The Boger swing was a torture device built and used by SS Staff Sergeant Wilhelm Boger at Auschwitz, where victims were chained upside down to an iron bar and beaten during interrogations. Boger’s use of the device was a centerpiece of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of 1963–1965, which ended with his conviction for murder and a sentence of life imprisonment plus five years.1Fritz Bauer Institut. Chapter 16
How the Device Was Built and Used
The swing was simple. Two upright wooden beams held an iron pole between them. Boger would force a prisoner to kneel, lay the pole across the back of the knees, chain the prisoner’s hands to the same pole, and then fasten the bar to the uprights. The prisoner hung upside down, head down, body exposed to blows.2Holocaust Research Project. Wilhelm Boger
The device belonged to the Political Department of Auschwitz I, which used it to extract confessions. Survivor Josef Kral, who was himself hung on the swing, testified at the Frankfurt trial that interrogation sessions ran three to four hours a day. He described being suspended by his arms, strapped behind his back, until they broke.3Perspectivia.net. The Story of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial Kral also recounted the killing of a fellow prisoner named Janicki, saying the man was “torn to bits” on the device. After the session, Kral testified, Boger kicked the dying prisoner’s head with his boot while Janicki begged for water.2Holocaust Research Project. Wilhelm Boger Boger was documented interrogating prisoners on the swing until they died.
No proper image of the device survived the war. In 1959, Kazimierz Smoleń, a survivor and director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, was organizing the archives and realized there was no adequate description of the swing. The historian Hermann Langbein pointed him to Josef Kral, who produced a detailed drawing. That drawing became the first real representation of the device and was later entered into the pre-trial files of the Frankfurt case.3Perspectivia.net. The Story of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Who Wilhelm Boger Was
Boger was born on December 19, 1906, in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. He joined the Nazi youth movement in 1922, the Nazi Party and SA in 1929, and the SS in 1930. He entered the auxiliary police in 1933 and was appointed Kommissar in March 1937. In December 1942, he was transferred to Auschwitz and assigned to the Political Department as a staff sergeant.2Holocaust Research Project. Wilhelm Boger
The Political Department was the camp’s internal security and intelligence arm, staffed by Gestapo and criminal police officials. It handled prisoner registration, surveillance, the crematoria, and executions at the “Death Wall.” Within it, the interrogation and investigation unit, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, “evoked the greatest fear among the prisoners.” Boger was identified alongside Gerhard Lachmann as one of the unit’s “notorious henchmen.”4Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. The Organizational Structure of Auschwitz Concentration Camp The department head reported both to the camp commandant and to the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin.
Some accounts called Boger “the Tiger of Auschwitz,” and the swing was his signature. His private secretary, identified in trial records as Frau Braun, testified that she had been required to observe and take shorthand notes during his torture sessions throughout her time at the camp. She was fluent in six languages and worked as his stenographer in the interrogation chamber. She told the court Boger had once said to her, “You see, my pretty Fräulein, you will never live to tell the tale.” She survived, but later said, “I was saved in Auschwitz because I belonged to Boger. And because I belonged to Boger, I could never have children.”5Cali Tree Review. Frau Braun and the Tiger of Auschwitz
Arrest, Escape, and Final Capture
American military police arrested Boger on June 19, 1945. He was scheduled for extradition to Poland on November 22, 1946, but escaped while in custody at Cham. For about three years he lived near Crailsheim under a false name. In 1950 he took a job at an airplane factory in his hometown of Zuffenhausen, where he worked openly until his final arrest on October 8, 1958. He was charged with complicity in the crimes committed at Auschwitz.2Holocaust Research Project. Wilhelm Boger
The Swing in the Courtroom
The first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial ran from December 20, 1963, to August 20, 1965, the longest trial of Nazi crimes ever held in West Germany.6United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Auschwitz Trial Testimony of Otto Wolken It was initiated by Fritz Bauer, the Attorney General of Hesse, who had received documents on killings at Auschwitz in January 1959 and immediately opened an investigation.7Hessisches Landesarchiv. Recordings of the Auschwitz Trial – Chapter 5
Unlike the Nuremberg proceedings, the Frankfurt trial operated under the German Penal Code of 1871. Prosecutors could charge only murder or aiding and abetting murder, and they had to prove the individual, personal guilt of each defendant nearly two decades after the fact.8Jewish Museum Berlin. Auschwitz and Majdanek Trials Over 183 days of hearings, the court heard 319 witnesses, including 181 Auschwitz survivors.9UNESCO. Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Boger’s device was shown to the judges directly. On March 19, 1964, Paul Leo Seidel, a Holocaust survivor and former Auschwitz inmate from Munich, physically demonstrated the Boger swing in the courtroom, showing how victims were restrained and suspended.10Pritzker Military Museum and Library. Auschwitz Trial Demonstration of the Boger Swing On May 25, 1964, Kazimierz Smoleń testified about the device’s construction and use and presented the drawing Josef Kral had made for the museum.3Perspectivia.net. The Story of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
The case against Boger did hit a serious obstacle. Rudolf Kauer, a former construction engineer and former prisoner in the Political Department, took the stand on July 6, 1964, and recanted the sworn statements he had earlier given against Boger, which had described Boger beating prisoners to death. Kauer called his prior statements fabrications, said he had been “a bit tipsy” when he gave them, and described them as “a yarn.” The prosecutor Georg Friedrich Vogel told the court that “nothing useful is to be expected” from the witness and suggested stopping the examination.11Auschwitz-Prozess.de. Zeugenaussage Rudolf Kauer
The volume of consistent survivor testimony and Frau Braun’s corroborating account carried the case. Boger gave statements on the 50th day of the trial (May 29, 1964) and the 151st day (April 26, 1965), with final remarks on August 6, 1965. On August 20, 1965, the court convicted him of murder on at least five counts and collective murder on at least 109 counts, along with accessory to collective murder, and sentenced him to life imprisonment plus five additional years.1Fritz Bauer Institut. Chapter 16 Boger spent the rest of his life in prison.
Why the Case Still Matters
The Frankfurt trial exposed how narrow the legal path was for prosecuting state-sponsored mass murder in domestic courts. Of roughly 6,500 SS personnel who served at Auschwitz, only about 50 were ever convicted in German courts. The requirement to prove individual acts of killing made lower-ranking guards very hard to reach. That standard did not shift until the convictions of Ivan Demjanjuk in 2011 and Oskar Gröning in 2015, when German courts accepted that service as a death camp guard could itself support charges of accessory to mass murder, without evidence tying the defendant to a specific killing.12CBC News. Auschwitz Convictions Have Been Few and Far Between
Boger reached that higher bar on his own. The swing he built, the testimony of the people he hung on it, and the drawing Josef Kral made from memory were enough to prove personal killings in a courtroom twenty years after the fact.