A former SS officer, who admitted he ordered the murder of more than 400 men, women and children in Brest-Litovsk in 1942, has been acquitted by a Kiel court on grounds he had acted “in a war situation” out of a “sense of duty” and that “cruelty” or a “criminal lack of compassion” had not been proven.
The acquittal verdict for Erner Poehls was called “scandalous” by the Allegemeine Juedische Wochenzeitung, a Jewish weekly. The court was shown letters, handwritten by Poehls to his commanding officer, complaining that Russian villagers whose lives had been spared during mass shootings included some partisans, and asking permission to shoot them. Evidence indicated that permission was granted and that Poehls later reported “success figures” showing that his unit had shot 417 villagers, including 60 children and 40 women.
The Jewish weekly charged that “only one logical conclusion” could be drawn from the verdict — that the court did not wish to condemn Poehls, who joined the SS as early as 1933 and “was decorated” by SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The weekly added that Poehls was “now a free man, able to exercise all civic rights.” The weekly said the acquittal “extended in a horrifying manner the chain of misjudgments in favor of Nazi regime executioners.”
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.
