Witnesses from Israel and the United States who returned to Germany to testify at the trial of Gustav Sorge and Wilhelm Schubert, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, told the court of the inhuman brutality with which Sorge and Schubert, beat, kicked, drowned and” burned to death hundreds of Jewish prisoners in the death camp.
One witness described Schubert’s setting fire to the long white beard of an old Jew whom he had first nicknamed “Father Christmas” In another instance, Schubert had demonstrated “christening” procedure for Jewish prisoners by drowning a 75-year-old Jew in a water barrel. Sorge was said to have ridden around the camp on a bicycle cracking skulls of Jewish prisoners standing at attention.
Following “crystal night” in 1938, when Nazi gangs were unleashed throughout Germany to destroy Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues, Jews were mistreated in gruesome fashion, witnesses testified. The mortality rate among Jewish prisoners soared and medical personnel among the prisoners were forbidden to assist sick or injured Jews, but many did so at risk to their own lives.
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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.
