A West German court at Bochum sentenced Paul Werner Hoppe, a former Nazi camp commander, to nine years’ hard labor. He was convicted of having aided in the murder of thousands of inmates, many of them Jews, at the Stutthof camp, near Danzing.
Sixty witnesses testified in the course of the five-week trial that 25, 000 Jews were killed by gassing and lethal injections, by shooting and hanging in the Stutthof camp. A number of former inmates told how Hoppe had administered brutal beatings, how he supervised a variety of sadistic practices and trained bulldogs to tear prisoners apart. A girl medical student gave evidence under oath that Hoppe had intervened to speed the gassing of pregnant Jewish women.
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.
