A 55-year-old former SS man, Erich Gnewoch, hanged himself in his jail cell a few hours after his arrest on charges of murdering 4,000 Jews in special gassing buses, police reported today.
He admitted, on his arrest Thursday, that as an official of a Nazi special secret action group, he arranged changes in buses to improve their gassing efficiency. His technique was to invite groups of 30 Jews at a time to take bus rides into forests in Russia. Once inside the escape-proof bus, the victims were gassed by fumes from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle. He would then drive to a freshly dug mass grave prepared by SS comrades where the victims were buried.
Gnewoch lived quietly as a caretaker in Charlottenberg with his wife and two sons, police said, adding that he never talked to neighbors about his past, saying only that “I once lived through a horrible time.”
When another SS chief, Wenntritt von Oberfranken, gave evidence about Gnewoch to the Koblenz district court, he was arrested. His police dossier contained a warning: “Attention–prisoner may attempt suicide.”
Because of this police officials began an inquiry about Gnewoch to learn why he was left with a bed sheet in his cell after other possible suicide aids, such as bootlaces, necktie and suspenders, had been taken from him. He tied one end of the sheet to a window bar and the other into a noose around his neck. Police had hoped he would supply information leading to hundreds of former SS war criminals still living in West Germany.
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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.
