A Warsaw Provincial Court, before which Erich Koch, one time Nazi Gauleiter of portions of Poland and the Ukraine, is standing trial on charges of responsibility in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews, has rejected his latest attempts to postpone the trial. Dispatches received here from the Polish capital report that Koch’s plea that his indictment violated a general amnesty decree of 1956 was rejected by the court.
The court, however, agreed to further medical examination of the half-paralyzed onetime intimate of Hitler whose trial has been delayed for years on the grounds that his health was too bad to permit court proceedings. Two Warsaw University physicians made the examinations and reported that he could stand trial despite his ill health.
From the evidence assembled, it appears that the former gauleiter was responsible for carrying out the Nazi policy of mass murder of Polish Jewry and may have had a hand in the death of some 4, 000, 000 men, women and children. He is the last of the Nazi war criminals to face Polish justice.
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.
