A Polish author of a book on the Gusen concentration camp testified today in the trial of former camp commander Karl Chmielewski that the defendant decided, after having had many prisoners frozen to death in the camp outdoor area, to arrange for killing Jewish inmates less publicly.
The author, 56-year-old Stanislaus Mogaj, said that a small group of inmates, who had survived the SS officer’s murderous activities, threatened to run into the electrified fence as a group. Chmielewski then started his “bath” killings in which naked inmates were hosed down with ice cold water until they were dead. Subsequently, however, the author testified, the commander gave an order to kill Jewish inmates “quietly.”
Another Polish witness testified that Chmielewski and other SS officers used to “visit” the Jewish blocks in the evening after they became drunk. The next morning, the witness said, “five to ten corpses had to be dragged to the morning roll call.”
In Nuremberg, a jury court sentenced former Sachsenhausen Camp leader August Koelb today to three years imprisonment for beating an inmate so severely as to cause his death. The three years were added to an earlier three-year sentence imposed in 1954 on the 67-year-old merchant for other crimes committed in the death camp.
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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.
