The Federal Supreme Court at Karisruhe upheld today a decision of a Local court at Freiburg which last summer acquitted two former members of a German police battalion accused of participating in the murder of more than 3, 000 Jewish women, children and aged Jews behind the Eastern front in the summer of 1941.
The Freiburg public prosecutor, who had demanded sentences of up to five years at hard tabor for the two defendants, appealed the Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that the defendants had acted under compulsion, fearing they might themselves be executed if they tried to disobey orders.
In sustaining the verdict, the Supreme Court held that possibly another court might have come to a different assessment of the evidence than did the Freiburg court but that on the legal aspects of the case within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, there were no grounds for overturning the lower court verdict.
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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.
