An appeals court in Augsburg has imposed a four-month suspended Jail sentence on a former official of the Christian Social Union for making anti-Semitic remarks during a quarrel in his office.
Otto Roesch, 55, lost his job as a Bavarian state insurance official and was arrested after witnesses said he had shouted “The gassing and destruction of the Jews was right.” The outburst came during an argument in December 1962 with a fellow official over a charity fund set up by a Jewish-owned Augsburg department store.
Roesch, who bad served as chairman of the CSU, the Bavarian branch of Chancellor Erhard’s Christian Democratic Union, was tried by a lower Augsburg court which acquitted him last November on grounds of lack of evidence. He had been charged with violating West Germany’s law against inciting racial hatred. The decision of the appeals court in effect reversed the lower court acquittal.
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