3 Survivors of Death Camp Headed by Linnas Want Him Spared

Three survivors of a Nazi concentration camp commanded by Karl Linnas believe that he should be spared the death sentence imposed on him by a Soviet court in 1962.

But they agreed that Linnas, deported from the United States and turned over to Soviet authorities last month, should spend the rest of his life in prison.

Their views on Linnas’ fate, given during interviews with two American reporters, differ somewhat from the official Soviet view that Linnas was a Nazi war criminal undeserving of clemency.

The return of Linnas to the Soviet Union was shown on the evening television news. It is a topic of prime interest for abut 150 Estonians, now living in Tallinn, who were prisoners in the Nazi-run camp from the summer of 1941 until it was evacuated in September, 1944.

Linnas, 67, was convicted in absentia of organizing mass murders of prisoners at a camp in the Estonian city of Tartu when he was commandant there for a nine-month period ending in May, 1942. Soviet officials say that 12,000 people were executed there without trial.

The U.S. Justice Department has said it believes that there is massive evidence to support the verdict. Linnas, who lived for 35 years in Garden Lawn, N.Y., has protested his innocence.

“Let him stay in prison for life,” said Arnold Jaska, a former inmate of the camp who was a classmate of Linnas in high school and at the University of Tartu.

“He’s an old man--why shoot him?” asked Jaska, who was a witness for the prosecution at Linnas’ first trial 25 years ago.

His wife, Anastasia, another survivor of the Tartu camp, agreed, saying:

“We are not bloodthirsty. We are not looking forward to killing him. He lived for 25 years under a death sentence, and I think he felt something all that time.”

Antonina Kasik, a third Tallin resident who was in the prison during Linnas’ time as commandant, said in a separate interview that she also opposed his execution.

“I want him to be prosecuted,” she said. “But I think that if the death sentence is changed (to life imprisonment), it will be worse for him.” Kasik, a red-haired woman who works at the information desk of the main post office, appeared close to tears at times as she recalled her Tartu experiences.

Once, she said, Linnas visited her when she was serving a 10-day sentence in a windowless punishment cell to ask if she was declaring a hunger strike by not eating her daily 200-gram ration of bread.

“He who doesn’t work doesn’t eat,” she said she replied, referring to her removal from work assignments while she was confined in isolation.

Kasik and Jaska both said they did not witness the killings of any inmates but heard about them afterward from boastful guards.

Prisoners from a special section known as Block 5, they said, were taken outside, stripped and put aboard buses with hands tied behind their backs. The procedure was often repeated several times a day, they added.

“If I had seen somebody getting shot, I wouldn’t be sitting here now,” Jaska said. “The guards who kept people away (from the killing site) came back drunk and boasted about how many people they killed.”

Kasik, who said some of her best friends were shot during the mass executions, added, “We all knew that he (Linnas) participated--we all knew it, but we didn’t see it.”

Jaska, who showed reporters a 1934 school photo of Linnas from a family scrapbook, said that in their school days, he and his acquaintances were just beginning to develop their political views. Linnas, he said, became a leader in the Sokol (Falcon) organization and another nationalist group.

“He was someone who longed for power,” Jaska recalled. “I can’t say that he was cruel when I knew him as a student, but he liked to hold authority, and the Germans gave him a chance.”

Linnas served as a reserve officer in the Estonian army, Jaska said, and became commandant of the Tartu camp in September, 1941, only two months after the Nazi invasion. Linnas remained in that post until May, 1942, when he joined the German army, then fled the country in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced westward, other trial witnesses have said.

At the time of the Nazi occupation, Jaska was an economist, working for the Soviet authorities on the nationalization of a vodka plant. His wife and Antonina Kasik were arrested because of their membership in the Young Communist League, they said.

The gray-haired and gray-bearded Linnas they saw on television, the three Tallinn residents agreed, bore little resemblance to the handsome, blond young man who ran the Tartu camp.

“He’s changed, definitely,” said Antonina Kasik.

Although she welcomed Linnas’ deportation, she voiced her reluctance about becoming a witness against him.

“It’s very hard for me, and I want to save my nerves,” she said as her eyes welled with tears.