A 55-year-old former SS man, Erich Gnewoch, hanged himself in his jail cell a few hours after his arrest on charges of murdering 4,000 Jews in special gassing buses, police reported today.
He admitted, on his arrest Thursday, that as an official of a Nazi special secret action group, he arranged changes in buses to improve their gassing efficiency. His technique was to invite groups of 30 Jews at a time to take bus rides into forests in Russia. Once inside the escape-proof bus, the victims were gassed by fumes from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle. He would then drive to a freshly dug mass grave prepared by SS comrades where the victims were buried.
Gnewoch lived quietly as a caretaker in Charlottenberg with his wife and two sons, police said, adding that he never talked to neighbors about his past, saying only that “I once lived through a horrible time.”
When another SS chief, Wenntritt von Oberfranken, gave evidence about Gnewoch to the Koblenz district court, he was arrested. His police dossier contained a warning: “Attention–prisoner may attempt suicide.”
Because of this police officials began an inquiry about Gnewoch to learn why he was left with a bed sheet in his cell after other possible suicide aids, such as bootlaces, necktie and suspenders, had been taken from him. He tied one end of the sheet to a window bar and the other into a noose around his neck. Police had hoped he would supply information leading to hundreds of former SS war criminals still living in West Germany.
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.
