A former Nazi death camp commander who was captured in Brazil two years ago was charged in a Dusseldorf court yesterday with the murder of at least 400,000 Jews during World War II. The prosecutor accused Franz Paul Stangl, former commandant of the notorious Treblinka camp in Poland, of acting “cruelly, perfidiously and out of base motives” in directing mass murders. No date has been set for the trial. Stangl escaped to Brazil after the war and hid out there for 20 years.
Earlier this week, a 64-year-old former aid to Gestapo deportation chief Adolf Eichmann was sentenced by a Berlin court to 12 years’ imprisonment at hard labor for participation in mass murder. The prosecutor had asked a life sentence for the prisoner, Fritz Woehrn.
West Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger was expected to testify for the defense in a trial of Nazi war criminals accused of killing mentally ill people during the Hitler era. Egon Geis, the defense lawyer, asked Kiesinger to testify in July, 1968 and has now renewed his request.
An officer of the West German border guard was arrested on charges of participation in the mass murders of 1,000 Jewish women and children in Russia in 1941. The charges were made against Wilhelm Ratke who was a senior officer in the Nazi occupation police at the time.
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.
