The Bavarian Ministry of Justice will investigate the back grounds of 52 of its highest ranking judges and state prosecutors following a protest by the Association of Persons Persecuted by the Nazi Regime which charged that the jurists had served “Nazi justice” in Hitler’s special courts.
The charges grew out of the escape to Egypt of Hans Eisele, a Nazi camp doctor who fled the country while under investigation. At that time it was discovered that the prosecutor responsible for the inquiry into Eisele’s crimes was Max von Decker, an early member of the Nazi Party.
On the list of jurists with Nazi backgrounds is Adolf Paulus, director of the Bayreuth Circuit Court, who recently sentenced Buchenwald criminal Martin Sommer to life imprisonment for the murder of Jews and others. The association of persecutees charged that Paulus turned down a plea for mercy of a Ukrainian agricultural worker who was condemned to death by a Nazi court in 1942 for a minor offense.
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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.
