Karl Tollkuehn, a Latvian-born former petty officer in the Nazi-controlled Latvian security police, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years’imprisonment by a Hamburg district court today for complicity in the mass murders of Jews during World War II.
Tollkuehn, 70, admitted his guilt but insisted that although a Nazi by conviction, he was not anti-Semitic. According to the charges he aided and abetted the shooting of 700 Jewish women and children deported from Germany to Latvia in 1942 and was similarly involved in the shooting of 30 other Jews near Riga the same year. A court spokesman said the light sentence was imposed because Tollkuehn made a statement of confession.
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