The second case tried under the US occupation brought in another category of defendants. On 15 August 1944, an American pilot had bailed out over the village of Preist in the Rhineland. A rural policeman went to the spot where the airman landed to take him into custody. When the policeman arrived, two German soldiers home on furlough were helping the pilot out of his parachute harness. Before they had finished, Peter Back, a local Nazi Blockleiler, and a crowd of other civilians appeared on the scene. Back was carrying a pistol which he fired at the American, wounding him. The German soldiers protested, but Back ordered them to stand aside and shot the prisoner a second time. Back then called on the crowd to take revenge for a recent air raid on a nearby town, and two persons beat the dying pilot, one with a hammer, the other with a club. The policeman did not attempt to prevent the attacks. Military commissions sitting at Ahrweiler tried the policeman and two civilians on 1 June 1945 and tried Back after he was captured two weeks later. Back and the two civilians received death sentences and the policeman life imprisonment. Similar cases in which downed US airmen were the victims would make up the largest single category of trials involving crimes against Americans. By the end of summer 1945, war crimes investigating teams collected evidence in 800 such cases; the great majority charged to civilians or the police, very few to soldiers.57
German court set to throw out case against Nazi guard as time runs short for Auschwitz trials
The Back case was already extending the scope of war crimes to include nonmilitary acts committed away from the battlefield, when on 2 June Eisenhower asked the Combined Chiefs of Staff ( CCS ) to approve also the prosecution of concentration camp commandants and guards as war criminals. The Moscow Declaration, he pointed out, provided for returning Germans for trial and punishment to the countries in which their "abominable deeds" were done but said nothing about the crimes committed against United Nations citizens inside Germany. Swift punishment of these crimes, he believed, would have "a salutory effect on public opinion both in Germany and in Allied countries." 58 In reply, the CCS lifted all "previous restriction" on war crimes trials, "whether the offenses were committed before or after occupation . . . and regardless of the nationality of the victim." 59
The Hadamar Hospital case in which German medical personnel were charged with having killed 45 Poles and Russians by injections, began on 8 October at the War Crimes Group headquarters in Wiesbaden, thus beginning the cases involving concentration camp and other mass atrocities. During the next month, Seventh Army began its trials at Ludwigsburg, and Third Army courts at Dachau began what was going to be a three-year session during which they would hear 489 cases against 1,672 accused and pass 297 death sentences.62 The Hadamar case was tried under a military commission. All the subsequent cases were tried by special military government courts that had nothing to do with current offenses against the occupation, dealt exclusively with war crimes, and were more like military commissions than like regular military government courts. Procedurally, however, the distinction was significant. Military commissions operated under the elaborate regulations for courts martial. The regulations for military government courts, on the other hand, specified
Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Justice Jackson's office), resulted in one conclusion, namely, "that literal compliance with JCS 1023/10 is in practice out of the question." They therefore produced a plan for compliance as far as it was feasible. The USFET War Crimes Group would retain responsibility for the kinds of trials it was conducting, that is, war crimes and concentration camps. The other atrocities since 30 January 1933 would be turned over to German courts as a "test of German regeneration." Jackson's office would prepare and, after the international trials, conduct the cases against the major offenders whom the International Military Tribunal did not try and against the members of criminal organizations.69 Although the division of responsibility reduced the Army's direct share to a fraction of what it might have been under JCS 1023/10, it was still large and would in the end constitute the majority of the cases actually tried. As of January 1946, the War Crimes Group had referred 81 cases to trial and had 2,438 war crimes and 131 mass atrocity (concentration camp) cases on the docket. 70
It is now August, and it is the third time that the retiree has received journalists from SPIEGEL. A few days prior, just after his 91st birthday celebration, he learned that state prosecutors in Stuttgart had abandoned the case against him. Jakob W. was already convicted by a Polish court in 1948 in connection with his Auschwitz duties and he cannot be punished a second time.
It is certain that the debate about the law and the value of the trials will continue. The laws have been criticized by the Law Reform Commission as well as by some judges in recent trials. Indeed, a recent appeals judgment in the Keegstra case in Alberta found the law (Section 281.2) under which he was prosecuted unconstitutional.112 The Attorney General of Alberta will appeal that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. The same law and Section 177 have been found constitutional by appeals courts in Ontario.113 Obviously the Supreme Court must resolve the questions raised by the contrasting judgments. In the meantime, more Canadians than before surely know that the Holocaust is a fact and cannot be denied, and also that it is a fact of direct importance to them and their neighbors because of the legal issues. 2ff7e9595c
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