A group of survivors of the Nazi occupation of Vilna met today with Dr. Christian Broda, the Austrian Minister of Justice, to press a request for a new trial for Franz Murer, an Austrian Gestapo officer acquitted in Austria last June of charges of having murdered 17 Jews in Nazi-occupied Vilna.
The arrangements for the meeting grew out of an hour and 15 minutes of picketing before the Austrian Consulate here by survivors of the Vilna Ghetto. Leon Szmigiel of Brooklyn, one of the pickets, said he testified at Murer’s trial that he saw the former Nazi shoot his son, Abraham Szmigiel. The state prosecutor appealed the verdict.
A spokesman for the Consul-General said, before the meeting, that the Murer verdict would be examined by the Austrian Supreme Court. The spokesman said he did not know the date for the Supreme Court hearing.
Dr. Broda, who is currently on a visit to the United States, met in Washington last week with a group of members of the Jewish Nazi Victims Organization of America. He told the delegation he would take back to Austria any evidence available in this country against Murer.
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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.
