Friday, March 6, 1964—THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS-38
W. Germany Rejects Extended Time Limit on Nazi Prosecution
Witnesses Describe Deaths
in Ovens; Baby Burned Alive
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
cially a Dr. Clauberg, tried vari-
ous injections for sterilization
on women inmates.
"After receiving injections,
these women were kept in Clau-
berg's station for three months'
observation and later gassed,"
Muench testified.
KARLSRUHE — A proposed
extension of the statute of limi-
tations for prosecution of Nazi
war crimes was rejected Tues-
day by West German Justice
Minister Ewald Bucher.
* * *
The proposal was made last
week by the American Jewish Jews With U.S. Passports
Congress in letters to Secretary Annihilated in Auschwitz
of State Dean Rusk and Karl
An Auschwitz murder camp
Knappstein, West German am- survivor declared for the first
bassador to the United States. time that transports to the
The statute is scheduled to be- camp included in 1943 a group
come effective in 1965.
of Jews with U.S. passports.
The Jewish organization
The disclosure was made in
pointed out that earlier statutes testimony at the trial by Dr.
of limitations already prevent Otto Wolken of Vienna, a sur-
prosecution for major war vivor of the camp.
The Vienna physician had
crimes other than murder. The
new limitations will permanent- given detailed testimony impli-
ly bar prosecutions for all Nazi cating defendant Stefan Baretz-
war crimes, the organization ki in a number of murders. A
defense attorney challenged Dr.
said.
* * *
Wolken to identify Baretzki.
FRANKFURT (JTA) — The
As a hushed silence fell
burning of a Jewish baby alive, over the courtroom in the
the stuffing of the gas ovens Frankfurt City Council cham-
at Birkenau with so many Jew- ber, Dr. Wolken walked slow-
ish victims that the Nazis had ly down the aisle of seats oc-
to build an outdoor pyre to cupied by the defendants. He
cremate the martyrs more stopped in front of the desk
quickly, and the deaths of many where a balding, greying man
from rat bites were described of 44 was sitting and pointed
in detail here at the trial of 22 to him. "That is he," Dr. Wol-
former Auschwitz-Birkenau of- ken said as Baretzki's face
ficers, guards and medical per- turned white.
During hours of virtually un-
sonnel.
The testimony came from a interrupted testimony, Dr. Wol-
non-Jewish woman physician, ken told dramatic stories of
Dr. Ella Lingens, of Vienna. courage of some of the millions
She spent two years at Ausch- who perished at the huge Au-
witz for having been active as schwitz-Birkenau murder com-
an anti-Nazi in the Austrian
Social Democratic party.
"I was not a typical pris-
oner," she told the court, "but
I saw and heard everything.
The mortality rate in the
women's camp was as high as
350 a day. They died from
Writing in the Texas Quar-
disease, exhaustion, beatings,
hunger." Rats attacked both terly, in 1958, on "My Political
the dead and the living, she Philosophy," Lyndon B. John-
said.
son, then the majority leader of
Dr. Lingens added that 700
the
United States Senate, stated:
women were gassed so their
barracks could be disinfected.
"I am a free man, an Ameri-
She said she knew about the can, a United States Senator,
Birkenau crematorium almost and a Demo-
as soon as she arrived at the crat, in that
death camp. "At first, I thought order, and
it was used only to cremate there, for me,
bodies of people who had died the classifying
`natural' deaths.
stops."
"Then one night I saw wom-
This is one
en being driven into the gas of the dicta
ovens, screaming and begging offered to the
for mercy. About 15 minutes readers of "A
later, I saw the smoke becoming Time for Ac-
thicker, rising from the chim- tion—A Selec-
neys. Then I knew."
tion from the
Early in 1944, she said, Speeches and
thousands of Hungarian Jews Writings o f The President
were brought into the camp. Lyndon B. Johnson-1953-64",
"They sent so many to the published by Atheneum (162 E.
gas chambers," she continued, 38th, NY16). The book is filled
"that the crematoria were too with excerpts of President
full. So they built a pyre out- Johnson's uttered policies and
doors, and threw bodies into principles. The publishers ex-
the fire. I saw one SS officer plain that the selections were
throwing a live baby into the made with the author's permis-
fire."
sion shortly before he became
The white-haired, 55-year-old President of the United States.
doctor described how she and Their explanatory note states
another woman inmate saw a that the compilation "is de-
Gestapo man hurl a live baby signed to be selective rather
into a pit of fire near the camp than complete and to present
crematoria.
the principal expressions of his
Dr. Lingens said they had views in the high offices he has
sneaked up to see what was be- occupied since he became the
ing burned. "We saw it was Democratic leader in the Sen-
bundles of something, bodies or ate in 1953. All the speeches
old clothing."
and writings are given in full,
"Suddenly one of the SS as they were written and de-
men threw something that
livered."
moved," she said. "I said, 'Oh
There are two important
my God, he's throwing a dog
in there' But I was near-
speeches in this voltune that
sighted. The other woman
were delivered by Johnson
said, `It's not a dog—it's a
at Jewish gatherings—one, on
child, a living child'."
