DEMAND FOR DEATH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21923, 18 January 1946, Page 3

DEMAND FOR DEATH

TOP NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

FRENCHMAN’S DRAMATIC PLEA

“MONSTROUS ATTEMPT AT DOMINATION” (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (11 a.m.) NUREMBERG, Jan. 17. An impassioned demand for retribution was made by the prosecutor, M. Francois Demanthon, a former resistance leader, when he opened the French case before the war crimes tribunal. He called for the death penalty for high Nazi war criminals. “The conscience of the peoples who, only yesterday, were enslaved and tortured, both in soul and body, calls for judgment and condemnation of the most monstrous attempt at domination and barbarism of all times,’’ he said. “France bore almost alone, May and June, 1940, the weight of German armaments, but my country never gave up the battle for freedom. Through my voice France becomes the interpreter of the martyred peoples of western Europe—Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg.” “The initial condemnation of Nazi Germany by a high tribunal will be 'the first lesson for the people of Germany and constitute the best starting point for the work of revision of values and re-education which must be its great concern in coming years. France calls for the supreme penalty

on those who were chiefly responsible." It was his purpose to prove that "this organised vast criminality" sprang from the crime against the spirit—the doctrine aimed at plunging humanity back into barbarism—the monstrous doctrine of racialism.