The zeal displayed by Willi Reupke, a district election manager for the right-wing German Party in the election campaign that closed last Sunday, may be his undoing.
Reupke was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for “persistent political libel” of Erich Ollenhauer, leader of the Social Democratic Party, through the distribution of posters falsely labelling him a Jew and appealing to the voters to support a right-wing party, not “one led by a member of the ‘Chosen People.'”
As a result of publicity given the case, Reupke has now been identified as having been a police captain in the Nazi service. After the German invasion of Poland, according to information filed with the prosecutor’s office in Brunswick, Reupke commanded a police district in the corridor city of Bydgosz. Five German police who served there at the time have now made charges to the prosecutor that Reupke beat a number of prisoners to death and had them buried in the courtyard of the police station.
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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.
