Switzerland to Extradite to Germany Nazi General Who Killed Jews

The Ministries of Justice and Police of Switzerland notified West Germany today that they will hand over to West German authorities Erhard Kroeger, a former SS general, arrested in Zurich on German charges of personal responsibility in the murder of 3, 045 Jews and mentally ill persons in Lemberg, Poland, in 1941. During the war, he was chief of a Nazi commando unit in occupied Russia.

Kroeger had come recently from Italy, where he was living, on a safe conduct guarantee, to testify in the trial of two former Nazis, charged as war criminals in a court at Wuppertal. The two, both former leaders of the SS, are Alfred Rendorfer and Wilhelm Babischek. They have been found guilty of complicity in the mass execution of Jews in Russia during the war, and are to face sentence next week.

They had pleaded innocent, saying that the Jewish children they had ordered shot, at Baranowice, were executed “not specifically” as Jews but were included among others who were not Jewish. Kroeger testified at their trial that he was not aware of any killings. He then left to return to Italy, under his safe conduct document. But, at Zurich, where he stopped to visit a son, the Swiss police arrested him on West Germany’s request.

According to the Swiss notification, Kroeger will have to be given a hearing before he is turned over to the Germans. However, Switzerland recognizes the crime of which Kroeger is charged as extraditable. Italy, on the other hand, calls such a crime “political,” and not extraditable. In 1963, a court in Bologna, Italy, refused to order Kroeger extradited when the Germans requested that he be handed over, terming the charge against him “a political offence.”