Nazi’s Life Term May Mark End of War Trials Era

In a case that many believe signals the end of the era of Nazi war crime trials, a German court Monday sentenced former World War II slave labor camp commander Josef Schwammberger to life imprisonment for mass murder during the height of the Holocaust.

Schwammberger, now 80 years old, severely deaf and stooped with age, was found guilty of personally killing one or more individuals on seven occasions and, in 32 instances, of being an accomplice to large-scale murder.

Most of the victims were Jews.

During the course of the 11-month-long proceedings in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, Schwammberger expressed regret for the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, but he never admitted his own personal guilt.

For much of the trial, he sat expressionless as witnesses recited the personal horrors they said he unleashed upon them.

Schwammberger, a member of Hitler’s elite guard known as the SS, had been initially accused of personally executing at least 45 prisoners and participating in the deaths of 3,377 others.

Many of these cases were dropped for lack of evidence during the course of the trial.

The killings occurred while Schwammberger was serving as the commander of forced labor camps in the Polish ghettos of Rozwadow and Przemysl between 1942 and 1944.

A parade of some 40 witnesses, many of whom broke down during their testimony, described variously how their tormentor simply walked up to a prisoner and shot him for no apparent reason, how he loosed his pet German shepherd on slave laborers and then watched as the dog tore its victim apart, how he swung small children around by their ankles before smashing their heads against a concrete wall.

Schwammberger was also accused of helping organize the September, 1943, mass execution in Przemysl in which more than 1,000 Jews were herded into a gymnasium and shot.

Chief prosecutor Kurt Schrimm said he was extremely pleased with the verdict.

“It’s a good decision and a good sentence,” said Schrimm, who added that he had devoted much of the last 4 1/2 years to building the case against Schwammberger. “The court gave us most of what we asked it for.”

Dieter Koenig, the respected court-appointed attorney who defended Schwammberger, said he will appeal the judgment.

“I’m not satisfied with the sentence, and neither is he,” said Koenig, referring to his client.

Koenig had argued that the passage of time had blurred and confused witnesses’ testimony to the point where it had become no longer credible.

Monday’s verdict came 20 years after the court first issued a formal arrest order for the Austrian-born Nazi and 4 1/2 years after he was first arrested by police in Argentina, where he had lived since escaping from Allied custody in the late 1940s.

Monday’s decision also concludes a major effort both by the German government, which paid a record $310,000 reward for the tip that led to Schwammberger’s November, 1987, arrest and by Jewish groups, such as the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, that located camp survivors willing to testify against the man who had once terrorized their lives.

“It was justice delayed, but not justice denied,” summed up Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Wiesenthal Center. “He avoided the arms of justice for 47 years, and the sad truth is that he managed it because for a long time no country was interested in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.”

Speaking in open court, chief trial judge Herbert Luippold said the decision showed that despite the passage of nearly half a century, time is still not an insurmountable barrier to getting a conviction.

“With this case, the court has proven that even today, Nazi crimes can be successfully prosecuted,” Luippold declared.

Despite this statement, many of those most closely involved over the years with bringing former Nazis to justice believe that Schwammberger is probably the last important figure to be tried for mass murder.

“Another trial would be very difficult,” noted Alfred Streim, the chief prosecutor at Germany’s Central Office for Nazi Investigations in Ludwigsburg during an interview shortly before testimony ended in the Schwammberger case.

Hier said Monday that he agreed with that assessment.

Since May, 1945, German prosecutors have formally investigated and filed charges in 91,000 cases. About 6,500 people were tried and convicted, and 12 were sentenced to death.

Of those Nazi war criminals still suspected of being alive and free, the whereabouts of only one major figure is known--that of Alois Brunner, once a key aide to the Holocaust’s principal technocrat, Adolf Eichmann.

Brunner, whom Hier calls responsible for the deaths of 134,000 Jews, is now 80 years old and reportedly lives in Damascus, Syria.

Although Brunner’s residence in the city was for many years so well known that its location was an open secret among journalists covering the region, Syrian authorities have always denied his presence there.

Noting the international sanctions recently imposed on Libya in efforts to get custody of two men suspected of blowing up a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, three years ago, Hier said that comparatively little pressure had ever been exerted on Syria to win Brunner’s return to Germany for trial.

After the announcement of Monday’s verdict, a small cluster of about 15 youthful neo-Nazis gathered outside the Stuttgart courtroom shouting, “Freedom for Schwammberger!” and “Away with the war guilt lie!”

While the protest was the first open expression of neo-Nazi sentiments that many Germans could recall around a war crimes trial, those connected with the proceedings said they did not interpret the demonstration as evidence of a major new threat from the extreme right in Germany.

Said chief prosecutor Schrimm: “There are 80 million people in this country, and the neo-Nazis managed to round up 15. Those numbers speak for themselves.”

According to Hier, the verdict sent an important message to the neo-Nazis.

“It says to them that 47 years after a crime was committed, there was a knock on the door for Mr. Schwammberger, and he had to answer the call of justice,” Hier said. Men like Schwammberger, he said, “are used to having the entire world under their goose-stepping boots. . . . We have no remorse for this old man.”

Times staff writer Amy Wallace in Los Angeles contributed to this article.

* WITNESSES REACT: Two Californians answered the call for survivors to testify. B1