The trial of Otto Abetz, Hitler’s ambassador to Paris, started here today in a heavily-guarded military court with two officers reading an 84-page indictment charging him, among other things, with complicity in the deportation of 40,000 Jews from France to the Oswiecim extermination camp in Poland and with responsibility for looting Jewish property in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France.
The trial, which is considered one of the major “war crime trials,” is expected to last about two weeks. The charges against Abetz in connection with his anti-Jewish activities fall into the following main categories:
1. He initiated the looting of Jewish art collections and furniture, which resulted in the stealing of 22,000 works of art from 203 Jewish collections. The looted art articles were sent to Germany, while the furniture of all Jewish apartments in the northern zone was stolen by individual Germans or Nazi collaborators.
2. He advocated the mass arrests and deportation of Jews from France. In a telegram to the Nazi Foreign Office in Berlin, dated July 3, 1942,–the indictment says–he stated that he saw “no objection” to the deportation of 40,000 Jews to extermination camps in Poland.
3. He suggested that Leon Blum and Georges Mandel, two leading French Jewish statesmen, be shot. M. Blum, who was held by the Nazis, survived, but M. Mandel was executed.
Three former French premiers–Edouard Daladier, Paul Reynaud and Pierre Flandin–are expected to testify at the trial. Six French Army officers were chosen today as jurors, while six others were appointed alternates.
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.
