Former Nazis’ Evidence Sought

Press, Volume C, Issue 29504, 4 May 1961, Page 15

Former Nazis’ Evidence Sought

(N .Z.P.A.- Reuter—Conyrlght) JERUSALEM, May 3. The Israeli Court trying Adolf Eichmann today announced that it would request a West German Court to take evidence from four witnesses named by the defence.

; The four men are Eberhard von Thadden. a former German Foreign Office man concerned with Jewish affairs; Hermann Krumey, a former S.S. major and subordinate of Eichmann; Dr. Franz Six, a former S.S. superior of Eichmann in the mid-19305; and Dr. Hans Merten, the former Military Administrator in Salonika. In Bonn, a West German Justice Ministry spokesman said today that Germany was ready to take all necessarv steps within German and international law to assist the Eichmann trial preoeedings. He said that under German law persons called as witnesses were bound to comply unless they were related to the accused or would implicate themselves. Local courts in the areas where the requested defence witnesses were living would presumably take their evidence, he said. A gasp of astonishment swept the Court yesterday when a witness identified a boy who was lashed 80 times by an S S. man in Poland during the war as the police officer helping the prosecutor with documents in the case. The witness. Polish-born Dr. Josef Buzhminski. said the bo.y had been lashed with a whip wielded by an S.S. man in German-occupied Poland. “Usually a boy could not take more than 50 lashes, and he would be killed. But this one was whipped 80 times and ordered to run—and he did so.” Mr Gideon Hausner, the Israeli Attorney . General, asked; “Is that young boy here in the Courtroom, Officer Goldmann sitting here bes ; de me’” Dr. Buzhminski nodded at the policeman sitting next to Mr Hausner A crescendo of incredulous muttering was heard in the

gallery as members of the public craned their necks to see the officer. Dr. Buzhminski said another boy being whipped had attacked the Gestapo man, stabbed him with a knife, snatched his revolver, and run away. “The Gestapo man was only wounded and was removed to hospital, but the Germans took 50 hostages. ‘‘The next day the boy was caught. 25 hostages were executed and the boy. together with another boy. was hanged in public.” Dr. Buzhminski. who is now a Tel Aviv physician, told the Court he himself survived the Nazi occupation because a Polish woman sheltered him after he escaped from a German death train. She was now his wife. Earlier in yesterday’s hearing. another witness wno escaped death after being forced to dig his own grave said he spent two days in a “death brigade” searching for his own body. Dr. Leon W.‘ Wells, a Polish-born American scientist. told the Court that as . he was about to be shot he was ordered back to his concentration camp to bring the body of another inmate who had been shot dead While doing so he managed to escape. He told how he was arrested again and put in a "death brigade" working for a special S.S. unit formed towards the end of World War II to wipe out the evidence of mass murders committed by the Nazis. One day they were ordered to remove all traces of a mass burial of 182 neonle but could only find 181 bodies. The missing one was his own. Dr Wells said. “We were searching for two days for the missing body,” he said.