With a callousness which has shocked observers here, Dr. Gerhard Peters, German manufacturer of a special cyanide gas, who was acquitted of responsibility in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and other inmates at the Auschwitz concentration camp, has appealed against the verdict which acquitted him last week.
Dr. Peters, again an executive in the chemical industry of Germany, has appealed on the grounds that he should have been awarded the costs of his legal defense and for the time he lost when held in pre-trial custody after the war ended. The acquittal came in his seventh trial, the verdict in all six others having been against him.
The Frankfurt prosecutor, who had a week in which to appeal the court’s acquittal refused to act despite an appeal to him by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. This means that if Dr. Peters is granted a re-trial on his appeal, he cannot be sentenced regardless of the finding of the appellate court.
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.
