Edgar Fernau, local school teacher and former Nazi, was given a four month suspended sentence here this week-end following his conviction on charges of having defamed the memory of the dead by publicly stating his approval of the Nazi gassing of Jews.
Fernau, suspended from his teaching post last March following his indictment, was said to have declared in a public argument with a barber that “it’s a pity about the Jews, that they were not all gassed.” Denying this, Fernau said in his own defense that the argument started when the barber “sung a hymn of praises” for the Jews. Witnesses testified that when the barber, Paul Knospe, said that “Jews are human beings like anyone else,” Fernau replied: “They are not.”
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