Stefan Baretzki was an Auschwitz guard of Bukovina German origin. He was conscripted into the Waffen-SS and stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 until 1945. There he participated in the mass murder by making selections, beatings and murdering prisoners on his own initiative. After the war, Baretzki settled in West Germany. He was the lowest-ranking of the twenty-four defendants in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. His murders were sensationalized in the German press, taking the focus off of the systematic crimes of the Nazi regime. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment and eight years for participating in the murder of more than 8,000 people. Baretzki expressed regret for his actions, testified against his former superiors, and committed suicide while serving his sentence.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as Der Auschwitz-Prozess, or Der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess, was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants under German criminal law for their roles in the Holocaust as mid- to lower-level officials in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration camp complex. Hans Hofmeyer led as Chief Judge the "criminal case against Mulka and others".