The leniency shown by German courts on the rare occasions when Nazi crimes still come to trial is denounced in resolution adopted by a regional conference of Social Democratic women.
One of the cases cited in the resolution is that of ex-Wehrmacht Captain Karl Friedrich Noell and ex-Sergeant Emil Zimber, the former a school teacher near Darmstadt and the latter a postwar member of the Freiburg police force. They had been indicted for “participation in murder” because they ordered the slaughter of at least 250 Jews in a village near Smolensk, during the German advance on Moscow in 1941.
The sentences handed down by a Darmstadt court last March were three and two years of imprisonment, respectively. “Thus, the penalty for each murdered Jewish infant is just a few days in jail,” the resolution points out.
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.
