Two separate trials involving three ex-Nazis charged with war crimes in the murder of Jews during World War II were opened in Germany today.
At Verden, a jury court started hearing testimony against Heinrich Wessel, aid to the commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Wessel, a former colonel in Hitler’s SS, is 57. He was arrested two years ago at Dorfmark, Lower Saxony, where he had been living under an assumed name since 1945. The charge against him is manslaughter and participation in mass murders at Sachsenhausen.
Two former members of the German security police, who served in Galicia, went on trial before a jury court at Saarbruecken. One, Kurt Koellner, 53, is charged with brutally murdering 18 Jewish men, women and children in eastern Galicia between August 1942 and August 1943. The second man, 57-year-old Heinrich Peckmann, is accused of murdering two Jews in the same area during the same twelve-month period.
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