SS Colonel Hans Himpe, who 20 years ago ordered black shirts under his command to kill four Jews of Hirschberg, in Silesia, had his sentence for being “an accessory to murder” cut from ten to six years by a local German court.
Two days after the so-called “Roehm putsch” of 1934, the four Jews were arrested and, in accordance with the instructions transmitted by Col, Himpe, taken out of town in an automobile. On an open highway the SS men, pretending that the car was stalled, forced their unwilling passengers to leave it, then shot them down in cold blood.
The witnesses for the defense, who sought to show that Col. Himpe’s murder order had been “legal,” kept referring to “the Fuehrer” and “the Reich Marshall,” even after the presiding judge pointedly and repeatedly told them that their meaning would be per fectly clear even if they referred simply to “Hitler” or “Goering.” One of these witnesses is presently a high official in the office of the Berlin delegation in Bonn.
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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.
