Even the prosecutor at the trial of Dr. Gerhard Peters. Nazi manufacturer of “Zyklon B,” a cyanide gas used to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews and others at the Auschwitz death camp, has asked the court to acquit the unrepentant Nazi. Throughout the ten-day trial, which is now taking place here, prosecutor Konrad Halama has behaved in a strikingly listless manner.
Although six different German courts have found Peters guilty of being a deliberate accessory in the murder of at least 300,000 persons. Dr. Halama based his summation today upon the “lack of unassailable proof” that vast quantities of “Zyklon B” crystals shipped to Auschwitz were actually used in gassing the victims. He did not offer any substitute version of how the victims were gassed.
Dr. Halama accepted the labored defense contention that the S.S. officer in charge of cyanide procurement, who had told Peters that the poison was being used on human beings not on vermin as officially listed, might have destroyed Peters’ shipments or used them as disinfectants. This contention was based on the knowledge that the S.S. officer, Lt. Col. Kurt Gerstein, was known to have suffered qualms of conscience about what he was doing. Gerstein committed suicide in 1945.
GERMANY’S TOP PROTESTANT CLERGYMEN TESTIFY AT TRIAL
Testimony about similar visits by the distraught Gerstein was given to the court by the president of the Protestant Church in Hesse, the Rev Martin Niemoeller, and by Darmstadt minister Herbert Mochalski who, while Niemoeller was imprisoned in concentration camps, occupied the deserted pulpit of Niemoeller’s Berlin church.
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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.
