An expert on Nazi death machinery told a Cologne court today that no “final solution” for French Jewry would have been possible without the collaboration of French institutions and public organizations. Prof. Wolfgang Scheffler of the Free University of West Berlin, was testifying at the trial of three accused Nazi war criminals, Kurt Lischka, who was head of the Gestapo in Paris during World War II; Herbert Martin Hagen and Ernest-Einrichsohn.
Scheffler stressed that his statement was meant neither to clear not to incriminate the defendants, but was based on his research. He said the help given by French institutions was indispensable to the Germans in their efforts to liquidate Jews. As an example, he noted that in one wave of arrests 2500 French policemen took part.
Scheffler, who also testified for five hours yesterday, has not yet said if he has information on whether the defendants knew what would be the final fate of the Jews they sent to concentration camps. This may be the decisive question in the trial, which started last Oct. 23. But Scheffler did testify today that Lischka rejected a suggestion by the German army in 1942 that the Jewish inmates be released and that the Red Cross be given information about their arrests.
The audience throughout the trial has been made up mainly of French Jews, some of them carrying yellow placards reading “Juif de France.” Demonstrators outside the courtroom yesterday waved two Israeli flags.
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.
