The German news media is giving extensive coverage to the sentences pronounced by a Cologne court Monday on Kurt Lischka, Herbert-Martin Hagen and Ernest Heinrichsoan, all former Gestapo officials in France during World War II, convicted of complicity in the murders of thousands of Jews and others who they deported to Nazi death camps.
Lischka, 70, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Hagen, 66, received a 12-year sentence and Heinrichsohn, 59, was sentenced to six years. All are free pending a higher court’s decision on their appeals, a process that could take as long as a year.
The liberal daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, published in Munich, carried the headline, “High Jail Terms at Lischka’s Trial.” The paper observed that “there might be a lot to criticize on the continuous provocations of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld but one must admit that without their demonstrations no Lischka trial would have taken place.” Serge Klarsfeld, a French Jewish lawyer, and his non-Jewish wife, Beate, have been active for years in attempts to bring Lischka and other Nazi war criminals to justice.
ISSUES RAISED B, THE PRESS
Die Welt, a conservative national daily published in Bonn, ran a four-column story on the outcome of the trial and repeated the question asked by the presiding judge, Heinz-Fussbender: “Why weren’t the superiors accused as well?”
The left-wing Frankfurter Rundschau stated in an editorial: “Only now, many years after the honor, details about it are reaching the public …. History is being written in the court but up to now its significance was hardly noticed.” The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported the verdict in a small one-column news item but promised more detailed coverage in future editions.
The Communist East German Neues Deutschland, official organ of the ruling United Socialist Party, headlined its two-column report, “Only 6-12 Years to SS Murderers” and stressed that the trial was held only after violent protests in West Germany and abroad. The paper noted that Lischka’s victims were French Jews.
The Central Organization of Jews in Western Germany raid the verdict serves as a juridical and moral precedent. Heinz Galinski, chairman of the Jewish community in West Berlin, said the trial reaffirmed the necessity to go ahead with the prosecutions of Nazi war criminals.
The radio and television networks focussed on man-in-the-street interviews with residents of the small Bavarian town of Buergstadt where Heinrichsohn served as mayor until he resigned Monday after sentence was pronounced on him. The town’s residents reacted angrily to the verdict and young people in particular expressed solidarity with the convicted war criminal.
A local butcher, in a shop owned by Heinrichsohn, said in view of the Cologne verdict it would be foolish for Germans to serve in the military because they could be accused of murder years later. Other residents insisted that Heinrichsohn was just doing his duty as a good German.
An attempt is being made to have Hagen’s 12-year sentence reduced by three years for time already served in an Allied internment camp after the war – Each of the other two defendants can claim 18-month reductions for the same reason.
Meanwhile, the State Prosecutor in Cologne has demanded an eight-year prison term for former SS official Martin Patz and six years for his colleague Karl Misling, both accused of killing some 300 Polish inmates of German prisons. The prosecutor said the two took an active part in murdering the inmates after the beginning of the revolt in Warsaw in August 1944.
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