A German court here has sentenced Helmut Eschner, onetime assistant SS leader in the Grossrosen concentration camp, a satellite of the Oswiecim death camp, of complicity in murder, attempted murder and manslaughter and has sentenced him to 12 years in jail.
The prosecution, which had demanded a life sentence, charged that Eschner was responsible for the death of thousands of Jews and other camp inmates including a large number who had remained behind in 1945 when the camp was evacuated by the Nazis. The court found that a “causal relationship” had not been established between his proven mistreatment of prisoners and their subsequent death.
Six years ago he was convicted by a British military court in Hamburg of shooting 15 British prisoners of war and was sentenced to be hanged. For some unknown reason the sentence was never confirmed and he was released in 1948. He was subsequently sentenced to a four-year term by a denazification court, but was free again by 1949.
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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.
