Harry Wentritt, 59, an engineer who invented the infamous “gas van” for quick and “efficient” killing of Jews, as part of Adolf Eichmann’s program for the murder of 6, 000, 000 European Jews under the Nazi regime, was arrested here yesterday. At the same time, the Federal Prosecutor’s office announced, three of Wentritt’s principal assistants were also arrested. One of them is Johannes Tradel, a police officer at Hanover.
All of the arrested men have been living under their own names. Wentritt has been working as an automobile mechanic in the small Bavarian town of Selbitz.
According to the prosecutor Wentritt and his colleagues had been traced through Nazi documents recently examined in Washington by Dr. Erwin Schuele, a representative of the West German Government. Dr. Schuele went to Washington, last summer, after the arrest of Eichmann and the scheduling of the latter’s trial in Israel.
The American Government had stored vast Nazi files in warehouses in Washington, but most of the documents had never been examined until Dr. Schuele and a team of assistants went carefully through the archives. Wentritt had been commended by the SS for his invention of the “gas van,” and had been promoted to a higher rank for his “achievement.”
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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.
