A German criminal court here has dropped proceedings against five former Gestapo and Nazi police officials charged with having played an active role in the deportation of 2,463 Jews from Wuerttemberg. The reason for the court’s action was that the “subjective guilt” of the defendants had not been proved.
The Nuremberg war crimes court is hearing an appeal against the decision of a lower court giving two former Nazi officials three-year, one-month sentences on several charges including responsibility of large numbers of Jews from Nuremberg to certain death in camps outside Germany.
The defendants are B. Martin, one-time police chief of Nuremberg, and Dr. Helmut Rudersdorf, forcer advisor to the Gestapo in this city. The men were convicted of unlawful detention of the Jews and of blackmail, but were cleared of direct responsibility for the deportations on the ground that they acted on orders from their superior. This mitigating circumstance was not accepted in the case of 12 other co-defendants, leading to the present reconsideration of the case.
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