An Austrian Jury in Vienna deliberated six hours Friday and then acquitted Walter Dejaco, the Nazi architect who designed and built the gas chambers and furnaces at the Auschwitz death camp, of murder. Dejaco was released from custody after the verdict. The jury accepted Dejaco’s plea that he was not guilty because he was acting under military orders and that he did not know the use to which the chambers and ovens would be put.
The jury of seven men and one woman also acquitted his former aide, Fritz Ertl. Dejaco is 63 and a former SS member. Ertl is 64. The jury unanimously found both men not guilty of directly aiding the mass murder of inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest death camp in occupied Poland. By a 5-3 vote, the jury decided that Dejaco did not bear a “remote” guilt in the deaths. Ertl was convicted on that charge but excused on grounds he was acting under “duress of orders.”
The verdict caused little surprise. Austrian courts have a long record of leniency toward Nazi defendants tried on war crimes charges. State Prosecutor Hugo Kresnik said he would seek a re-trial. More than 60 persons testified, including Auschwitz survivors. Many refuted Dejaco’s plea that he did not know what the chambers and ovens were used for. The court was shown blueprints which included plans for elevators to move corpses from gas chambers to the ovens. All of the blueprints bore Dejaco’s signature. The trial was largely the result of efforts of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.
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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.
