Former Ss General Traced, Charged with Killing 340,000 Mostly Jews

Walter Drugh,Chief Bonn Prosecutor, reported today that Wilhelm Koppe, a former Nazi SS general, has been identified as the former director of Chelmno concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where 340,000 inmates were murdered.

Koppe was living under an assumed name with his family, and working for a business firm in Frankfurt, when he was arrested three months ago by agents of West Germany’s war crimes investigation department.

Prosecutor Drugh, disclosing that Koppe’s true identity was not confirmed until last week, said the former general would be charged with complicity in the killing of the Chelmno camp victims. The camp was located between Poznan and Lodz.The prosecutor cited Polish sources for the figure of 340,000 victims, most of them Jews. He added the case against Koppe would take several months to complete, partly because numerous witnesses remain to be located.

Schleswig authorities announced today the arrest of a municipal councilman, Martin Follenz, on charges of participation in the murder of Jews near Cracow in 1942.Fellenz is a member of the Free Democratic party.

Nazi songs echoed last night in the Bergzaben prison near Mainz, sung by 10 youths, aged 18 to 23.They were arrested June 17 for celebrating “unity day” by wearing SS-like uniforms and singing Nazi songs.

At least 1,400 Berlin Jews were saved from death during the war by non-Jewish Germans, Senator Joachim Lipschitz, a ‘leading Social Democrat, revealed here today.

Senator Lipschitz,himself a half-Jew who,somehow,managed to live through the war to return here as a war hero and who lest an arm on the Eastern front, made that statement in introducing a bill in this City-State Legislature to compensate Germans who had saved Jews and are now in need. The bill provides that non-Jews in that category receive a grant of 1,000 deutschemarks (about $250).