The Germans are reacting with apathy to the repeated descriptions of “the most staggering brutalities” emerging from testimony at current West German trials of Nazi war criminals, the Manchester Guardian reported today from Bonn.
The Guardian correspondent reported that very few Germans he had questioned on one occasion had read beyond the headlines of a 32 column inch story of testimony at the mass murder trial in Frankfurt of 22 former Auschwitz camp personnel. The story described eye-witness testimony of dogs tearing at the bodies of women inmates in Auschwitz.
At the 12,000-student University of Bonn, the subject of the trials comes up frequently in private conversations but it has not been discussed recently in public forums, he reported, “and most students do not read details of newspaper reports on the trials.”
He added that he had found that many Germans were taking a legalistic view that such trials were now “inadvisable” because courts should not convict on testimony taken 20 years or more after the events. Others, he reported, think that the investigations have taken such a long time because former Nazi party members have been covering up for one another.
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