TreblinkaDeathCampOfficials
Go on Trial in Duesseldorf in
Murder of Thousands of Jews

DUESSELDORF (JTA) — Ten
former SS officers and guards of
the notorious Treblinka concentra-
tion camp heard the prosecution
detail charges of murder, man-
slaughter and sadistic cruelty in
the opening sessions of their trial
for the slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of Jews during the early
years of the Second World War.
In the year and a half between
February 1942 and November 1943,
300,000 person s, most of them
Polish Jews, were put to death at
Treblinka, about 50 miles north-
,
west of Warsaw.
Chief defendant in the trial is
former S.S. Lt. Karl Hubert Franz,
head of the camp's SS guards,
whose activities during the period
were detailed in the prosecution
indictment read to the court.

Franz, who has been under
arrest since 1959, was named
"Lalka" by the prisoners from
the Polish word for "ghoul." He
was charged with using his pistol
and whip at every opportunity
and with compelling prisoners to
climb trees so that he could
shoot them down to demonstrate
his marksmanship.

Other prisoners were forced to
carry bottles as targets, but his
bullets struck them in the head.
On one occasion, he shot a dozen
Jews because he found one of
them wearing a Star of David.
Franz frankly admitted that
Treblinka was an extermination
camp which was destroyed by the
SS troops at the end of 1943 when
all remaining inmates were killed
and the camp was replaced by a
large farmhouse to hide any trace
of its notorious past.
The court, composed of three
judges headed by Dr. Gottfrieder
and a six-member jury including
one woman, decided to meet three
times a week — on Mondays, Tues-
days and Thursdays — until the
end of Jan y to hear the testi-
mony which ill include 85 pros-
ecution witn ses.
All 10 accu d have been living
in West Germany since the end of
the war. West German authorities
are still searching for the former
camp commander, SS Maj. Franz
Stangl, who disappeared after the
war and is believed to he in South
America. The trial is expected to
last six weeks.

an investigation of the attorney by of 3,000 Jews, gypsies and Rus-
the West German Bar Association. sians, many of them women and
Heinz Galinski, head of West Ber- children, in the Klincy region of

lin's Jewish community, denounced
"this outspoken defense of mur-
der" and said if West German
leaders remained silent, "they
The federal prosecutors office should not be surprised at what
and defense attorneys both filed
happens in the future."
* * *
appeals against the sentence of

15 years at hard labor passed
against S.S. Gen. Karl Wolff
following his conviction for com-
plicity in the wartime murder of
300,000 Jews in Poland.
The prosecution asked the fed-

eral high court to increase the sen-
tence to life imprisonment, while
the defense sought Wolff's free-
dom.
The Karlsruhe court rejected
appeals of two other SS officers,
Guenther Fuchs, who received a
life sentence, and Otto Bradfisch,
who was sentenced to 13 years of
hard labor, for their activities in
Nazi extermination squads.
At Flensburg, the public pros-
ecutor said that S. S. Major Martin
Fellenz had been re-indicted on
charges of having caused the mur-
der of 7,300 Jews in the Krakow,
Poland ghetto in 1942. Fellenz had
been convicted of this charge in
1962 but the federal high court
ordered a retrial.

The argument by a defense
attorney in the Hannover trial
of five men accused of war
crimes, that they could not be
punished for murder because
they had merely obeyed Adolph
Hitler and Hitler had been
above the law and therefore
without guilt in the slaughter of
millions of Jews, continued to
provoke an angry response, in-
cluding demands for exclusion
of the attorney from the bar.
The lawyer, Gerd Heincke, rep-

resenting one of the quintet
accused of participating in the
massacre of 7,000 Jews in Vlodowa,
told the court that Hitler had
believed he was fulfilling a
"sacred mission" in the destruc-
tion of European Jewry and that
those who carried out his orders
were not guilty of murder.
A statesman, who kills other
people because he believes they
are destroying his own people does
not act from malicious motives, he
argued.
Justice Ministry officials in
Lower Saxony said that the sys-
tematic annihilation of racial and
national groups by the Nazis was
murder, as ruled by many West
German courts, and that those who
took part in them could be tried
for complicity in such killings.
The official press service of the.
Social Democratic Party demanded

Lawyers Get Complaints
Against Hitler Apologist

HANNOVER (JTA)—The Han-
nover Lawyers Chamber is investi-

gating wide spread complaints
against Gerd Heinecke, the de-
fense attorney in the trial of the
accused murders of 7,000 Jews,
who told the court that the de-
fendants were not malicious be-
cause Hitler believed he was ful-
filling a "sacred mission" in killing
Jews.
Heinecke, meanwhile, filed suit
against a newspaper, `Bild,' which
urged the revocation of his law-
yer's license. He said he could not
understand what he described as
a "misunderstanding," since he did
not mean "to show hatred but
love" in his remarks.
The defendants gave the court

their own accounts of the events
leading up to their employment
as members of the Treblinka
staff personnel.

