The West German Supreme Court has extended to life imprisonment the 12-year sentence imposed by a lower court in Hamburg on former SS Cpl. Wilhelm Eickdorff who was convicted in 1976 for the murder of at least 50 Polish Jews during World War II. Eickdorff, now 57, headed an SS camp in White Ruthenia, Russia, during 1942-43 where more than 1400 Warsaw Ghetto survivors were murdered.
The Hamburg court pronounced the relatively mild sentence on grounds that Eickdorff was only 21 at the time of his crimes and was “caught in a web of officially ordered murders.” But the Supreme Court rejected that argument. It stated that if such grounds for leniency were to be recognized other war criminals and members of violent groups could claim that their criminal acts were condoned at the time they were committed.
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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.
