Title:THE ARREST OF FRITZ SUHREN [Allocated Title]
Film Number:MGH 617
Other titles:
Summary: Film of the formal identification and arrest of the notorious Fritz Suhren, SS Commandant of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, sometime after the war.
Description: The film shows the official identification of SS Lieutenant-Colonel Fritz Suhren by a Polish Army Officer who had been an inmate of Sachsenhausen concentration camp whilst Suhren was commandant of that camp. Suhren is then formally arrested by Major Rees, the Public Safety Officer of the 115th Detachment, Military Government of Germany, the unit that made the arrest. Suhren is put in a car and driven down refugee-filled roads in devastated Germany. The arrest is undated and the location unknown. The quality of the film is poor. Suhren was commandant of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp at the end of the war and was arrested by the Americans on 3 May 1945 when trying to barter his own release for that of Odette Churchill. He subsequently escaped and was recaptured at a later date (shown in the film). He escaped again under mysterious circumstances and was free for several years until recaptured and tried by the French at Rastatt in 1950. Suhren was executed on 12 June 1950.
