Bahl-Nair Massacre Recalled

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, April 26, 1968-7

Harman Sees Growth

ELECTRONIC

Gina)
cribed as the chief defendant, 53-
in Foreign Students
GARAGE DOOR
year old former police officer Hen-
TEL AVIV (ZINS)—There is a
OPENER
rich Schneider, escaped justice by
growing interest among American
killing himself on the day the Jewish students to attend institu-
trial opened. The three who were tions of higher learning in Israel,
sentenced received the maximum Abraham Harman, former Israeli
penalty — life imprisonment. But Ambassador to the United States,
considering the horror of their declared in an interview.
crimes, gravely affirmed by the
He is convinced, he said, that
judge, and the fact that past ex- their number in Israel will grow
' Call Evenings Until 9
perience does not preclude their
eventual release, the sentences appreciably if conditions in the
353-3284
country become more inviting.
were light.
Those three are Joachim Buchs,
Wilhelm Schaffrath and Freid-
rich Rondholz. Testimony at the
trial proved that Buchs was re-
sponsible for burning the Bialy-
stok synagogue on June 27, 1941
— five days after the German
invasion began — with some 700
Jewish men, women and children
locked inside. Rondholz was con-
victed of murdering Russian pris-
ioners of war on the same day
and participating in the murder
of 35 Jews. Schaffrath, it was
testified, ordered Jews to be
chased in his direction. As they
came close, he shot each in the
neck. '
According to witnesses, Buchs,
"just for fun," fatally shot an old
Jewish woman from his speeding
car. Elderly Jews had their
beards set on fire and were or-
dered to dance for the amuse-
ment of the police. A Jewish boy
of about 12 was shot when he
asked a policeman, "why do you
want to shoot me, I've done noth-
ing?"
The horror of Bialystok how-
) 1.00000000*00000000*** ever, was the synagogue massacre.
The German police entering the
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city had orders to drive the Jews
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11 from their homes and concen-
11 A.M. to 4 P.M.
trate them at one central spot.
)1
STOP IN AND SEE
Buchs decided that the synagogue
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was the most likely spot. On his
orders, police drenched the build-
ing And the 700 Jews with gas-
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oline, barred the doors and set
Clothing from the finest makers in the country : . .
the place on fire. To further the
a
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carnage, hand grenades were
a
thrown inside. Witnesses recalled
that they heard the victims
screaming. Some of them, human
Fine Clothes For Over 30 Years
torches, tried to escape through
15200 W. SEVEN MILE ROAD
windows but were machine-gunned
3 BLOCKS EAST OF GREENFIELD
by the Germ an police. The
DAILY TO 6:00 P.M. MON. & THURS. 12 TO 9:00 P.M.
M screams ended after about an hour,
SUNDAY 11 A. M. TO 4:00 P. M.
according to testimony. The police
a
WE HONOR MICHIGAN BANKARD and SECURITY
who took part in the mass-acre
were later feted with beer and
champagne. Such were the eye-
witness accounts of what happend
in Bialystok on a June day.
paunchy, aging former Nazis
The BARLOW • GA.10-34
went to jail. Nine others, who car-
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ried out their orders, went free.
compact console in grained Walnut

(Continued from Page 1)
police battalion who shot down
Jews indiscriminately in the streets
of Bialystok and burned at least
700 of them alive in the town
synagogue.
The defendants in the Darmstadt
trial number 11, all of whom served
under the command of SS Gen-
eral Paul Blobel who was convicted
and hanged at Nuremberg right
after the war. They range in age
from 5'7 to 65. Strangely enough,
only five of them are in jail. The
rest come and go as they please,
checking in at the trial in the
morning and leaving when the
sessions adjourn, just as if they
were spectators or ordinary men
going to their places of business.
The prosecution has asked 170
witnesses to give testimony. One
of them is a 65-year-old former
Wehrmacht soldier, Willi Spang,
who was an eye-witness to the
mass shooting of Jews at Skol
on the Bug River. Spang told the
court that he regrets "what my
eyes have seen." But when it came
to identifying one of the defend-
ants, he was afflicted with retro-
active astigmatism. He could not
tell "exactly" if this was the man.
But he did recall certain incidents
that, if nothing else, reflect on the
humanitarian sensibilities (or weak
stomachs) of the Nazi soldiers who
shot Jews. One member of a firing
squad suddenly became ill and
could not continue shooting the
Jews, Spang said. The command-
ing officer called him a "coward."
One of the defendants, Heinrich

Huhn, recalled suddenly that a
comrade in arms "fainted" when
he saw a pit filled with dead
bodies.
But beyond such apocryphal tales,
little hard evidence has been ex-
tracted. And it is hard evidence
that the defense demands. Because
so many witnesses fail to remem-
ber, those few who do are suspect
or, according to the defense, "prob-
lematic witnesses." Will Spang
did manage to produce a piece of
visual evidence, a snapshot of
soldiers comfortably resting on the
grass. On the back of it he had
written a caption, "place of
horror."
The prosecution hopes to bring
in two eye-witnesses who can
testify from the victims' point of
view, both women, both elderly,
one living in Kiev, the other in
Oslo. But the state prosecutor has
no illusions. "We know," he said,
"that even these women will not
be able to recall exactly the face
of those who took part in the shoot-
ing of Jews." "But," he added,
"we want to hear what was going
on in their souls when it happened.
We have heard enough of what
went on in the souls of the de-
fendants."
The Bialystok trial at Wuppertal
produced far more eye-witnesses.
It lasted only five months. It ended
with the conviction of all 12 sur-
viving defendants. But only three
were sentenced, the other nine
being turned loose on grounds that
they were only small fry, blindly
following orders. The man des-

•

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