The murder by Nazi technicians of 121 Jews, including 30 women, in order to complete the collection of skeletons at the Strasbourg Anatomical Institute, then under German administration, was described today at the trial of 23 German doctors before a U.S. war crimes tribunal.
Henri Henry-Pierre, a French chemist who was employed at the Institute, testified that when the bodies arrived they were still warm and bore signs of having died violently. All the corpses were of persons of good physique. The corpses remained in preserving tanks for one year until with the advent of the Allied invasion, the directors of the Institute sought to destroy them, but were thwarted by Henry-Pierre who disposed of only a few bodies.
The prosecution introduced evidence that Rudolph Brandt, who was Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler’s assistant at one time, and Wolfram Sievers, a former S.S. colonel and director of the Institute, collaborated with other Nazis in obtaining the skeletons of the “Jewish Bolshevik commissars,” as the victims were described.
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.
