A former Nazi officer testified yesterday at his trial in the shooting of 300 Jews in the Ukraine in 1942 that he had ordered the killings out of fear that if he had refused to do so, he himself would have been executed.
Alois Huelsduenker, 68, said that as chief of the Nazi security police post in Berditchev, he had been ordered to liquidate the 300 Jews in the camp. Asserting that he knew he was participating in a crime, he said: “In my anguish I thought of my wife and six children as home. If I had refused to execute the order, I would have been put before a special court myself and sentenced to death by shooting.”
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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.
