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German Ex-mayor Sentenced for Burning Down a Synagogue

Wilhelm Fischer, former mayor of Hellenthal, a small town near Aschen, Artur Schoeller and Edmund Gottwald were tried here on charges of participating in the burning down of the Hellenthal synagogue in 1938 and in the so-called “pillory march” of Jews through the city’s streets the day following the arson. Fischer was sentenced to 15 […]

July 9, 1952
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Wilhelm Fischer, former mayor of Hellenthal, a small town near Aschen, Artur Schoeller and Edmund Gottwald were tried here on charges of participating in the burning down of the Hellenthal synagogue in 1938 and in the so-called “pillory march” of Jews through the city’s streets the day following the arson. Fischer was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment, Schoeller received a seven-month term and Gottwald was acquitted.

Josef Tannenbaum, formerly a foreman at the Buchenwald concentration camp, has been sentenced to five years penal servitude by a German court here. In 1939 and 1940, when he was only 18 years old, Tannenbaum mistreated and tortured his fellow prisoners and tried to murder one of them.

Investigations into the desecration of the Bad Canstaat Jewish cemetery have brought about the arrest of three boys between the ages of ten and twelve. The police say there was no criminal motive behind the desecrations, which were described as “merely a prank.” Thirteen tombstones were overturned and one tomb was destroyed by the vandals.

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