Witnesses from West Germany and from Prague testified today in the trial in East Berlin of Dr. Horst Fischer on charges of participating in the murder of at least 70, 000 inmates as a “selection doctor” in the Auschwitz death camp; Dr. Fischer has admitted guilt in those murders in one of the rare Nazi war crimes trials in East Germany.
The defendant had lived for 20 years in East Germany under his own name and was finally arrested in June, 1965. He had arranged for surgical removal of the tattoo on his arm which all SS men received.
West German judicial officials received material on Dr. Fischer’s wartime activities for the first time in 1959. On April 6, 1960 a warrant was issued in West Germany for his arrest. Despite assertions by East German officials that they had not been contacted about Dr. Fischer’s crimes, they later asked for data on those crimes and the West German Government handed over all the material it had.
Dr. Fischer testified that there were many women and children among the 400, 000 Hungarian Jews transported to Auschwitz and that when he was on duty, “I had to send all of them to be gassed, even the old people. ” He testified that Gerhard Neubert, a former medical assistant at the camp, had worked with him in making the “selections” for the gas chambers. Neubert is now in a Frankfurt jail, awaiting resumption of the second Auschwitz trial in that city, in which he is a defendant.
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