The Auerbach trial in Munich “lit up as with a searchlight, the sad hatreds which have been seething there during the seven post-war years,” the Manchester Guardian said yesterday in an editorial on the trial. It declared that while the technical charges against Auerbach might have been juridically proved and legal justice done, there was question as to “the moral and political advisability and even justification of this trial.”
Auerbach, the editorial noted, had been charged with “embezzlement, blackmail, accepting bribes and attempted submission of false statements.” The paper said that “few of those who lived through ‘the suave qui peat’ anarchy of postwar Germany-whether Allied troops, Germans or victims of the Germans-were entirely guiltless of one or other of these offenses in either a good or bad cause.”
The paper declared that “the tone and setting of the Auerbach trial seem to have been even more questionable than the fact of its being held. A Free Democratic member of the Bavarian Parliament declared that it was ‘disgraceful’ that former Nazis should try a Jew and compared the presiding judge’s conduct to that of Freisler, a notorious judge of Hitler’s People’s Court. In spite of Jewish protests, the proceedings were started during Passover,” the paper pointed out.
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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.
