Denials by two defendants at a war crimes trial here that they had killed any Jews in occupied Tarnopol in Galicia were flatly challenged by survivors who listed specific details of such killings in testimony here.
The accusers were Pawel Adler, now a resident of New York, and Faeok Mondschein, now an electrician in Israel, who testified against Paul Raebel and Paul Mellar, two of the 10 former SS officers on trial here on charges of complicity in mass murders committed in the Galician town.
The New Yorker testified that Raebel and Mellar shot and killed Jews. He said that 20 Jews engaged in forced labor and 15 other victims who suffered from typhoid were killed by the two Nazis between 1942 and 1943. Raebel then asserted he had never killed any one as a former commander of a section of Tarnopol and Mellar said he had never even served in the Tarnopol camp.
Adler nevertheless refused to be shaken. He repeated that the two former Nazis had shot Jews, saying earnestly, “Believe me. There is not the slightest doubt of this. ” He then described in detail the shooting of typhoid-stricken victims in the section Raebel commanded during the war.
Mondschein, who was employed in the home of one of the two defendants, also testified against them. He accused another defendant, Mueller, of shooting Jewish inmates. A. Landesman, now a technician in a Haifa postoffice, testified that his father was murdered three days after the Germans entered Tarnopol. He also related that two inmates, who sought to escape, were caught. The rope with which they were being hanged broke and they begged for mercy, the witness said, but Raebel immediately shot both of them.
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