The six-month old trial of members of Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard ended in Osnabrueck yesterday with sentences of life imprisonment at hard labor imposed on three of the defendants convicted of murdering Jews in northern Italy in the autumn of 1943. Two other defendants received three year sentences.
The life sentences were pronounced on Hans Roehwer, 56, Hans Kruger, 57, and Herbert Schneller, 56, who were found guilty of shooting down at least 22 Jews at Lake Maggiore. Ludwig Leithe, 47, and Oscar Schulz, 45, got the lighter sentences for aiding in the murders. All had been ordered to disarm Italians in the lake district following Italy’s surrender to the Albes in 1943 but in the process arrested and shot Jews. Their trial began last January. The jury heard 180 witnesses at hearings in Milan and Maggiore as well as in the Osnabrueck courthouse. The Jewish cemetery at Essen was invaded by vandals who overturned more than 50 gravestones over the weekend.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
