Franz Stangl. former commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps, told a court here today that he never harmed anyone. the prosecution charged that he sent more than 400,000 Jews to the gas chambers or had them shot at Treblinka in 1942 and 1943. According to the prosecution Stangl was promoted and decorated as the death camp commandant who contributed most to the extermination of Jews. The 62 year-old former SS officer is the first commandant of a Nazi extermination camp to be tried by a West German court. A spectator in the court today was Simon Wiesenthal, director of the Nazi war crimes documentation center in Vienna, who flushed Stangl out of his haven in Brazil three years ago. Wiesenthal told newsmen, “In my eyes he is the number three Nazi criminal after Martin Mormann and Gestapo chief Mueller, If they are still alive.”
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.
