A former Nazi police officer, appearing as a prosecution witness in the trial of two former Nazis accused of helping to murder 233, 000 Lodz ghetto Jews in 1942, testified this weekend that he thought the Kulmbach extermination camp was a recreation center for sick Jews.
The prosecution witness, Ottmar Roese, testified that he had been told there was an old castle at Kulmbach “where ailing Jews were sent to recuperate and I was foolish enough to believe it.” Roese, who was wartime commander of the Nazi security police in Lodz, gave the testimony at the trial of former SS Lt. Col. Otto Bradfisch, 69, and Guenther Fuchs, 52, who had been Gestapo “chief for Jewish affairs’ at Lodz in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The witness said that he later learned what was really taking place in the northern Bavaria camp and “immediately drove out there to take a look for myself. It was awful. They were just herding a group of screaming people into the gas vans, and their shrieks sub sided only a full 20 minutes later.”
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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.
