Dr. Czeslao Glowacki, a Warsaw gynecologist who had spent four years at Auschwitz as a corpse-bearer, insisted on calling some of the 22 defendants in the current trial of Auschwitz-Birkenau personnel “murderers,” even after he had been warned by the court that he must not convict them before their trial is over.
The physician took the stand today for the third successive session, describing the horrors of the death camp. The defendants have been on trial since December, accused of murder or complicity in the killing of several million Auschwitz inmates, mostly Jews.
Today, Dr. Glowacki was submitted to more than four hours of cross-examination by one of the chief defense attorneys, Dr. Hans Laternser. When he referred to the defendants as murderers, Presiding Justice Hans Hofimeyer told him to avoid using that term, since the accused have not yet been found guilty. “When I have seen someone committing murder with my own eyes, ” the witness retorted, “then he is a murderer as far as I am concerned.”
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