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Express Train to Cologne
Time November 4, 1979 Angry and grim-faced, 300 French Jews left Paris by express train last week. They were bound for Cologne to attend what may be one of the last few major war crimes trials held in West Germany. They were angry because it had taken so long for the slow-moving machinery of West German justice to act, grim-faced at the need to evoke again the crimes committed against the Jews during the Nazi Occupation of France. Most of the travelers wore yarmulkes and yellow badges lettered JUIF DE FRANCE. Many carried banners and placards made up in the blue and white colors of Israel or with the Star of David. Nearly all, had lost mothers, fathers or other family members at the Auschwitz death camp. As they arrived in Cologne, one of the organizers of the mission announced flatly: "We're here to raise hell." The main target of their wrath was Kurt Lischka, 70, a former Gestapo chief in Nazi-occupied Paris, who through a bizarre series of legal loopholes has been living freely in Cologne since the war despite charges against him. Lischka retired four years ago from a Cologne cereal firm. where ,he had worked as a clerk for 25 years. He stands accused with chilling precision of having deported to Auschwitz a total of 56,341 Jews, of whom 33,592 are known to have died. Lischka has always contended that he never knew he was shipping the Jews to death camps. He insists now that he believed they were destined for farm labor duty. It is a defense that failed in the past. In 1950 Lischka was tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia by a French court life imprisonment at hard labor. Ironically, a law forced on West Germany by the Allies forbade his extradition to France. Hence; the sentence was never carried out. Within West Germany, Lischka was protected from prosecution by a law that prohibited retrial of Germans already tried by the Allies. The charmed life of the former Gestapo chief so angered French Lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, whose father died at Auschwitz. that he tried to kidnap Lischka off a street in downtown Cologne in 1971 and return him forcibly to France. The attempt failed but it drew attention to the case. That same year an agreement between the French and West German governments removed the restrictions on retrials of war criminals. It then took four years for the West German government to ratify the agreement. Another three years were spent in bringing charges against Lischka and two lesser co-defendants who served in the Gestapo under him. One is Herbert Hagen. now 66, who is business manager of an industrial equipment firm in Warstein, 30 miles east of Dortmund. The other is Ernst Heinrichsohn, 59, the popular mayor of the Bavarian village of Burgstadt. Now, 37 years after the infamous deportations began, Lischka was facing his accusers; The contingent of French Jews jammed the street in front of the Cologne State Court. In anticipation of heavy demand for seats, the trial had been moved to- a large courtroom accommodating 150 people, but there still was not room enough. The scramble to get into the building grew ugly. Banner poles were'used to shatter glass doors. Fist-fights erupted, and four bailiffs and one demonstrator were injured. For a while the courtroom was overrun as the Jews leaped onto desks and tables shouting "Murderers!" "Assassins!" "Death to the Nazi hangmen!" The trial was delayed an hour and a half while order was restored. As the defendants were led in, seven black-robed lawyers raised their gowns to hide the three men's faces. When Heinz Fassbender, chief of the three-judge panel, addressed btie of the defendants courteously as "Herr,"demonstrators erupted in outrage. "Don't call him mister!" shrieked one, pointing to Lischka. "He is trash, a beast, a killer!" Replied Fassbender sternly: "He will be addressed as 'mister' in this court until his guilt is proven here. I will not let myself or my colleagues be influenced from any quarter. No one will be pronounced guilty before they are properly tried." That may take some time. In Dussel-dorf, the marathon "Majdanek process" is dragging into its fifth year. Nine defendants are charged with exterminating 250,000 inmates of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. On the court calendar, the Lischka trial is scheduled for 32 sessions, running into January, but, like the others, it could continue longer. Not many more war crimes trials of this magnitude are expected if only because the victims, witnesses and the accused former Nazis are all gradually dying off. Though most of the French Jews went home after the opening day, convinced that they had made their point, others planned to remain to monitor each session. "This time there will be no escape," said one. "no postponements to prevent a final conclusion. We will make sure justice is done at last." |
