Charles Deibel collection

This collection relates to an attorney with the United States military who served as a defense attorney at the Dachau War Crimes trials, which were run by the Judge Advocate General’s Department of the United States Third Army. Charles B. Deibel, Jr. served in this role between 1945-1946, spanning the trials of personnel from the Dachau, Mauthausen, and Flossenbürg concentration camps. The collection includes original photographs and photographic negatives of images taken during the trials and candid photographs of Deibel and the rest of the defense team. The collection also includes interesting series of correspondence, including letters from Florence Minners, a member of Deibel’s extended family who, though born in the United States, spent the war in Germany and requested Deibel to use his resources to help the family during the American occupation of Germany. Extensive correspondence with John Szeptycki, a Holocaust survivor who aided the United States military during the trials—including information about Szeptycki’s desire to reunite with his family and emigrate, and Deibel’s desire to assist Szeptycki—are also included. Charles Bond Deibel, Jr. (1914-1973) was born on March 5, 1914 in St. Louis, MO. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, he married Jane Stern on June 25, 1938 in Clayton, MO. He graduated with a law degree from the City College of St. Louis in 1939. Deibel remained in the United States during most of World War II, but was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Third Army in early 1945. Soon after the war ended, Deibel was sent to Germany, where he served as a defense attorney during the Dachau war crimes trials. He returned to the United States in late 1946. Deibel passed away on November 11, 1973.