A 51-year-old former SS staff sergeant who took sleeping pills in attempted suicide Sunday, was sentenced to life imprisonment today by a court in Hagen. The defendant, Heinz Jentszch, was convicted for his part in the mass murders of some 10,000 Jews in an Austrian concentration camp during 1941-42. The Jews were killed in ice-water “death baths.” Jentszch, now a Berlin building contractor, collapsed when the sentence was read. His co-defendants, former staff sergeants Helmut Kluge, 48, of Flensberg and Alfons Gross, 52, received sentences of eight and six years respectively. The court said it was being lenient in the case of Kluge because he was under 21 when he assisted Jentszch in murdering Jews.
A war criminal who served the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and took part in the murder of many Jews was sentenced to death in Plunge, it was reported in London. The defendant was Vincas Balteus who had lived in West Germany under an assumed name. He was arrested when he returned to Lithuania. A survivor, Israel Faktor, was one of the prosecution witnesses.
Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
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.
