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Charges Against Ss Official Dropped

January 14, 1992
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After 10 years of deliberations, a court in Hanover last week dismissed proceedings against former SS official Heinrich Niemeier, on the grounds that the 69-year-old war crimes suspect is too ill to stand trial.

The state prosecution charged Niemeier with shooting Jewish inmates in the Janina-Gruba section of Auschwitz when the death camp was being evacuated in 1945, in the final stages of World War II.

Meanwhile, the war crimes prosecution of Josef Schwammberger in Stuttgart is now in its third month.

The 79-year-old SS officer, who was extradited from Argentina in 1990, is charged with personally murdering dozens of Jews at concentration camps in Poland during the war and of complicity in the killings of thousands more.

Schwammberger is probably the last major Nazi war criminal who will be tried in Germany.

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