Trial opened here today of two Polish brothers accused in the wartime mass murder of 12, 000 Jews in the Nazi occupied Polish town of Stanislaw.
Wilhelm Mauer, 48, and Johann Mauer, 52, both of Lvov, were accused of taking part in executions and committing individual murders on October 12, 1941, when SS troops and Ukrainian auxiliaries occupied the Stanislaw Ghetto and rounded up 20, 000 Jews. They marched 12, 000 of the Jews to a spot where they were systematically killed by machinegun fire. The Nazis later imposed a heavy fine on the Stanislaw Jewish Council to pay for the “ammunition for the executions.”
The brothers were held in pre-trial detention for nearly four years while the prosecution took testimony from 200 survivors for the trial. A jury of five men and two women is hearing the case.
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