THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
12—Friday, February 7, 1969
Getting Away With Murder in Germany
Kurt Weise who murdered Jews
the lower echelons who pulled the
in the Grodno ghetto. But co-de-
triggers, activated the gas cham-
in some of these cases
bers or tied the hangman's noose fendants
were acquitted.
Many Germans are rightly con- were merely cogs in a machine, fol-
cerned that countless Nazi war lowing orders, therefore not re-
criminals will never face the bar sponsible.
o! justice if the statute of limita-
A corrollary to this type of
tions on war crimes prosecutions
thinking is the shocking new
goes into effect as scheduled- at
law, made retroactive to 1965,
the end of this year. But there
that absolves from guilt the so-
appears to be much less concern
called "desk killers." These were
2130
over the fact that scores of con-
Nazis who, by their signatures
E. Jefferson
victed Nazis—convicted of the most
on some paper or a rubber stamp
heinous crimes against humanity
LO 7-5750
on a document, sent tens of thou-
—are getting off with sentences
sands of men, women and chil-
"Atem
so mild in relation to their deeds
dren to pre-arranged deaths. The
Y'holim
as to be ludicrous.
reasoning behind the law is that
Liftoach Ai"
There is this appalling bit of
the "desk killers" had no per-
sophistry in some high German
sonal motivation. They were not
You Con Place
legal circles: the Nazi Big Wheels
indulging their "foul instincts."
Your Trust
who programmed the mass mur
Their acts were no more wilful
In Me
Andy Gochman
ders of Jews and others, did no
than the railroad dispatcher's
actually shed blood with their own
who directs carloads of cattle
Aaron (Andy) Gochman
hands, hence they are not guilty
to the slaughterhouse.
The quaint notion that a mur-
derer can be only someone caught
with bloodstains on his hands has
been applied to ex-judges of
Hitler's notorious Peoples Courts.
These paragons of Nazi justice
imposed thousands of death sen-
tences during wartime for such
crimes as telling jokes about Nazi
leaders or remarking privately that
the war wasn't going too well.
Al Wagner
Only one such judge was ever
. . . how does The
invites you
brought to trial — Hans-Joachim
Rehse — who admitted freely that
to the
Jewish News publish
he sentenced 231 Germans to death
Jefferson Beach
hecause, in varying degrees, they
up-to-the-minute news?
had expressed o'position to Hitler.
Marina
Rehse was acquitted. Judge Ernst
POST'S winning combination of Hot Type composi-
Oske. who 'reed him, contended
tion and Letterpress Printing is the "time-proven"
that his death penalties had been
answer. From page proof "OK" to "on press" is
justified in the context of the times.
minutes, not hours. POST also offers the most versa-
After all. the Third Reich was fight-
tile line of Offset Printing in the Midwest.
ing for its life.
A former SS man, Alfred Becu,
Printers of The Jewish News for peer a Quarter Century
and Wilhelm Adelt, a high-rank-
ing police officer, were found
guilty in Cologne of mass shootings
DOTROIT
or Jewish women and children in
Mitau, Latvia during the war. The
jury passed a three-year sentence
on Becu; Adelt got 18 months. They
might have been petty crooks up
for their first offense.
JEFFERSON
CHEVROLET
By ALFRED WOLFMANN
JTA Bonn Correspondent
(Copyright 1969, JTA, Inc.)
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PRINTING COMPANY
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The defendants in the Ausch-
witz death camp trials received
long prison terms, but they have
yet to start serving them. They
are free pending the outcome of
their appeals.
A Stuttgart jury recently de-
clined to punish Edgar Enge, an
SS man who operated the gas lor-
ries in which 5,780 Jewish women
and children were asphyxiated near
Belgrade in 1942. The judge said
Enge was "only a small wheel" in
the death machinery and that what
he did had to be viewed against
the background of the society in
which he lived. Enge is free, pre-
sumably still cherishing the letter
of praise he once received from
Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler.
A‘S
In Winter and Spring
we do a lot of
entertaining at home.
Why not? It's a good time of year for Israel. The
weather's fine (a little like Southern California). And
there's enough elbow room for people to linger over the ...,
thousands of years of history around them.
We've done everything to make our winter and sprin g'
tours enjoyable. We know the land, we know the people
we can arrange to show it best, and we've got more wino
ter and spring tours to Israel than anybody. We'd 104
to say "Shalom." So see your travel agent.
The airline of Israel
EL
AL,
Early detection and improved
treatment of many inborn errors
of body chemistry now enable
thousands of children to lead nor-
mal lives, according to the March
of Dimes.
Many ex-Gestapo and SS men
who receive severe sentences rare-
ly serve them. Dr. Wilhelm Harster
was sentenced on Feb. 24, 1967, to
15 years in prison for his role in
the deportation and murder of
Dutch Jews. A little over a year
later — in July 1968 — he was re-
leased for "good behavior" and
because the time he spent in a
Netherlands jail was deducted
from his term.
In Hamburg, a former German
minister to Holland who played a
role in deporting Jews, was re-
leased from jail because of his
age and "poor health" and his
trial was cancelled. The last com-
mandant of the Mauthausen con-
centration camp. SS-Hauptsturm-
fuehrer Anton Ganz, was released
from jail pending trial for mass
murder. There are scores of eye-
witnesses alive who will testify to
his crimes. But Ganz lived in free-
dom for 20 years before he was
arrested.
It must be said in fairness that
some Nazi criminals do get the
maximum sentence which, in West
Germany, is life imprisonment.
Serving terms now are former SS
man Wilhelm Rosenbaum, convict-
ed last August of 148 murders in
Bad Rabka; Paul Baron and Ernst
Piecha, who murdered Jews in
the Gorlice ghetto; and SS man
ALVIN L. WAGNER
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