An officer of Hitler’s SS who will be charged with “personal responsibility” for the murder of several hundred thousand Jews at Mogilev area, in the Ukraine, during World War II, will be put on trial next fall, it was announced today by Dr. Joachim Griess, president of the Frankfurt Criminal Court.
The accused is Adolf Harnischmacher, 44, of Echborn, who was the head of a Nazi einsatzcommando operating in Mogilev from December 1941 to December 1942. He has been under arrest since 1961. Thirty witnesses will be heard in the proceedings, the court stated.
In a trial under way at Heckingen, where an ex-Nazi named Helmut Schnabel is charged with having murdered small children at the Vaivari concentration camp, an Israeli testified today that he had seen the defendant kill children and send others to their deaths at Auschwitz. The witness, Mordechai Rosenberg, of Givat Haim, Israel, said Schnabel had beaten other inmates into unconsciousness and that he himself was beaten by the defendant. Rosenberg had been sent to the camp with a large transport of Jews from Vilna.
One former SS officer awaiting trial at Ludwig shaven committed suicide last night. The man was Alois Knabel, charged with murdering three Jews in the Ukraine and with participating in the killing of “countless others.” He was found hanged in his cell this morning. Under investigation for the last several months, the man had been released twice, but rearrested each time under the orders of the prosecution.
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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.
