The Flensburg Jury Court was told today, at the opening of the trial of former SS officer Martin Fellencz on charges of mass murder of some 40,000 Jews in Krakow, Poland, during the war, that the defendant falsified his Nazi past in becoming a Schleswig town councillor.
Fellencz served two years’ imprisonment imposed by denazification authorities but he carefully concealed his Nazi record and the prison term, submitting false sworn affidavits as he began a postwar career in which he even became a member of the United Europe movement, the Jury was told.
Fellencz, who was arrested in 1960, admitted responsibility for the deportation of Jews to Lublin and Belzec from the ghettos in Michow, Tarnow, Miczalowitz, Rzeszow and Przemysl. Some 140 witnesses, including surviving Jews now in Israel, the United States and Canada, will testify in the trial which is expected to last two months.
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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.
