Plans for a new trial of former Nazis in mass murders of Jews during the war were disclosed today in Freiburg. At the same time the prosecutor of a former concentration camp commander filed an appeal against a Hamburg jury’s verdict of acquittal.
Freiburg officials said nine former Gestapo members were under arrest in preparation for a trial of a number of such former Nazis on charges of mass slaughter of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. They said many witnesses in West Germany and abroad were being questioned for the forthcoming trial.
The Hamburg appeal concerned Willi Dusenschoen, the former commandant, who was acquitted of the charge he had driven to suicide Dr. Fritz Solmitz, a Jewish Socialist politician and Lubeck newspaper editor, in 1933. A number of Hamburg political and trade union leaders expressed regret that the proceedings against Dusenschoen were not initiated earlier than nearly 30 years after Dr. Solmitz killed himself.
The Coblenz jury court trying 14 former SS officers on charges of murdering more than 70,000 Jews, Gypsies and Russians during the Nazi occupation of White Russia ruled today against a charge by the defense counsel that the presiding judge was biased. The court rejected a request for the appointment of a new judge to preside at the trial.
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.
