Dr. Hans Laternser, chief defense attorney in the Auschwitz mass murder trial asked the court today to call four witnesses to testify against a Polish prosecution witness who last Friday made a series of grave charges against a number of the 22 defendants.
After a lengthy legal wrangle between Dr. Laternser and the prosecution, Presiding Judge Hans Hofmeyer granted the request. On the strength of the testimony by Joseph Krall, a Polish survivor of the death camp, Hans Stark, 42, youngest of the defendants, was arrested in the courtroom last Friday for detention. He had been free on bail, Kzall accused Stark not only of complicity in murder but also of having personally killed Auschwitz inmates.
Dr. Laternser, who has been associated with legal defenses of Nazi war criminals since the Nuremberg tribunals, told the court that his four witnesses would refute much of Krall’s testimony and prove that Krall killed two men at Auschwitz. The defense attorney said that two of his four witnesses were relatives of Stefan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader assassinated by Soviet agents in Munich in 1959. Krall, on questions from Judge Hofmeyer, said he knew that two relatives of Bandera had been interned at Auschwitz but he insisted he had never seen them.
In further testimony today, Krall accused defendant Klaus Dylewski of having shot many Auschwitz inmates, and of having tortured and gassed many others. He also accused defendant Peri Brod of having taken part in gassing prisoners.
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