The Austrian High Court ordered today that Franz Murer, a former SS officer, stand trial again in Graz, the town in Austria where he was acquitted last June on charges of murdering 17 Jews during the Nazi occupation of Vilna, Lithuania.
The acquittal, which was the court decision despite testimony implicating Murer in the killings, caused widespread protests and official assurances that the case would be reopened. In the ruling today, the High Court threw out one count in a new charge filed by the prosecutor and ordered that Murer be tried for one murder of an unknown Polish Jew in the Vilna Ghetto.
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.
