The trial of three former members of the Nazi Security Police, charged with complicity in the murders of at least 2, 400 Ukrainian Jews in the fall of 1942, opened here today in the same court buildings in which the Nuremberg war crimes trials were held.
The trial of Joseph Paur, Wilhelm Wacker and Otto Koeler is expected to last three to four weeks with some 50 witnesses expected to testify. The three committed the mass-murders in the towns of Sdolbunov, Misotch and Ostrog in the Rovno area.
At the same time a re-trial got underway in Hamburg of three former Nazis charged with the murder in July 1941 of 220 Jews in Lithuania. Werner Scheu, Karl Struvea and Otto Bastian were convicted and sentenced by a Jury court in Aurich to six, five-and-a-half and four years at hard labor, respectively. However, the Judgment was suspended by the West German Federal Supreme Court at Karlsruhe. The Jury court found the three defendants guilty of participation in the murders and not merely of complicity.
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