Frederick Tomke, a Hitler official known during the Nazi occupation of Poland as “Bloody Fritz,” has been arrested at Nova-Sul, in the Lublin area, and is being held by Polish police for trial on charges that he was responsible for the murder of at least a hundred persons. Word of his arrest reached here from Warsaw today.
Tomke was a minor Nazi police official in the Lublin area but, according to the charges, made it his business to murder many Jews and Poles. He is alleged to have beaten some men to death during questioning at Lublin police headquarters. Others were shot by “Bloody Fritz” on the streets or near the railroad station because he suspected the victims of being anti-Nazi.
When Poland was liberated from the Nazis, Tomke seemed to have disappeared. Recently, however, he turned up as the owner of a tailor shop in Nova-Sul. Under his own name, he applied for a permit to emigrate to West Germany. A routine check of his emigration application showed readily that he was the same “Bloody Fritz” who had been presumably missing since 1945.
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.
