Neo-nazis, War Criminals on Trial in West Germany

— Four separate trials of neo-Nazis have opened in Frankfurt. They come at a time when four cases of Nazi war criminals are also being tried in Frankfurt courts.

Part of the charges against the neo-Nazis are that they have spread the false claim that the Nazi death camps did not exist. The defendants in the war criminal trials, however, do not deny the existence of the gas chambers and mass shootings, but only that they personally were not involved in the

extermination of Jews and others. The two contradictory statements are often heard in adjoining courts.

One trial of neo-Nazis involves a father and his two sons who are charged with flying flags with swastikas from public buildings in Frankfurt and the surrounding towns. Another case is that of Erwing Schoenborn, who publishes anti-Jewish material and has been jailed several times for his writings. Among neo-Nazis he is considered an intellectual activist whose job it is to broaden the ideological base of the movement.

The other two neo-Nazi trials involve members of an extreme rightwing organization, the People’s Socialist Movement of Germany, who are accused of violence against pedestrians in the center of Frankfurt. The organization operates in several West German federal states and has close contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The group received quite a bit of publicity when one of its leaders, Frank Shubert, committed suicide on the Swiss border several months ago after being stopped by the police.

LONG DURATION OF WAR CRIMINALS’ TRIALS

The four trials of war criminals have been going on for years as a result of indecision by the authorities and delaying tactics of the defense lawyers. The trial of Walter Fasold, 76, has been going on for four-and-a-half years. Fasold was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1949 on a charge of complicity in the murder of 180 inmates in a factory in occupied Poland. German courts ordered a new trial and the defense has been calling as many witnesses as possible in order to complicate the situation.

A second trial involves the case of Hubet Gomerski, who was convicted in 1950 and again in 1977 for war crimes. But a new trial was ordered on the grounds that there were “contradictions in the statements of witnesses.” Fridrich Paulus, another accused war criminal on trial in Frankfurt, also had an earlier trial but the proceedings were stopped without a verdict.

The fourth trial is that of former SS officers Hors Czerwinski and Josef Schmidt, who were officials at Auschwitz, and whose trial has been going on for four years. Czerwinski has not appeared in court for several weeks because of ill health, Schmidt, meanwhile, was sentenced last week to eight years in jail from which the seven years he spent in prison in Poland will be deducted.