Heinrich Baab, a former Gestapo officer, was sentenced to life imprisonment here today for 55 murders and 21 attempted murders of Jews and for 29 cases of maltreatment of Jewish prisoners, Reuters reported.
Demanding the severest punishment permitted in Western Germany–a life sentence–the state prosecutor exclaimed: “I curse the day when I became a lawyer. As an ordinary citizen I should ask that all the tortures of the dark Middle Ages and those of the Nazi times be imposed on this man.”
The German criminal court, before finding Baab guilty of crimes against humanity, had heard 157 former Gestapo and concentration camp prisoners or their relatives testify during the five-week trial. The 41-year-old defendant was alleged by witnesses to have taken his six-year-old son to watch the deportations of Jews from Frankfurt’s main railroad station.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
