The Central Council of Jews in Germany protested today against the verdict of a Frankfurt court in acquitting Dr. Gerhard Peters, chemical manufacturer who produced a special “Zyklon B” brand of lethal potassium cyanide. The product was sold to the Auschwitz extermination camp in quantities sufficient to asphyxiate hundreds of thousands of its inmates.
The Council’s protest noted that Peters admittedly knew what the crystals were used for. The Council regretted that competent Jewish authorities were neither consulted by the prosecution, nor asked for help in locating witnesses to the employment of “Zyklon B” in Auschwitz. The circumstances of the case, the Council observed bitterly, made it probable that Nazi crimes against the Jews would be blamed on the Jews themselves.
The Jewish representative body asked that the Frankfurt Attorney General appeal against the acquittal, in a telegram informing the Attorney General of the Central Council’s position and advising him that the families of Jews killed at Auschwitz by poison gas ever, ignored the Council’s message and no appeal was filed within the one-week period prescribed by German law.
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.
