Josef Schwammberger was confronted by one of his surviving victims Wednesday in the Stuttgart courthouse trying him for Nazi war crimes.
A 65-year-old Israeli, Max Millner, swore he saw the defendant shoot concentration camp inmates to death on three occasions at the Rozwadow camp, near Krakow.
That was one of three concentration camps in Poland where Schwammberger, now 79, served as commandant in the Waffen SS.
Survivors of the Przemysl and Mielec camps, also commanded by Schwammberger, testified that he smashed children’s heads on a wall and threw people into a bonfire.
The accused, extradited from Argentina last year, has been charged with at least 45 counts of murder and complicity in the murders of 3,377 individuals, most of them Jewish slave laborers.
Millner told the court that he saw Schwammberger murder a rabbi named Fraenkel in Rozwadow on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The witness said the rabbi was shot for urging Jewish inmates to observe the 24-hour fast.
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