EXECUTIONS OF JEWS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 13

EXECUTIONS OF JEWS

No Refusals Known (N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) KIEL, March 12. The man who wrote the Nazi commentary on Hitler's racial laws, Hans Globke, said today he never knew of a German who refused on grounds of conscience to shoot Jews. Globke appeared as an expert witness at the war crimes trial of a former S.S. lieutenant, Hans Graalfs, who is charged with being an accomplice in the murder of 1550 Jews during World War H in the U.S.S.R. Globke, chief aide to the former chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, told the court he was informed during the war that persons who refused orders to kill Jews count on stiff punishment. “I believe that if the leaders of government during that time ordered mass murder, they would not have hesitated to shoot those who refused to carry out their orders." said Globke. Globke said he had never had the opportunity to study carefully this aspect of the Nazi era, but after the war he had heard that persons who showed no inclination to participate in mass murder were not executed. As early as 1941, Globke continued, he had learned that soldiers on leave in Berlin from the Soviet front had told their friends about Nazi mass killings in Russia. Globke also testified that he had seen Hitler and Henrich Himmler, the former Gestapo chief, two or three times but had never spoken with either. “Both were certainly unscrupulous,” he added. Globke has now retired. He was Dr. Adenauer's chancellery secretary.