A local court has reduced from eight to four years the penitentiary term which a former SS corporal will have to serve for helping to murder a Jewish merchant.
During the November 1938 pogroms in the Saxony city of Chemnitz–which last month was renamed “Karl Marx City” by the East German Government–SS corporal Guldo Immortal had driven a party of Storm Troop and SS leaders to the house of the manager of the Tietz department store chain, named Furstenheim, had helped to drag him into the cellar and shoot him in cold blood. For being an “accessory to murder,” he was given an eight-year sentence in 1952.
Upon his appeal another court has now confirmed the findings, but imposed only a six-year term, with two years of pre-trial custody to be deducted. Immortal’s conviction was largely based upon the accidental discovery of the records of a Nazi Party court which, because random murder was still unauthorized in the Germany of 1938, had opened proceedings against him in connection with the case. The Nazi court had “sentenced” Immortal to cancellation of his permit to carry a concealed weapon.
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.