All of the accused testified that
they had been in some way con-
nected with the Nazi euthanasia
program before they came to Treb-
linka. Nine of them claimed that
they had no idea of how they got
the infamous jobs, citing sudden
telegrams summoning them to
Gestapo headquarters in Berlin,
where they were given the new
assignments.
One of the defendants. a former
waiter. told of quitting his rest-

aurant job against his wishes, to

LONDON — The London Daily
Express reported Tuesday from
Asuncion that the hunt was on
again for Dr. Josef Mengele, the
Auschwitz "selection doctor," and
that hunters of Nazi war criminals
were "hot on his trail in Para-
guay."
The report said that Mengele,
who fled to Paraguay from Argen-
Ex-Eichman Aide
tina in 1961, was under the protec-
tion of Alfredo Stroesner, the
on Stand in Vienna
Paraguayan president. The report
VIENNA (JTA) — One of the also said that Mengele's hunters

Russia during the Second World
War.
Rapp, who was a close friend of
Adolf Eichmann, lived under a
false name in Essen as editor-in-
chief of a publishing firm, until he
was found three years ago. About
100 witnesses will testify in the
trial.

biggest war crimes trials in

Austria since the end of World
War II will open Nov. 1 when
Franz Novak, former aide of
Adolf Eichmann, will go on trial
on charges of participating in the
deportation of some 400,000 Hun-
garian Jews.
Documents against Novak fill
25 volumes, in addition to testi-
mony drawn from the materials
developed during the Eichmann
trial in Jerusalem. Witnesses from
several countries, including the
United States, will take the stand
during the trial which is expected
to last three to four weeks.
GENEVA (JTA) — Switzerland
intends to deny former Nazis per-
mission to reside in the country,
Ludwig Von Moos, president of
Switzerland, told the Swiss Na-
tional Council.
Replying to questions about Nazi
war criminals seeking or finding
refuge in Switzerland, Moos said
that Swiss authorities were deter-
mined to avoid situations which
could have a harmful effect on

At Essen, Albert Rapp, the 45-
year old former Gestapo officer
who headed the notorious special
7-A Nazi externimation squad. went
on trial Tuesday for the murder

were engaged in a "cops and rob-
bers war" with Paraguay's "ruth-
less Gen. Vera, who is known here
as Nazidom's best friend."
Despite continued denials, Israel
and the West German government
have proof that Mengele currently
is in hiding not far from Ascun-
sion, the Express said. It repeated
an earlier report that Mengele's
trackers missed him by a few
minutes in a hotel near Ascunsion
when the hotel owner, a former
SS officer tipped off the former
Auschwitz doctor who fled shortly
before the hunters closed in. They
were reported to have picked up
his trail again after the near miss.

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
8—Friday, October 16, 1964

become a killer. A former carpent-
er said he was assigned the task
of checking all bank accounts of
Jews in northern Italy. An ex-
musician described his job of pre-
paring files and photographs of
victims he later gassed, while
another defendant told the court of
traveling from one camp to
another to build gas chambers.
Only one of the accused said he
was a member of the Nazi Party.
None of the defendants was rec-
ognized as an SS man when capt-
ured by Allied troops at the end
of the war.
Gestapo Officer, Eichmann Pal,

Goes on Trial for Killing 3,000

Mengele Pursuers 'Hot
on Trail' in Paraguay

WO 3-4890

Louis I. Zuckerman, C.L.U.

Rudolf L. Leitman

Club Advisory Board
President, 1956

Club Vice President
North Central Region

By serving the needs of others . . .

Rudolf Leitman and Louis Zuckerman

have achieved leadership

DINNER COMMITTEE STANDS IN READINESS FOR BETH YEHUDAH'S
GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

in New York Life's TOP CLUB

It's always rewarding to "reach the top" in your company and

your

profession. It's especially rewording when you do so as a result of

helping people. The knowledge and experience of Rudolf Leitman

and Louis Zuckerman have helped their clients—whether individuals
or businesses — achieve greater financial security. In doing so, they

have earned their appreciation, respect and friendship.. New York

Life is proud to honor these "Top Club" leaders. They share with

their fellow New York Life Agents a genuine concern for people

and a spirit of helpfulness. That's why we say: "The New York

Life

Agent in Your Community is a Good Man to Know."

,
Pictured above are members of the Dinner Committe of the Businessmen's Council Dinner in
behalf of Yeshivath c eth Yehudah's Golden Anniversary Dinner scheduled to take place Sunday evening,
October 25th at Cob. Hall. Although reservations for the dinner are coming in in greater quantities every
day, the goal of 1,t 10 has still not been reached and it is being striven for every day by the committee of
workers that has pplied itself with vigor to this project.

In the phot above are committee members. Standing
(left to righ : William Schwartz, A. M. Silverstein,
Benjamin Po •, Ezriel Weissman, Arthur Faber, Paul J.
Bragman, Sam Goodman, Wolf Cohen and Irving Palman.

NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

660 WOODWARD AVENUE, DETROIT

Seated (left to right): David Silver, Howard H. FInsilver,
secretary of the dinner committee; Leon J. Simon, overall
chairman of the fiftieth anniversary dinner; Sam E.
Adv.
Dashow, program chairman, and Reuvin Grevnin.

REMEMBER! OUR HISTORIC TRIBUTE DINNER

Wonortng

MRS. LEVI ESHKOL

"First Lady of Israel"

. SAM ROTHBERG,
Dinner Chairman
Saturday, Oct. 17th — 7:30 p.m. — Cobo Hall

MAX M. FISHER,

For Reservations, Call DI 1-5707
Tickets May Be Obtained at the Door

Special

Auspices, Detroit Israel Bond Committee

Guest

$6.00 per plots
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