Rudolf Heindl, Gestapo commandant of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, was executed in the courtyard of the Litomerice prison this week, two hours after he was found guilty of a long series of war crimes.
During the two-day trial preceding execution, scores of survivors of the notorious Nazi camp told the court that he directed several mass murders. In one instance the Gestapo chief inspected the camp’s hospital for TB victims in the dead of night and ordered all the tubercular patients to stand nude in the open doorways. Many of them died as a consequence, they reported. Police officials in the court were compelled several times to restrain numerous witnesses from attempting to attack the defendant.
The Czech Youth Front newspaper, “Mlada Fronta,” predicted this week that anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia will increase in the near future as a result of the “pressure on the remnants of bourgeois reaction in Czechoslovakia.” Agitators are appearing to try to arouse anti-Jewish feelings in the less-advanced parts of the population, the paper said, adding that the “dethroned bourgeoisie” was responsible for the recent anti-Semitic riots in Slovakia.
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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.
