in 1944 he was appointed SS Obersturmbannführer. The man who gave Frühling his direct orders and his accomplice, Fredrich Jahns (1885–1939) was a master gardener, member of the SA and Obersturmführer for the SA Reservesturms 29/411 Lesum-Ritterhude. He died in 1939. In 1948, Frühling, Köster, Walter Seggermann, Ernst Röschmann and further involved parties had to stand trial for the murders of Martha and Adolph Goldberg and Leopold Sinasohn before the Bremen District Court. Seggermann was sentenced to two and a half years and Röschmann to four years in prison, and the principle defendant Köster was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. August Frühling received a sentence of ten years. As was also the case when the same court carried out proceedings against the murderers of the businessman Heinrich Rosenblum in the previous year, relatively mild convictions for manslaughter were given for various reasons: the defense pleaded "superior orders and disturbance of consciousness during the act", and the court considered it proven that the criterion for murder, premeditation (then, "Überlegung" in German, now referred to as "Vorsatz"), was not present. Fritz Köster's life sentence was reduced to 15 years in an appeal hearing, and he was released early in 1953. He went on to work for the department store Horten AG in Düsseldorf and was employed as an advisor for the Lürssen-Werft shipyard in Bremen in the 1970s. August Frühling was pardoned by the Senate of Bremen in 1951, through the commutations of sentences for Nazi perpetrators that were stipulated by the US High Commissioner for Germany, John Jay McCloy. After this, from 1952, he returned to work as a ship's 'engineer. Impact and commemoration Commemoration of victims A process of coming to terms with the persecution of Jews during the Nazi period began rather hesitantly in Bremen at the end of the 1970s and first became accepted by the majority of the population in the 1980s. Accordingly, a plaque by the Bremen sculptor Claus Homfeld was first installed in 1982 at the Kolpinghaus on Kolpingstraße in the Schnoor district of Bremen, commemorating the synagogue that was set on fire and destroyed by National Socialists in 1938. Also in 1982, not far from this former main synagogue of the Jewish community in Bremen the Memorial for the Victims of Reichskristallnacht was installed in front of the Landherrnamt building, in memory of Martha and Adolph Goldberg and the other three Jewish victims of Reichspogromnacht