Another witness at the Frank- June 8, 1957, at the annual
furt trials told of sterilization conferenec of the United Jew-
experiments practiced on wom- ish Appeal in New York, and
en inmates of Auschwitz. He is the other, April 4, 1963, also
Dr. Hans Wilhelm Muench, who
said he worked in a research in New York, on receiving
the Bnai Brith Human Rights
institute at Auschwitz.
said SS physicians, espe- Award.
plex. One of them involved a
transport of Jews with U.S.
passports which arrived at the
Birkenau camp on Oct. 25, 1943.
"One woman in this transport
suddenly realized where she was
and began screaming 'This is
Auschwitz'," Dr. Wolken re-
lated. "An SS man named
Scheldinger tried to calm her.
Suddenly she grabbed his pis-
tol, shot him dead and wound-
ed another guard before she
was overpowered.
"In revenge," Dr. Wolken
added, "the other guards start-
ed shooting wildly into the
group. I don't know how many
were killed that day."
Once in 1944, he said, he
watched a group of Polish
Jews being led to the gas
chambers, among them many
children and teen-agers. "A
boy of about 14 stopped in
ront of a group of SS guards
and said defiantly to them
`Don't think you'll go unpun-
ished; some day you'll go to
the same place we are go-
ing,'" Dr. Wolken said.
The witness-survivor said
that the chances for survival of
prisoners who were not sent to
the gas chambers were not
much better than for those who
were gassed. After the camp's
liberation by the Russian Army
in 1945, Dr. Wolken testified, he
found some documents which
told the details of 15 transports
which arrived between April
and July of 1942.
In specific charges against
Baretzki, Dr. Wolken said that
the defendant and some other
guard shot and killed 11 prison-
ers on the inspection grounds
after one of them tried to flee
and another sought to protect
himself from a beating.
Dr. Wolken also testified that
in April 1944, Baretzki beat an
inmate, Mihail Liszka to death
with a club. The doctor said he
was "about six yards from the
scene. I brought Liszka to the
barracks building where he
died. Death was definitely due
to the beating."
Nazi Arrested in Argentina;
Came Often From Germany
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
BUENOS AIRES — Gerhard
Bohne, who jumped bail and
fled from West Germany last
July to escape trial on charges
of heading Hitler's euthanasia
program, was arrested here
Monday. He told police that he
traveled frequently between
West Germany and Argentina
since his first visit in 1949.
He said he came to Argentina
that year with the aid of follow-
ers of former dictator Juan Pe-
ron, who, in addition to helping
him get the necessary docu-
ments, gave him funds to act as
a liaison between the Argentina
government and prominent Nazi
personalities who were interest-
ed in going to Argentina.
He was arrested on request
of West German authorities
for return to Limburg, where
the trial in which he was to
have been a defendant is un-
derway with only one of the
original four defendants pres-
ent.
He said the Argentine em-
bassy in Bonn facilitated his
trips. He also said that in Bue-
nos Aires he had entered "a
Jewish business" and that he
2 Historic Speeches at Jewish Gatherings,
Tribute by Stevenson, in the President's
A Time for Action'u Johnson's Utterances
-
In the UJA speech, entitled
"The Open Curtain," the Presi-
dent referred to the UJA
workers as people who have
dedicated their lives to helping
their fellow men, and he com-
mended them for their "envi-
able record." He spoke about
the problems of the atomic age,
the East-West struggle, the aims
to achieve peace through the
UN. Then he turned to the aims
associated with the UJA and
said:
"You have been associated
with many humanitarian
causes—and one of them is
creating a sanctuary - for the
oppressed. The sanctuary,
Israel, stands today—perma-
nent and enduring—in the
midst of what once was
desert.
"Creating that sanctuary
meant that rivers had to be
dammed; fields had to be
toiled; houses had to be built;
the resources of nature had
to be tapped.
"These are the tasks to
which all of humanity should
be dedicated.
"We have had enough of
oppression and wars; of
trouble and turmoil; of the
frustration of every normal
human impulse. We have seen
noble impulses thwarted and
turned to ignoble ends. We
have watched the fruits of
genius warped and turned
into the paths of destruction.
"This is not the work of
the people of the world. It
is the work of the small group
of selfish and twisted men
who withhold from their fel-
low human beings the indis-
pensable tool of freedom—the
truth.
