Thursday, June 21, 1973
THE SUMMER DAILY
Page Nine
Thursday, June 21, 1973 THE SUMMER DAILY Page Nine
War
EDITOR'S NOTE - Tragedy after
tragedy unfolds. Thousands upon
thousands have been convicted. And
still the World War II war crimes
trials continue. With an extension of
the statute of limitations, they could
drag on into the 21st century. In
Frankfurt on this day, six persons are
before the ndurt...
By OTTO DOELLING
Associated Press Writer
FRANKFURT, Germany - The
court is in recess. The specta-
tors, a mere half dozen, stand in
a dimly lit stairwell outside the
gallery and talk.
"The judge is much too young
to know how it was. He can't be
more than 35."
"THERE, YOU SEE. He never
was a soldier. He should have
been at the front. Then he would
have obeyed orders just like we
had to do."
"Aw, it's all a waste of time,
if you ask me. The sentences are
already decided."
"Decided how?"
"You wait. One thing is clear.
They won't be found innocent.
So much money isn't spent to
acquit anybody."
THE VOICES ECHO West Ger-
many's weary cynicism over war
crimes trials, which have gone
on almost continuously since the
collapse of Hitler's Third Reich.
crimes trials dra
With the 1965 extension of the
statute of limitations for wartime
~murders, the trials theoretically
could drag on into the 21st cen-
tury.
Though few remember Mo-
krow, Lachwa, Luniniec, Dawd,
Gorodok, Gorodiscze, Wysock,
Stolin, Janow, Drohotshin or
Pinsk, their stories are told vir-
tually without respite, revealing
tragedies a thousand fold. So far,
West German courts have found
more than 6,000 persons guilty of
war crimes..
Yet, after nearly three decades,
the West German trials have be-
come so routine they attract
scant public attention. They un-
fold quietly, like a passion of
Jewish suffering and German
guilt performed before near emp-
ty houses.
ON THIS DAY, six persons are
before the court.
Ten years before, when the
indictments were issued, there
were 18. But death and infirmity
have intervened - what Nazi
hunter Simon Wiesenthal has
called the "biological solution."
One of the remaining six de-
fendants is Johann Josef Kuhr.
LIKE FOUR of the others,
Kuhr belonged to paramilitary
Police Battalion 306, headquar-
tered in Lublin, Poland. The bat-
talion was responsible for seal-
ing off ghettos, rounding up Jews
and escorting them to execution
trenches outside of towns.
The sick and resisting were
shot on the spot, or en route.
"The Jews were the poorest of
the poor. It was a crying injus-
tice what was done to them,"
Kuhr says to a newsman outside
the courtroom. He fastidiously
cups a hand under the long ash
of his cigarette and makes re-
peated trips to an ashtray 10
feet away. "I'm all for punishing
the people who were responsible
for war crimes. But not just in
Germany - also those in Rus-
sia and the United States. The
Americans seem to be trying to
come to terms with the problem
. . I think too much was made
of My Lai, though."
KUHR IS charged with aiding
in the murder of 16,200 Jews at
Pinsk, and with executing 6,000
Soviet prisoners of war at Biala
Podlaska.
He does not- consider himself
responsiblefor what happened
at Pinsk and Biala Podlaska,
but he has been forced to live
under their grim shadows for
nearly 10 years, awaiting the
start of his long-delayed trial.
He was arrested in 1962, spent six
days in jail and then was re-
leased on bail of 25,000 marks -
$6,250.
Since war crimes are not cov-
ered by West Germany's crimi-
nal code and since a genocide
statute cannot be applied ex post
facto, the six are being tried
under statutes dealing with or-
dinary homicides.
THE SPECIFIC charge is aid-
ing and abetting murder. The
court reasons that they acted un-
der orders, did not show exces-
sive zeal and derived no personal
rewards from their deeds.
"Butcher" Petsch is said to
have bragged about his handi-
work to SS comrades who tended
to shun him, and decades later
he discusses without remorse
how he went about the slaughter.
The court notes he does so like
other people talk about every-
day jobs.
Petsch's lawyer pleads that his
client was too dimwitted to have
known he was doing wrong. The
court orders Petsch tested. A
New & Important
WAR and
POLITICS
available at
316 S. State St.
psychologist determines that,
while Petsch is far from intelli-
gent, the test-results are within
the norm. Petsch seems strange-
ly pleased by the findings that
are to seal his conviction.
One of the original accused
was declared an imbecile, and
his case was suspended at the
very outset of the trial.
"I THOUGHT then that an or-
der was sacred," defendant Ru-
dolf Eckert tells the court.
The argument is as old as war-
fare and is accepted only as ex-
tenuation by the court. In find-
ing all six guilty, the court rules:
"The actions cannot be jus-
tified on the basis of orders since
the orders themselves were il-
legal and far exceeded every con-
ceivable authority."
"BUTCHER" Petsch receives
the highest sentence - 5 years.
The other sentences range from
two and a half to four years.
In explaining the relatively
mild verdict, Judge Adalbert
Schaefer describes the six as
"themselves victims of inhuman
times ..
"If a taxi cab driver is killed,
everybody calls for the re-intro-
duction of the death penalty,"
Schaefer tells a newsman.
"BUT HERE no rooster crows
for it. Most want an end to these
trials - not that we ourselves
are so enthusiastic about them.
We conduct them only because
the lawmakers have commission-
ed us to do so."
Schafer, who is 43, never was
at the front as such, but the
strapping six - footer did serve
with a flack battery toward the
end of the war.
Pending appeals, including one
by the prosecution, the six are
continued free on bail.
KUHR RECEIVES the lightest
sentence - two and a half years
g on
instead of the eight demanded by
the prosecution. He is convicted
of aiding in the murder of the
Jews at Pinsk, but acquitted of
taking part in the execution of
the Russian POWs.
"A gross injustice," Kuhr com-
plains as he leaves the court-
room.
"I never did a thing to a Jew."
He motions back toward the
chamber, his mouth drawn down
scornfully. "It's easy enough to
open up one's mouth nowadays,"
He adds. "Then it was a com-
pletely different matter."
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