Dr. Horst Schumann, a former Nazi physician charged with killing 30,000 Jews and 100,000 inmates of mental hospitals, admitted here today that he supervised the killing by gas of “maybe 80,000 persons — I have no figures.”
Testifying in Ghana’s Court of Appeals in his appeal against an extradition request by the West German Government, Schumann said he carried out the killings on Hitler’s orders. Answering the charges that he killed 30,000 Jews by mass sterilization, he said he carried out the program out of fear of what would happen to him if he did not. Schumann had been sheltered by former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah from West German demands for his extradition, but he was arrested after the Nkrumah regime was overthrown.
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.
