A Vienna jury court sentenced today two brothers, Johann and Wilhelm Mauer, former SS officers, to prison terms at their second trial of charges of mass murders of Jews in occupied Poland, Johann Mauer received an eight-year term. His brother was given a 12-year term.
The Polish-born brothers, who voluntarily joined Hitler’s SS Elite Guard, were charged originally with participation in the “Bloody Sunday” massacre of October 12, 1941 when about 20,000 Polish Jews were driven from the Stanislaw Ghetto to the cemetery and 12,000 were killed on the spot.
A Salzburg jury acquitted the two Nazis last February on grounds they had acted under “compulsory orders” but the Salzburg Senate immediately suspended that verdict and the Austrian High Court ordered a new trial. Many witnesses, many of them Israelis testified at the second trial that the brothers had personally shot Jewish men, women and children.
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.
