Completion of testimony by witnesses in the trial of Georg Heuser and 11 other former Nazis charged with the wartime murder of 35,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Minsk was reported here today.
During the 58 days of the trial to date, 154 witnesses have been heard to obtain detailed information on the mass executions of Jews and Russians in the Minsk area. The prosecution was scheduled to make its summation tomorrow, and the defense will make its plea starting May 2.
A former Nazi officer said to have been Heuser’s superior at Minsk during the Nazi wartime occupation of that city, was one of the last witnesses. He testified that he “never fired on anyone.” He is Johannes Kunz, deputy police chief at Graz, Austria, who had been sought without success for some time to be brought here as a witness. Heuser previously testified at the trial here that Kunz drew up a plan for the mass annihilation of Jews in Minsk.
Kunz admitted in his testimony that he had been on duty in the Minsk Ghetto and that, from May 1942 until January 1943, he had been associated as an SS officer with the office of the Nazi Security Police chief at Minsk. He testified further that he had been assigned to create a Criminal Investigation Department, but strongly denied having ever taken part in any action against Jews in Minsk.
Asked by the Jury court president what he would have done if he had been given an execution order, he replied: “I would never have done it even at the risk of being sent to a camp from which there was no return.” Kunz has been suspended from his police job in Austria.
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