Fr iday, Janu ary 17, 1964—THE DETROIT JEWISH NEW S- 10
Auschwitz Trial Reveals Nazi Minds Have Not Changed
By JOHN DORNBERG
JTA Correspondent in West Germany
(Copyright, 1964, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, Inc.)
FRANKFURT.—Even in its
early stages, a pattern is emerg-
ing in the Auschwitz concen-
tration camp trial, Germany's
biggest war crimes case since
the 1946 Allied Nuremberg
tribunals. Among the 22 de-
fendants, ranging in age from
41 to 68 and including unskill-
ed laborers as well as academi-
cians, there are four groups.
Some of them overlap.
There are those, like Robert
Mulka, 68, adjutant to Rudolf
Hoess, the camp's most in-
famous commandant, men who
are charged with 'administra-
tive murder."
Then there are others, like
57-year-old Wilhelm B o g e r,
charged, among other things,
with kicking to death Polish
General Dlugiszewski. Or 57-
year-old Oswald Kaduk, accus-
ed of beating inmates sense-
less, then placing a club or
spade handle across their
throats and rocking on it until
his victims choked to death.
There are those who person-
ally murdered at random.
The first group is made
up of 11 defendants, the sec-
ond likewise of 11.
But
distinctions between the 22
go further than that. There
are those, like Boger and
others who, in the way they
testify, their mannerisms,
their attitudes reveal that at
heart they have changed
little since those dark days
of the 1940s when they were
arrogant Elite GUards of the
master race.
Then there are the others,
the "good citizens," who insist
they were drafted into the SS,
joined under pressure, were
never really Nazis at heart, or
went along with the system
like _everyone else.
"I was drafted," said Josef
Klehr, 59, a carpenter charged
with killing dozens of inmates
by giving them injections of
deadly phenolic acid directly
into their hearts.
"I was out of work and went
into the labor service and was
automatically transferred to
the SS," insisted Franz Hof-
mann, 57, already under a life
sentence from a Munich court
for two murders he committed
in Dachau, and charged here
with killing hundreds of in-
mates personally by either
shooting them, beating them,
forcing them into the gas cham-
bers or letting them freeze to
death.
"I had to join to clear up my
citizenship," said Brazilian
born Pery Broad, 42, accused
of "shooting or beating to
death numerous inmates be
tween the fall of 1943 and Jan-
uary 1945."
"I didn't even know what
the SS was until I found my-
self in it," said Arthur Breit-
wieser, 53, released only three
years ago after serving 12 years
of a life term in a Polish
war crimes prison. Breitwie-
ser, a lawyer, is charged with
participating in the first at-
tempt to liquidate inmates with
Cyclone B gas in October 1941.
More than 1,100 inmates, most
of them Soviet prisoners of
war, were murdered in that
experiment.
The testimony of these de-
fendants stands in stark con-
trast to the courtroom per-
formances of M u l k a and
Boger, for example, who
proudly announced they still
remembered their SS serial
and Nazi party membership
numbers, and boasted they
had joined the "movement"
in its early days.
Among the 22 is one so-called
"Alter Kaempfer," an "old
fighter," in the Nazi movement.
He is a Goeppingen dentist, Dr.
Willi Frank, 60.
An early admirer of Hitler,
Frank participated in the Nov-
ember 1923 march on the
Elderrnhalle in Munich where
he was a student at the time.
-His SS and Nazi party records
make numerous references to
this. But in court, Frank's in-
terpretation of what happened
on that Nov. 9, 1923, differed
Selwyn Lloyd Vows
British Cabinet Study
of Anti-Bias Measure
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
LONDON — Selwyn Lloyd,
leader of the House of Com-
mons, promised on behalf of the
government Tuesday that min-
isters of the cabinet will con-
sider the possibility of an
agreed-upon measure against
racial discrimination to be in-
troduced in the new parliament
after the next elections.
He made the promise to a
deputation representing all
karties and all religious and
racial groups. It was led by
Labor Deputy Fenner Brock-
way, who previously had intro-
duced for the ninth time a
measure for that purpose.
The proposal received a
first reading Tuesda y. It
would make it an offense to
discriminate to the detriment
of any person on grounds of
color, race, or religion, or to
incite publicly contempt or
hatred of any person on such
grounds.
Lloyd also said he would dis-
cuss with his conservative col-
leagues a proposal that the
government make a general
declaration in favor of the
principles of such legislation.
The deputation also met with
opposition leader Harold Wil-
son, who said that if the Brock-
way bill did not become law
before the election and that if
a Labor government took power,
it would introduce a govern-
ment measure along the lines
of the bill.
Social Service Agencies
There are more than 150
Jewish family and child care
agencies in the United States
serving over 65,000 individuals
and employing some 640 pro-
fessional workers.
markedly from the version he
had given on various life his-
tories.
"I was sitting in the Franzis-
kaner Keller (a famous Mun-
ich beer hall) eating lunch,
when I heard music and march-
ing sounds outside," Frank
testified. "I went outside and
saw sonic of my student friends
marching. They yelled to me
to join them. I didn't know
where we were going or any-
where, but thought it was great
fun. When I heard the first
shots, however, I ran."
The sounds of gunfire, ap-
parently, didn't bother Frank
at Auschwitz. There, accord-
ing to the charge sheet, he not
only participated in executions
of inmates, and selected thou-
sands to be sent to the gas
chambers, but supervised the
squad responsible for melting
down the gold extracted from
dead inmates' teeth.
All told, the defendants'
alleged crimes cover the
period from 1940, when the
camp was first established,
until January 1945 when the
remaining guards, driving
weakened inmates ahead of
them, beat a hasty retreat
from Auschwitz to Gross
Rosen in advance of the Rus-
sian Army. Yet, each man
is charged with specific acts
and in only rare cases were
there two or more men in-
volved in the same act.
There is some relationship,
however, between the charges
facing former members of the
camp's medical unit. This
group includes Josef Klehr,
Herbert Scherpe, 56, and Emil
Hantl, 61.
Scherpe,
a
balding,
be-
spectacled man of medium
height and mild, moderate, is
charged with advising SS doc-
tors which inmates should be
killed by injections. In early
March 1943, Klehr allegedly
himself administered lethal
phenolic acid injections to 119
teenage Polish youths. In
August 1942, Scherpe allegedly
sent 700 inmates to the gas
chambers.
Klehr, a carpenter, is charged
with having assisted Scherpe
in the August 1942 action, after
having sent 300 inmates to the
gas chambers in April 1942.
In September 1942 he alleged-
ly personally killed 200 in-
mates by giving them phenolic
acid injections directly into the
heart. In the summer of 1944,
it is charged, Klehr pushed a
Jewish woman and her daugh-
ter, who had refused to separ-
ate on arrival at the camp,
into a crematory pile in Bir-
kenau.
Hantl is accused of helping
Klehr and Scherpe during most
of these actions and, in addi-
tion, he is charged with having
given lethal injections to eight
or 10 German criminal inmates
in June 1944.
The charges in the case, ex-
pected to last six to eight
months, have been collected in
a book of 700 pages. As the
trial progresses, they will be
backed up with the testimony
s oofm
m eore than 200 witnesses and
88 volumes of evidence
collected by the four-man
prosecution team.
"It will be the end of Febru-
ary or early March before we
can begin with that," District
Attorney Hans Grossmann told
a JTA correspondent. "Until
then we'll be dealing with pre-
liminary matters."
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