The prosecution asked the Stuttgart court today to find eight defendants guilty and to free four others in the marathon trial of the former Nazi officials held responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Lwow (Lemberg) during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The prosecutor asked sentences of life imprisonment for seven of the defendants, the maximum under West German law since the abolition of the death penalty. He asked a four-year sentence on an eighth defendant and agreed to the acquittal of four others. Four other defendants remain to be brought to trial in connection with the Lwow murders.
During the course of the long-lasting proceedings, some 250 witnesses, most of them Jewish survivors, gave testimony against the defendants. The trial was considered the biggest war crimes trial since the first trial of officials of the Auschwitz death camp.
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