17 GERMANS ON TRIAL

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25226, 3 July 1947, Page 7

17 GERMANS ON TRIAL

SHOOTING OF ALLIED . OFFICERS

MASS ESCAPE FROM . PRISON CAMP (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

(Rec. 7 p.m.) HAMBURG, July 1. Opening for the prosecution in the trial of 17 Gestapo men who are charged with complicity in killing 50 officers of the British, Dominion, and Allied air forces who participated in a mass escape from Stalag Luft 3, Mr R. H. Haise said that under the rules of war it was permissible in certain circumstances to shoot prisoners attempting to escape, but such circumstances did not apply in this case. Where the officers had succeeded in escaping, killing them afterwards was against all the rules. , Eighty officers escaped through a tunnel on March 24, 1944, and four were caught near the opening. Three succeeded in getting out of Germany and the occupied areas. Of the remainder, 50 were shot and the others were again imprisoned. Mr Haise said that when the officers escaped, one of the accused, Max Wienien, then chief of the Breslau criminal police, issued orders which put every policeman, man, woman, and child in Germany on his or her toes searching for them, and Hitler issued an order that half the escaped officers were to be executed. A German general protested that the order would lead to reprisals. Nevertheless, the directive was issued, and Himmler ordered the police to hand the escapees over to the Gestapo, who would kill them on the way back to the camp. "The shdoting will be explained by saying that an officer shot them while they were trying to escape or resisting arrest,” he said.

Mr Haise added that Himmler’s order described the increasing number of escapes by officers as a menace. Wienien had acknowledged that the Gestapo shot 27 officers in Breslau after the Kripo (Criminal Police) had handed them over. Wienien added that an S.S. group leader, Nebe, who was chief of the Kripo, made the death selections from the officers’ registration cards. If an officer were young or married with a family, his card was put among those to be returned to the camp, but the other officers’ cards were placed aside, as they were to be shot. Nearly all the officers were shot on the roadside and their bodies were cremated. ... . Precautions By Germans Mr Haise continued that when it was realised that the British knew about the killings, Berlin instructed the Gestapo and Kripo to make their reports more “realistic” as the protecting Power might want to see them. Everything was done to cover up the murders.

A Royal Air Force investigation team which travelled 100,000 miles over land, sea. and air, and questioned more than 20,000 Germans, was responsible for bringing the 17 Gestapo men before the War Crimes Court. Among the escaping Dominion officers were Flying Officer Arnold George Christensen, of Duffering street, Hastings, and Flying Officer Pokokoru Patapu, of Taihape, New Zealand. All the accused pleaded not guilty to the general and specific charges of having killed the officers. Wing Commander Henry Marshall, of the Royal Aiy Force, who led the escape, was the first witness for the prosecution. He said that between -941, when he was captured, and 1944, the prisoners dug about 100 escape tunnels. The prisoners set up a complete escape organisation. The Germans discovered in 1943 a plot for a mass escape of 200 officers and blew up a tunnel.

In the tunnel through which the prisoners escaped in 1944, they first used lights made from melted margarine m tins, with pyjama cords for wicks. Later, when they had stolen enough wire, they lit the tunnel with electricity The tunnel was 364 feet long and 25 feet below ground to avoid sound detectors in the camp’s barbed-wire fences.

The. escape began when the camp lights were put out during a Royal Air rorce raid. It had been arranged that some of the escaping men should get away by tram. These were given priority m escaping, as "they had trains to catch.’’ The hearing was adjourned.