A Graz court today acquitted the former commander of the Volkssturm Nazi auxiliary troops in Austria, Oscar Reitter, who ordered the shooting of 11 Jewish forced laborers in April 1945.
Reitter claimed in his defense that he himself had been ordered to liquidate the Jews because they had typhus. Two former high Nazi functionaries had testified in Reitter’s defense. Even the Wiener Zeitung, official Government organ, terms the acquittal of the Nazi commander “a sensation.”
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