A former Gestapo official, on trial in the Court of Assizes here on charges of torturing Jewish prisoners, escaped punishment when the prosecution conceded that witnesses could not be located and brought here to testify against him. In the two cases where the victims appeared and were available as witnesses, the crimes charged involved penalties of less than three years and, therefore came under a 1954 amnesty.
In Frankfurt, two Nazi Party leaders who had organized attacks on Jewish shops and residences in Fechenhiem during the 1938 November pogrom were acquitted “for lack of sufficient incontestable evidence” although witnesses had identified them in connection with two cases of arson.
In West Berlin, the newspaper Telegraf quoted the head of the Municipal Education Department in the Borough of Steiglitz as saying that no action would be taken to remove or investigate a teacher who was still a rabid Nazi and boasted of the role he had played during the 1938 November pogrom. The official said the teacher would be pensioned off soon. The local parents-teachers group, however, is pressing the case.
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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.
