My italics. No tears.
Nazi war criminal dies in Britain
BBC
7 November 2005
The only man to have been convicted in Britain of Nazi war crimes has died in Norwich prison. Anthony Sawoniuk, 84, was serving two life sentences after being found guilty of murdering 18 Jews in the UK's first war crimes trial.
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Sawoniuk was born on 7 March 1921, in the harsh climate of Domachevo. As a boy he would have starved if it were not for the generosity of local wealthy Jewish families. But when the Germans arrived in 1941, he took up with the Nazi police force to help with the suppression and genocide of local Jews.
During his trial, the jury heard from an eyewitness how he watched Sawoniuk tell two men and a woman to strip beside an open grave and then shot them. The court also heard how he mowed down 15 people with a submachine gun and pushed their bodies into an open grave.
1 comment:
Arbeit macht frei indeed.
Convicted Nazi killer is freed to go to work
Times
13/06/07
A former SS officer convicted of murdering hundreds of civilians in Rome during the Second World War was cleared yesterday to leave house arrest every day to work, sparking outrage among Jewish groups.
Erich Priebke, 93, was told by a military judge that he was free to leave his flat in Rome to work as a translator at his lawyer’s firm in the city centre. Under the terms of his detention, Priebke was also able leave the office for “essential requirements”, the judge said.
The ruling triggered a furious response from Jewish groups and politicians. Leone Paserman, head of the Jewish community in Rome, said that Riebke had effectively been given his freedom. “The judge has obviously taken literally the slogan above the gates at Auschwitz — Arbeit Macht Frei — work makes you free,” Mr Paserman said. As an SS officer Priebke sent Jews to death camps in Germany, “and they did not have the chance to work, nor to live to his venerable age”, he added.
Renzo Gattegna, another Jewish leader in Rome, said that the court had already shown leniency by granting Priebke house arrest. “This is clearly another act of leniency towards a man who showed no mercy in killing innocent civilians and has shown no remorse since,” Mr Gattegna said.
Priebke was traced to Argentina in 1995 and extradited to Italy for war crimes. In 1998 he was given a life sentence for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre in March 1944, in which 335 men, including 75 Jews, were shot in reprisal for an Italian partisan ambush of a German patrol in which 33 soldiers were killed. Priebke’s sentence was later commuted to house arrest because of his age.
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