Two former SS officers were on trial here today on charges of having participated in the wartime murder of 500, 000 victims, most of them Jews, in mobile gas vans in occupied Russia and Serbia.
The defendants are former SS major Friedrich Pradel, 65, and his former first lieutenant at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, Harry Wentritt, 63. The indictment charged that Pradel suggested the use of such mobile murder devices and supervised the operation of more than a dozen of the vehicles. The indictment held that the vans Pradel directed killed 6, 000 victims.
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.
