A former SS captain testified yesterday in the war crimes trial of two former aides of Adolf Eichmann in Hungary that he had been assigned to guard a fortune in gold and Jewels taken from Hungarian Jews by the Nazis.
The witness, Karl Grabau, also said he did not know of the mass extermination program in which some 430,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered. He testified at the trial of former SS Officers Herman Krumey and Otto Hunsche. They are charged with having exacted huge amounts of ransom from Jews hoping to escape deportation to the Auschwitz death camp. They also are charged with mass deportations of the doomed Jews.
The witness, who is now an accountant in Hamburg, who had been a member of the SS supply staff in occupied Budapest, said he thought that the gold and Jewels were “paid” in connection with “the emigration” of Hungarian Jews.
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