Nazi Concentration Camp Chief For Trial

Press, Volume C, Issue 29434, 9 February 1961, Page 11

Nazi Concentration Camp Chief For Trial

(iVZP.A.-Keuter— Copyright)

BONN, February 7. The former commandant of a concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria, will go on trial in Ansbach, Germany, next Monday charged with killing 297 prisoners in "death baths." Prisoners at the camp were herded into outdoor cement basins and sprayed with freezing water until they died of exposure or collapsed and drowned, British United Press said. The commandant. Kurt Chmielewski, aged 57, is the first major defendant in German war crimes trials this year. More than 1000 concentration camp guards, mostly from Auschwitz, in Poland, may stand trial this year, British United Press said. The “death bath” trial, expected to last two months and involve more than 70 witnesses, will be one of the largest. Chmielewski has also been accused of killing some prisoners by given them alternate freezing and scalding showers, and others by hanging them from trees by their wrists until

they starved to death. He is also accused of ordering “Novack night” at the camp, in which all prisoners were forced to stand at attention on a parade ground for 36 hours after a prisoner named Novack disappeared. After the 36 hours, S.S. guards beat a number of prisoners to death. Chmielewski was a sculptor in wood and ivory before joining the S.S. Since bis arrest in 1956 he has worked i in the Ansbach prison library. He evaded arrest after the war by changing his name and starting a small chicken farm. On trial with him will be a former guard at Gusen, Walter Junge, charged with one murder.

A youth complained in criminal court in Montreal that someone had made off with 4868 dollars worth of furniture that he and a pal had stolen from a downtdwn store. "We rented a garage and stored the whole stock there,” he said, “only to find the next day that some crook had broken into it and carried off everything.”