Five members of Nazi Police Battalion 1001, convicted in a Hamburg court for participation in the murder of 25,000 Jews in the Lublin district of Poland in 1942-43, received sentences today of eight years imprisonment or less for crimes which the presiding judge characterized as “among the darkest chapters of human history.” Six other defendants, found guilty of war crimes, were let off without punishment on the grounds that they had been “subordinates” and had merely carried out their orders.
Police Commissioner Wolfgang Hoffman, 51; Julius Wohlauf, 55, and Kurt Greyer, 58, were each sentenced to serve eight years in prison. Police Commissioner Anton Becker was given six years and Heinrich Becker, 53, five years. After a five-month trial, Wohlauf was found guilty of having participated in the murder of 9,200 Jews; Greyer in 1,907, Anton Becker, in 1,807 cases and Heinrich Becker in 1,828 cases. In passing judgment, the court declared that the accused had been executors of Adolf Hitler’s murderous horror, but were still important although they had been minor cogs in the Nazi machinery.
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.
