A former SS officer was sentenced in Hagen today to life imprisonment for complicity in the mass murder of Jews in the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. Six other defendants received terms of from three to eight years.
A Hagen court found Karl Frenzel, 55, guilty of participation in the killing of at least 150,000 Jewish prisoners at the camp. Frenzel was one of 12 former Nazi camp personnel indicted in the Sobibor camp trial. Kurt Bolander, 54, the chief defendant, hanged himself in his cell last October 10, leaving a suicide note.
Franz Wolf, 59, was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on conviction of complicity in at least 39,000 murders. Alfred Ipler, 59, was given a four-year term for complicity in 68,000 murders. Karl Weber Dubois, 53, was sentenced to three years for complicity in 50,000 counts of murder. Erwin Lambert, 57, was given three years for complicity in 53,000 cases and Erwin Fuchs, 64, was given four years on at least 79,000 counts of killing.
The other defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. The trial began in September 1965. Many survivors testified, telling how they had been compelled to perform forced labor and how SS men beat and hanged Jews.
A court in Dortmund meanwhile dropped proceedings yesterday against Herbert Haertla, 74, a former SS captain, who was charged with the wartime killing of at least 17,000 Jews during the war. The court ruled he was unfit to stand trial. He was one of eight former SS men indicted in the murder or aiding in the murders of 40,000 Jews in the area of the onetime Polish city of Kolomea, which is now in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The trial will be resumed tomorrow.
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