The West German Foreign Office was reported today to have granted visas to eight Soviet citizens to come here to testify against George Heuser and 11 other former Nazis being tried for the murder of some 35,000 Jews in the Minsk area during the wartime Nazi occupation.
The Foreign Office action followed complaints by the Soviet Foreign Ministry, at a press conference in Moscow last month, that the Coblenz prosecutor was ignoring evidence in the case which the Soviet Ministry sent to Coblenz. Five of the eight Soviet witnesses made statements about their experiences as Minsk victims, the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung reported today from Moscow, where the statements were made at a press conference.
Laser Gilin, a plumber in Minsk, said he saw Heuser and three other defendants beating and killing victims. He said he himself was ordered to remove bodies of the victims. Bertha Gendelewitsch, a doctor, said she was a witness to exterminations in the Sluzk Ghetto at the beginning of February 1943,in which, she said, some of the defendants took part. She said she saw her mother, brother and sister killed by pistol fire but she was able to escape with her father.
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