The trial of twenty-one guards at the Breendonck concentration camp at Antwerp, one of the lesser known Nazi hells, who were being tried for the murder and torture of 4,000 persons, most of them Jews, has concluded here. The prosecution is asking the death penalty. The court announced that its verdict would be issued on May 7.
The defendants, three of whom are Jews, are charged with using their victims as targets during rifle practice, burning them alive, drowning some in the most around the camp, which was located in an old fortress, and other refinements of torture including the “electric needle.”
Breendonck, the 250 survivors who testified at the trial reported, was even worse than Oswiecim and Belsen, and the Jewish prisoners were treated worse than the others. The trial was disrupted on several occasions when the witnesses, unnerved by the recital of their tortures and the sight of their tortures, struck, kicked or spat on the defendants as they sat in the dock. One Jewish witness, Moitz Leventhal, appealed to the president of the court to be allowed to act as the hangman if the guards are convicted.
The three Jewish defendants are Walter Obler from Berlin, M. Schwanst, also from Berlin and Sally Lewin from Poland.
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.
