The resignation of a West German mayor accused of helping to send thousands of French Jews to the gas chambers has been demanded by West Berlin Jewish leader Heinz Galinski. He said it is extraordinary that Ernest Heinrichsohn can remain as mayor of the northern Bavarian town of Buergstadt while being charged with helping the deportation of 73.000 French Jews and Communists to concentration camps, where many of them died in gas chambers.
Heinrichsohn, 59, who worked in the Jewish affairs section in Paris during World War II, is on trial in Cologne along with former. Paris SS chief Kurt Lischka, 70, and Herbert-Martin Hagen, 66 He told the court that he thought the thousands of Jews being deported from Paris were going to work camps and did not know their fate until he saw films and photographs after the war. “I only carried out my orders,” he told the court last Friday when questioned about the deportation orders he signed. “I never acted on my own responsibility.”
Meanwhile, residents of the 3500-population town which re-elected him mayor by an 84 percent vote last year told German television that they stood behind Heinrichsohn.
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