Officials announced here today that former SS Major Hermann Hoefle, 47, who was arrested last year in Salzburg on charges of having participated in the slaughter of 30, 000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, will be brought to Vienna for trial.
Hoefle, who was an aide to former Nazi colonel Adolf Eichmann, lived for years in Bavaria and Austria under a false name until his arrest. Police arrested 20 persons connected with the case when they seized Hoefle. Prosecution documents are voluminous, the police said.
(In New York, the World Jewish Congress today reported that the Austrian authorities have requested its help in securing evidence against Hoefle and a number of other Austrians who are facing trial on charges of participating in the Nazi program for the massacre and pillaging of Polish Jewry. The others are: Hans Bohunsky, Franz Hoedl, Reinhold von Mohrenschildt, Rudolf Schleissner, Franz Eigner, Ernst Lersch, and Alois Rzepa. Anyone who has any knowledge of the crimes committed by Hoefle and his aides is asked to contact the headquarters of the World Jewish Congress in New York.)
Vienna’s State Attorney was simultaneously instructed by the Austrian Ministry of Justice today to bring to trial two prominent ex-Nazis accused of having played important roles at the Auschwitz concentration camp, as members of Hitler’s Elite Guard.
The men are Walter Dejaco, allegedly an SS officer who participated in the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau, one of the camps belonging to the Auschwitz complex; and Dr. Georg Meyer. Both men have been free until now. Dr. Meyer practices medicine in this city. Dejaco is an architect, living in the town of Reutte, in the Tyrolean district.
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