Nine of 12 defendants accused of massacring Jews in Bialystok, Poland during World War II, were found guilty here today but only three of them received sentences from the judge who termed the others “small fry” who had been “misled.” Three other defendants were acquitted.
Sentences of life imprisonment were given Rolf Joachim, 53, a former police chief who was responsible for burning alive more than 700 Jews who were packed into the Bialystok synagogue on June 27, 1941; Friedrich Rophols, who participated in the murder of 30 Jews and also shot four Russian soldiers, and Wilhelm Schaffraph who participated in 35 other murders. The defendants were all members of a police battalion in Bialystok which was ordered to kill the Jews after the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941.
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