A Polish Journalist, who was an inmate of the Auschwitz death camp for five years, implicated a number of the principal defendants in the Auschwtiz personnel trial in testimony here today. Wojciech Bartz, 49, told the court that he saw one of the 22 defendants, Josef Klehr, give a number of lethal felonic injections to prisoners, a charge made against Klehr by previous witnesses in the monumental, mass trial, which began last December.
Bartz testified there were two types of prisoners who were chosen for such disposal. One comprised the sick and infirm who could no longer work. The other were members of special crematorium squads who had to transfer bodies from the gas chambers to the ovens, who were “periodically killed off and replaced by new prisoners.”
He also accused defendants Klaus Dylewski and Perri Brod of atrocities and brutalities, but was unable to give any details on their activities in the death camp. He described another of the defendants, Dr. Franz Bernhard Lucas, a gynecologist who had been a camp doctor, as “very decent” in his treatment of prisoners. He also testified, however, that Dr. Lucas occasionally substituted for Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous “selection doctor” in the camp hospital, and in selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. Dr. Lucas denied the charge.
In another war crimes trial today at Brunswick, the prosecution in the case of five former SS officers, charged with the wartime murder of 5,200 Jews in Pinsk in White Russia, asked for seven concurrent life sentences for Hans Walter Nenntwich, the principal defendant. He was charged specifically with killing seven Jews. The prosecution also asked for prison terms ranging from four to seven years for four other defendants.
At Kiel, Hans Graalfs, 48, former SS officer, was sentenced yesterday to three years’ imprisonment at hard labor for complicity in the wartime killing of 780 Jews. He had been charged with being involved in the deaths of 1, 500 Jews in Russia, but was convicted on the lesser charge.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
