Dr. Emanuel Schaefer, former SS brigadier and Gestapo chief of this city, convicted of responsibility for deporting Cologne’s 13,000 Jews to their deaths during the Nazi regime, received today what amounts to a three-month jail sentence. Only about 300 of the 13,000 Jews deported from Cologne to the death camps in Eastern Europe between 1942 and 1944 survived.
Sentence, as a result of Schaefer’s being found guilty by the local Court of Assizes, was passed today by Presiding Justice Schwengers. The judge formally sentenced the former Gestapo general to a year of hard labor. Then Justice Schwengers combined nine months of the sentence with another prison term previously imposed against Schaefer in such a way that the “net” increase for the Cologne crime will be only ninety days.
The previous sentence given Schaefer was for various crimes he committed while heading the Nazi Security Service in Yugoslavia. There, according to the charges, he was responsible for the slaughter of some 6,000 Jewish women and children at the Semlin internment camp near Belgrade. After ordering these 6,000 killed, he had telegraphed to his superiors in Berlin: “Serbia is now cleansed of Jews.” For that crime, Schaefer was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
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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.
