Ghetto Survivors Tell Court Of Atrocities

Press, Issue 29236, 21 June 1960, Page 12

Ghetto Survivors Tell Court Of Atrocities

fN.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) TEL AVIV, June 19.

Survivors of the dreaded Kolomeya ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland told a Tel Aviv District Court today that they had seen a former Gestapo officer commit atrocities take hurling babies in the air and shooting them. They gave evidence before the Court Registrar at the request of the West German authorities against Friedrich Knakendofel, aged 54, accused in West Berlin of war crimes committed in G*alicia, Poland. One witness, Shmouel Hurowitz, aged 60, testified that he saw Knakendofel shoot down with his pistol 30 women and two children in Kolomeya Hospital.

Hurowitz said he had been left in the ghetto until 1943 when he and 10 other Jews were taken by the Gestapo to a cemetery where all the others were killed. He managed to escape and later reached Hungary, from where he made his way to Palestine shortly after the war ended. Another witness, Jonas Axelrod, a native of Kolomeya, testified that he also saw the murder of hospital inmates. He said: “I well remember how he ordered all the patients to get up from their beds and walk to the courtyard, where he pulled his gyn and shot them one after another.” Axelrod said Knakendofel ordered the children to be hurled upward and he shot them in midair. "L saw it with my own eyes,” he said.

During the “actions”—Gestapo raids into the ghetto to round up Jews destined for death camps —Knakendofel used to behave as “a wild beast,” said Axelrod. Knakendofel used to order those who had been rounded up to undress Then he searched their clothes and later shot them, generally from behind and at the base of the neck. On one occasion, Axelrod recalled, Knakendofel rounded up about 100 people, took them to the slaughterhouse and followed them in. “Then I heard firing and bloodcurdling shrieks,” tie said. “When quiet was restored I saw waggonloads of bodies taken away.” Mrs Paul Axelrod testified that she also witnessed the murders in the hospital and later saw Knakendofel take out a cigarette, light it, and smile.