A former Nazi police officer was Bet free by a Hamburg Jury yesterday after it found him guilty of having participated in the murders of at least 1800 Jews in the Lublin district of Poland during World War II. The Jury that convicted 62-year-old Anton Becker refused to sentence him on grounds that he played a relatively minor role in the mass killings and was, moreover, “bound by the military discipline which reigned at the time.”
Three former SS leaders received light sentences in Munich yesterday for their role in the murders of 400 Polish Jews. Karl Fingerwas, 62, got a four year jail term and Siegfried Schuhart and Theodor Lips, both 57, each was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
A court in Essen, meanwhile, has postponed for the second time the trial of Horst Wagner, an aide to Adolf Eichmann accused of complicity in the mass murder of 350,000 Jews. Wagner, who is free on ball, was released from trial in order to undergo an eye operation. The presiding judge, Walter Behringer, said he intends to open the trial in July. But the accused has already served notice that he intends to enter a hospital for treatment of “other illness” after his eye surgery.
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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.
