For deporting Jews of this ancient community and its vicinity to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe, the local court last night imposed a three-year sentence on Cologne’s one-time Gestapo head Franz Sprains and a two-year term on his aide, Kurt Mapschoke. These were just half the penalties demanded by the prosecution.
Of 9,000 Jews deported under the direction of this pair, more than 8, 000 perished. The court, which found both defendants guilty of “aggravated deprivation of liberty with fatal consequences”, ruled they had known they were sending Jews to their deaths.
At the opening of the trial, one of the principal defendants had been former Gestapo chief Dr. Emanuel Schaefer, 53. SS brigadier and wartime commander of the Nazi security service in Serbia. Because he suffered a nervous collapse, the case against him has, however, been detached and adjourned indefinitely. In a separate trial a week before, Schaefer had been convicted of numerous ghastly crimes, including the 1942 killing of some 6, 000 Jews in the inter-mated camp at Semlin, Belgrade. He was sentenced to six-and-a-half years’ imprisonment.
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.
