A jury at Freiburg acquitted Hermann Herz, a 57-year-old former Gestapo officer in Allenstein, East Prussia, who was charged with shooting a group of 15 persons who were engaged in burying victims of mass killings and removing evidence of such atrocities.
In announcing the verdict, the jury said it found that it was no longer possible to discover all the details relevant to the case, and had therefore to acquit Herz, The former Gestape official admitted that he had given the order to shoot the victims, but claimed that the persons he killed were Polish partisans who had been sentenced to death, and that he was just carrying out the sentences. The prosecution had asked for four years of hard labor for the accused.
At Hechingen, three officials of two Nazi concentration camps received prison terms at hard labor at the close of a nine-month war crimes trial. Franz Johann Hofmann, a former SS official, was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment on conviction of manslaughter. A previous sentence against Hofmann by a Munich court was included in the sentence. Stephan Kruth, 48, was given a 12-year term on conviction for two cases of attempted-murder. Helmut Schnabel, was given 10 years for attempted murder and complicity in the murder of four victims. Eugen Wurth, 48, was acquitted.
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.
