S.S. Man Denies Orders To Kill

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 18

S.S. Man Denies Orders To Kill

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) STUTTGART (West Germany), Dec. 13. A former S.S. major on trial in Stuttgart on charges of murder committed in one of the grisliest incidents in Nazi history denied yesterday that he ever ordered a single prisoner to be shot.

Chief accused, Hans Sohns, aged 61, one of four S.S. men being tried, said he only had responsibility for procuring barbed wire, chains, oil and excavators. In the operation codenamed “operation 1005” the bodies of Russian and Latvian Jews executed earlier as the German Army advanced through Russia were exhumed and burnt as the Nazi Army retreated on the eastern front, it is alleged. The slave labourers forced to exhume the corpses were shot in the back of the neck and their bodies hurled on the flaming pyres, to ensure absolute secrecy, according to the prosecution.

Sohns, who is charged with abetting the murder of at least 530 slave labourers between 1943 and 1944, denied that he was in charge of the operation’s discipline. Asked for his professional

conclusions about the order to kill the labourers, Sohns, a trained lawyer, commented: “The King can do no wrong ... We weren’t entitled to draw conclusions, but to obey.” ' Sohns said the head of the operation, who had been executed after the war, had warned him of the dire consequences of breaking secrecy. “It was a matter which came right from the top,” Sohns said. He said he had never thought that the individuals receiving and carrying out orders could ever be put on trial, since they had then stood under the omnipotent power of the State. The other accused are a former S.S. captain, Fritz Zietlow, aged 66. who later worked as an intelligence officer, a former S.S. captain, Walter Helfsgott, aged 57. i until recently a Duesseldorf 1 police superintendent, and; Fritz Kirstein. aged 60. a former sergeant. More than 27 witnesses from several countries are expected to give evidence at the trial, which is expected to last two months.