The state prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt is now preparing 36 new trials involving hundreds of alleged war criminals, including former camp personnel and inmates at the Auschwitz death camp, Dr. Hans Grossman, the chief prosecutor, disclosed today.
Among the defendants in a third Auschwitz trial which is due to start soon, he said, will be three former camp inmates accused of participation in the murder of other prisoners. A fourth Auschwitz trial, he said, would involve former members of Hitler’s SS.
Dr. Grossman noted that the first two trials of Auschwitz guards and camp personnel had not been concluded because the defendants had appealed their convictions and the appeals were still pending. He said that indictments would be forthcoming early in 1967 against at least six former Nazi police officers.
Current investigations, he said, cover the activities of hundreds of persons suspected of war crimes in Czechoslovakia between 1939 and 1945, the years of the German occupation. He said preparations were being made to bring to trial those responsible for execution of the Nazi campaign to exterminate the gypsies.
The Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, Dr. Grossman said, is currently examining the possibility of bringing to trial the Nazi officials who devised the train transportation plans for deportation of Jews to the extermination camps in Poland.
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