Thirteen defendants will go on trial before a jury court here in November on charges of murder and complicity in the slaughter of some 130,000 Jews at Chalmno, a Nazi death camp near Poznan, during World War II.
Chelmno was not a concentration camp but a murder factory where Jews were shoved into gas chambers and killed on arrival. Prosecution officials said the number of survivors was negligible. Only two of the survivors, all of whom are living in Israel, have been traced to be witnesses. It has taken the Bonn Public Prosecution staff two years to assemble the full details on the operation of the brutal extermination center.
The defendants include Ernst and Walter Burmeister, Haefle, Moebius and Heinl. The latter two had the task of informing newly arriving Jews that they had been brought to Chelmno to work. A few minutes after that announcement, the victims were killed. The presiding judge at the trial, which is expected to last several months, will be Herbert Schroeder, who a few years ago sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor two Sachsenhausen camp guards, Schubert and Sorge.
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