Three Nazi officials were sentenced to death in Warsaw, Lublin and Wloclaweck this week following conviction of charges of either “liquidating” Jewish ghettos or torturing Jews in Nazi-camps.
The trial of Bernard Lel, one of the condemned, attracted wide attention. The accused, who was an “expert” on Jewish affairs at the Gestapo headquarters in Lublin and directed the mass transportation of 40,000 Lublin Jews to extermination camps, was charged with personally shooting to death 15 aged Jews in the Lublin Jewish hospital when they were physically unable to move from their sick beds. After Lel denied his guilt, he was told “by one of the Judges that he, himself, had seen Lel kill a number of Jews in the Lublin ghetto.
The defense protested against the, judge “taking sides” while the trial was on. Whereupon the judge was removed from the bench, but was immediately summoned as a witness by the state’s attorney. After the Judge’s testimony, the defendant withdrew his denial and was sentenced to hanging.
The others sentenced to death were Eilert Hesenmeyer, the “liquidator” of the Jewish ghetto In Wloclaweck and Haas Liska, deputy chief of the Gestapo in Lublin during the Nazi occupation.
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.
