Sentence on Erich Koch. Hitler’s gauleiter for parts of Poland and the Ukraine, convicted of responsibility for the murder of at least 400, 000 people, will be issued between March 6 and March 10, in the Warsaw court in which he was tried.
The four-month trial of Koch ended today in Warsaw, where he had been charged with responsibility for the murder of at least 400, 000 people, most of them Jews.
Ludwig Wojtaszluski, the public prosecutor, ” in the name of the hundreds of thousands whom he killed, ” demanded the life of this defendant.
Many Jewish survivors from the areas under Koch’s wartime jurisdiction had been brought to Warsaw as witnesses against the ex-gauleiter. Some of the witnesses came from foreign countries, including Israel.
Among the crimes of which he was accused was the murder of 200,000 Jews in the Bialistok area, and the killing of 15,000 Jews in Kovno, where he had his headquarters.
Throughout most of the trial, Koch sneered and jeered in the face of the court. His principal defense was that he was a civil administrator, and not an Army man, and he relied on the now-classic Nazi defense about being only a servant who was carrying out orders from on high. As to extermination of Jews, he said he knew nothing about the matter.
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.
