The two chief aides of Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of some 300,000 Hungarian Jews to the death centers went on trial here today for the second time on charges of complicity in the massacre. Former Lieut. Col. Hermann Krumey, 63, and former Captain Otto Hunsche, 56, who was Eichmann’s chief legal advisor, faced a court today composed of three judges and six jurors. Krumey had been convicted in a Frankfurt court in 1964 and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Hunsche had been acquitted. The public prosecutor appealed both decisions and the West German Supreme Court ordered the retrial of both men.
Both men were officers in the SS, Hitler’s elite force. Their previous trial lasted for nearly 10 months. During the proceedings, Krumey, whom Eichmann had once described as one of his closes associates, was identified as the man who negotiated with the Western powers in Eichmann’s behalf, offering to barter one million Jews for 10,000 trucks for Hitler’s Army. Both men denied knowing that the Jews, whose deportations they had ordered were being sent to death camps. Krumey also sought to defend his acts by claiming that he was a small functionary carrying out orders. When the trial opened today, Judge Werner Hummerich, the presiding Judge, excused one juror who said he hated the defendants because of the injuries his family had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
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.
