One of the most important trials of ex-Nazis in the post-World War II period will get under way here shortly when Karl Chmielewski, one-time commander of a subsidiary camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, and one of his former guards, Herbert Junge, will answer charges of having murdered thousands of Jews and other prisoners at the Nazi death camp.
Specifically, Chmielewski is charged with having ordered the murder of 389 Dutch Jews at the camp, near Linz, Austria, during 1941. In many of these cases Chmielewski ordered the “death bath.” a torture he had devised himself. In the dead of winter, the prisoners were lined up near a pool and squirted with water hoses until they froze into a solid mass and then, tumbling into the basin, were drowned.
Ironically, Junge, who is now serving a prison term for robbery, came to the attention of the authorities during his earlier difficulties, while Chmielewski was uncovered as a fugitive from justice when he was brought to trial two years ago on charges of bigamy.
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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.
