Four former Gestapo officers were indicted today by the public prosecutor in the city of Wupperthal for participating in the murder of thousands of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Soviet Union territory. Their trial will probably start in December.
A long-term probe into the activities of Dr. Franz Schlegelberger, the physician and “specialist” in euthanasia during the Nazi regime, and of the work in that field during the Nazi era by 20 other West Germans, is far from completed, it was indicated here by the Stuttgart District Court today.
The 20 involved with Dr. Schlegelberger were chief prosecutors and district court high judges under Hitler. Schlegelberger himself was state secretary in the Nazi Ministry of Justice.
Last December, the Stuttgart court had announced that the investigation into the chief officials who implemented the Nazi euthanasia program would be completed in about a month. Today’s announcement set no date for the completion of the probe. Euthanasia, or the so-called “painless mercy killing” of the mentally ill, was a Nazi device for “legal” designation of certain persons, the vast majority of them Jews, for murder.
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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.
