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Oswiecim Survivor Charges in Court That Quisling Responsible for Death of 1,000 Jews

August 24, 1945
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Vidkun Quisling was accused in court here today of being responsible for the murder of over 1,000 Jews deported from Norway to Germany and Poland between November, 1942 and February, 1943. His accuser was Dr. Leo Eitinger, one of the few deportees to survive at the Oswiecim camp.

Dr. Eitinger testifying at the trial of the Norwegian traitor revealed that 140 of the 168 persons in the group with which he was deported were sent to gas chambers immediately after their arrival at Oswiecim and that only 12 of the 1,000 deported are bolieved to have survived. He described how the deportees were jammed into the hold of a German ship while being transported from Norway to the Reich. There they were placed in sealed freight cars and transported to Germany. Similar testimony was given by other Jewish witnesses.

Quisling denied all knowledge of the tortures of the Jews and claimed that he had never before heard of the gas chambers. He made a similar denial on Tuesday, to the effect that he had never heard of Nazis mistreating Jews in Norway.

At that time, he asserted that “I am the man who gave the most help to the Jews of Norway.” When queried by the prosecutor as to whether he was ignorant of the fact that members of the Hird, his personal storm troop organization, had smashed the windows of Jewish homes and shops and broke into private houses where they tortured Jewish men and women, he alleged that he had taken action against persons who had committed such crimes.

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