The Innsbruck Law Court, which convicted the Jewish student, Philip Halsmann, and sentenced him to ten years imprisonment, afterwards reduced to four years, on the charge that he had murdered his father, who was killed while they were mountain-climbing during their holidays in the Austrian Tyrol, has received an official application from Halsmann, who after he was set free by a free pardon given him by the Austrian Government a few months back, is now continuing his studies at Paris University, in which he asks it to reopen his trial, in order to consider important new evidence which his legal advisers have obtained.
The Austrian law authorities will decide early next month whether the application should be granted, and if so, where the new trial should be held.
Philip Halsmann points out in his application that he did not ask for the pardon which was given him, and that he refused to sign the appeal for it, because he did not want to be released with the stigma of parricide still upon him. He will not rest, he says, until it has been established by a court of law, that he did not kill his father.
The antisemitic papers have already utilised the opportunity to start a new agitation, on the ground that the Austrian judicial authorities had no right to step in and extend a free pardon to a foreign Jew, when his guilt had not been disproved.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
