For being the ringleader in the devastation of a Frankfurt synagogue and in the pillaging of Jewish stores during the November 1938 pogroms, the manager of an electrical manufacturing plant here has been sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment by a Frankfurt court. His co-defendants were set free.
The mild sentence was imposed on Paul Venten, 59, veteran leader of the Storm Troops and in the words of the court a “typical Nazi.” Together with a truckload of fellow-workers from the factory where he was then employed, he demolished the synagogue in the Frankfurt suburb of Heddernheim, destroyed the Torah scrolls and other ritual objects, tore up prayer books and smashed interior fittings. On their way home, Venten and his gang laid waste to two Jewish stores.
This, the court found, was more than Nazi Party headquarters had expected of him. Venten, who had earlier been acquitted by a British Zone degasification court, was convicted for committing a “serious breach of the public peace.” Two other ringleaders, one now a Frankfurt manufacturer and the other an electrical engineer, were found guilty only of a “simple breach of the public peace” and set free. The court ruled that their sentence would in any case have been less than six months, thereby falling under a 1949 amnesty.
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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.
