The authors analyze the place of the Jews in three postwar trials relating to Auschwitz and find that the murder of the Jews played a signficant role in the proceedings. The Jews figured prominently in the trial of Auschwitz-Birkenau commandant Rudolf Hess in Poland in 1947 and in the 1963-65 Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. The analysis of these trials helps us to understand why Auschwitz-Birkenau became the symbol of the Holocaust