The German Supreme Court has ordered a new trial for Franz Rademacher, one-time head of the “Jewish Section” of the Nazi Foreign Office, who was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the annihilation of Jews and was then sentenced to 41 months in prison. The sentence was pronounced by a German court in Nuremberg.
The prosecution appealed the sentence as too mild and was upheld in the Supreme Court verdict. However, the victory is a hollow one since Rademacher was released from jail last year by the Bavarian authorities and promptly disappeared, reportedly to South America.
In Bremen, meanwhile, Jewish witnesses now residing in a number of different countries have definitely identified former Gestapo Lieutenant Fritz Hildebrand, commander of several concentration camps in Poland, as having committed brutalities against Jews, particularly children. Adele Holzmann, a resident of Tel Aviv, told the court trying Hildebrand of the brutalities inflicted on eight and ten-year-old Jewish children by the Nazi. Another witness identified the Gestapo man as having ordered the shooting of a dozen Jews at one concentration camp.
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