Roland Freisler was born in Germany in 1893. He joined the German Army and during the First World War he
was captured by the Russian Army and was a prisoner of war.
On his return to Germany he joined the German Communist
Party. After studying at university he became a lawyer. His political
views gradually moved to the right and in 1925 he joined the National
Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP).
When Adolf
Hitler came to power in 1933 Freisler was appointed chief personnel
officer in the Prussian Ministry of Justice. The following year he became
state secretary in the Prussian and then the federal Ministry of Justice.
In July 1942, Freisler joined Reinhard
Heydrich, Heinrich Muller and at Adolf
Eichmann the Wannsee
Conference where they discussed the issue of the large number of
inmates in Germany's concentration
camps. At the meeting it was decided to make the extermination
of the Jews a systematically organized operation. Eichmann was then placed in charge of what became known as the Final
Solution. After this date extermination camps were established in
the east that had the capacity to kill large numbers of inmates.
Freisler was appointed as president of the “People's
Court” in August 1942. The court had been set up to judge
"political crimes" and presided over the trial of those involved
in the July Plot.
Roland Freisler was killed during an Allied air raid
when he was hit on the head by falling masonary in February 1945.
