THE DACHAU CRIMINALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26027, 15 December 1945, Page 7

THE DACHAU CRIMINALS

THIRTY-SIX TO DIE

LONDON, Dec. 13. Of the 40 defendants of the Dachau concentration camp atrocity trial, 36 have been sentenced to death by hanging; one sentenced to life imprisonment, and three sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. Before announcing the sentences, the president of the court said the court was convinced that Dachau and its subsidiary camps subjected the inmates to killings, beatings, tortures, starvation, and indignities to an extent necessitating the indictment of everyone, high or low, who had anything to do with the conduct of the administration of the camp. Martin Weiss, commandant of the camp, who is among the 36 sentenced to death, clicked his heels and stood stiffly without expression, taking his sentence like a military order from a superior officer. The five doctors sentenced to death were Dr Klaus Karl Schilling (aged 74), who was accused of killing hundreds of people during experiments on internees concerning malaria; Fritz Hintermeyer, whose endurance experiments for the Luftwaffe allegedly killed 900 prisoners; an Austrian, Dr Fridolin Karl Puhr, and Dr Hans Kurt Eisele. The defendant sentenced to life imprisonment was Peter Betz, against whom there was little evidence of cruelty. Those sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment were Huga Lausterer, who. according to witnesses, was kind to the prisoners; Albin Gretach, who was drafted into the S.S.; Johann Schoep, who was drafted from the Rumanian Army by the S.S. Most of the accused showed no emotion as they were sentenced in the glare of the kinema lights.