A 67-year-old former policeman in the Chelmno concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland testified today at the trial of 13 former Nazis here that it was mainly Jewish women and children who were the victims of the mass murder program at the camp. The defendants are charged with participating in the wartime killing of 180,000 Jews there.
Kurt Moebius of Aix La Chapelle, the former policeman, insisted the SS had always tried to leave the actual killings to the Nazi police at the camp and that he had done nothing but obey orders.
The prosecution entered today into the court record a secret letter dated May 1, 1942 from the sectional Gestapo leader to Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler, which read: “The special treatment in my region now is almost completed. More than 100,000 Jews have been liquidated. I suggest now that we kill 230,000 Poles suffering from tuberculosis.”
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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.