The Nazi extermination of Warsaw’s Jews was “the most horrible crime in the history of mankind” and “a shame to German culture and civilization,” Ludwig Fischer, Nazi governor of Warsaw, under whose direction tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in the ghetto and deported to death camps, testified today during his trial before a Polish Peoples Court.
Fischer alleged that he no longer believed in the Nazi theory of racial superiority and stated that when he saw what was being done to the Warsaw Jews, he begged to be relieved of his post and sent to the front.
A Jewish witness, Mieczylaw Maszlanko, one of the most prominent attorneys in pre-war Poland, who spent several years in the Warsaw ghetto and the Maidanek and ## camps, testified, however, that Fischer exceeded even the orders issued to ## by the governor-general of Poland, Hans Frank, inflicting the most barbarous punishment on the Jews.
One of Fischer’s co-defendants, Gestapo leader Joseph Meissinger, was charged by the witness with being equally responsible for the atrocities in the ghetto. He said Meissinger had participated in a conference in Berlin at which the extermination of all Jews in Europe had been mapped.
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.
