A 52-year-old former Nazi policeman, Gerhard Schlosser, will be tried for the fourth time on charges of war crimes committed in the Czenstochow ghetto in occupied Poland, officials here said today.
He has been accused of murdering 40 Jews and was tried for the 1942 murder of Harry Mittler, a Jewish medical assistant in the ghetto. He received one sentence of ten years at hard labor and one for life imprisonment but both sentences were quashed.
In his most recent trial, in November 1965 in Schweinfurt, the jury decided it was unable to try him and the case was suspended. The Schweinfurt court held the case to involve manslaughter and not murder because the prosecution was unable to prove that Schlosser had killed Mittler because of “race hatred.” The court then noted that the statute of limitations for manslaughter became effective in 1960 and the jury said it could not act.
Meanwhile, the Central Office for the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals reported today that a group of its experts are in Prague studying documents relating to Nazi crimes. They will remain in Prague until Saturday. The office said the visits were arranged last January in Prague with the Czechoslovak Commission for War Crimes.
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