Trade unions here today called on all workers in the city to lay down their tools in protest against the acquittal yesterday of Wolfgang Hedler, former member of the right-wing German Party, who was charged with making an anti-Semitic speech in which he said that although the extermination of Jews in gas chambers might have been wrong, there were other ways of getting rid of them.
Bruno Verdieck, president of the Kiel trade unions, said the unions demand the resignation of the judges who tried Hedler, a ban on the German Party and a ban on any more speeches by Hedler in Schleswig-Holstein, where he was elected a member of the Bundestag. Unless these demands are met, the unions will take other measures, he warned.
The German Party announced today that, despite Hedler’s acquittal, he will not be readmitted to membership in the party. The announcement added that Hedler’s expulsion from party ranks was not connected directly with the anti-Semitic speech for which he was tried.
It became known today that two of the three presiding judges who issued the verdict in the Hedler case were former members of the Nazi Party. The judges ruled that the charges against Hedler were not proven because there was no exact transcript of what Hedler actually said in his speech.
According to Die Neue Zeitung, American-licensed German-language newspaper, Hedler had said in his speech: “Everyone makes much ado about Hitler’s barbarism against the Jewish people. One may have a different opionion on whether the gas extermination of the Jews was the right way. But certainly there would have been other ways and means to get rid of them.”
United States High Commissioner John J. McCloy, after receiving news of the verdict in the Hedler case–which was issued by a court in Neu-Muenster, in Schleswing-Holstein–stated last night in Frankfurt that he doubted if Hedler would ever be acquitted by public opinion. “Hedler may have been acquitted by a court,” McCloy commented, “but if he did, in fact, say the things which are attributed to him, I doubt that he can or will ever be acquitted morally by public opinion of the world or indeed of Germany.”
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