"As you go about your hu-
manitarian work, I want to
leave you with one thought
tonight.
"You are people who seek
to build, not to tear down.
And when doors are opened
had "no animosity" toward "the
Jewish race."
He also asserted that he had
"many Jewish friends" and that
his sister, who works in the
German hospital in Buenos
Aires, "spends her free time at-
tending Jews."
He admitted freely, under po-
lice questioning, that gas cham-
bers were used to implement
the program for protecting "the
purity of the German race" by
killing of mentally and physical-
ly crippled Germans deemed
unfit by the Nazis to live.
He said the program was
only for the insane and other
"physically defective" people
and that while he was in-
volved in the program, 80,000
such persons were killed.
Dr. Werner Heyde, accused
of succeeding Bohne as director
of the program, committed sui-
cide by hanging himself in his
jail cell shortly before the trial
opened.
Dr. Friedrich Tillman, an-
other defendant, jumped or fell
to his death in Cologne the day
before the Heyde suicide. Only
Hans Hefelmann is in the dock-
et in the Limburg trial, now in
its second month.
Hefelmann h a s testified
that Nazi nurses who worked
overtime to destroy handi-
capped children received ex-
tra pay and Christmas
bonuses.
He told of his "difficulties"
in establishing a children's
ward to do the job, and also in
finding a German doctor to per-
form the "operation." He said a
Dr. R en e au eventually was
brought from Austria for the
work.
Hefelmann, 58, was an official
in the Hitler chancellory, help-
ing run the "euthanasia," "mer-
cy killing" program.
* * *
Testifies How Children
Saw Killing of Parents
BRUNSWICK, (JTA) — Otto
Kielhorn, a Nazi storm trooper
during World War II, described
during the trial of five former
SS officers charged with mur-
dering 5,200 Jews in Pinsk, Po-
land, how the Nazis forced Jew-
ish children to watch their par-
ents being massacred.
Kielhorn said the Pinsk Jews
had been rounded up, robbed of
their valuables, and forced to
strip down to their underwear,
While the children watched, he
said, the parents were killed.
Then he said, the "children
were driven into the line of fire
of light machineguns," and all
murdered.
so the people of the world
can find the truth for them-
selves, we can all turn to
building—building a better
life for ourselves and our
children.
"The people can be trusted.
It is time the case be turned
over to them."
Johnson's speech to the Bnai
Brith less than a year ago was
entitled "The Century of Human
Rights," Thanking Bnai Brith
for the Human Rights Award,
he said: "The intense fury with
which the totalitarians of both
the right and the left deny the
concept of human rights is the
* *
measure of their realization that Auschwitz Survivors Appeal
their cause is doomed." He made to Refuse Asylum to Nazis
this significant statement:
PARIS, (JTA)—An appeal to
"It is difficult for our gen- all governments of the world to
eration—which has known of help bring former Nazis to just-
Dachau and Warsaw, of the ice was issued here by the In-
imprisonment of cardinals, ternational Auschwitz Commit-
and the fate of Passover in tee, at a conference of 100 dele-
the Soviet Union—to realize gates representing death camp
the tremendous advance of survivors from 14 countries.
The appeal requested that no
the concept of equal rights in
government give asylum to Nazi
the mid-twentieth century."
war criminals, but aid in their
In Johnson's "A Time for Ac- apprehension and amend sta-
tion" appear, in addition to nu- tutes of limitation so that no
merous of his speeches as Sena- former Nazi criminal would go
tor, his noteworthy Presidential free even if his crime had gone
addresses—to Congress on Nov. undiscovered for a number of
27; to the nation on Thanks- years.
giving Day, Nov. 28; to the UN
General Assembly, Dec. 17; his
State of the Union message, last
Jan. 8.
Adlai E. Stevenson, in an in-
troduction to the Johnson book, Stops itch—Relieves Pain
pays the President this tribute:
For the first time science has found
"Come now, and let us reason a new healing substance with the as-
together' is Lyndon Johnson's tonishing ability to shrink hemor-
and to relieve pain without
favorite quotation and his best rhoids
surgery. In case after case, while
characterization. I can't recall gently relieving pain, actual reduc-
when I first heard him use these tion (shrinkage) took place. Most
of all — results were so thor-
words from Isaiah. But for the amazing
ough that sufferers made astonishing
30 years I have known him—as statements like "Piles have ceased t6
a Congressional secretary, Con- be a problem!" The secret is a new
gressman, Senate maj or it y healing substance (Bio-Dynee)—
of a world-famous research
leader, Vice President, and now covery
institute. This substance is now avail.
President—reasoning together, able in suppository or ointment fern;
face to face, has been his called Preparation Mk At all drug
'punters.
method and his strength."
Shrinks Hemorrhoids
Without Surgery