Apr. 13, 1963 - A Ukrainian court has convicted 11 Soviet citizens of having served as S.S. guards in a Nazi death camp in Poland where thousands of Jews were murdered. Ten of the accused were sentenced to death and, according to the Associated Press, have already been executed. The eleventh was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. Krasnaya Zvezda, the newspaper of the Defense Ministry, reported that the convicted men were arrested last year by the State Security Police. They deserted to the Nazis when the German armies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The men were given special training and then sent as guards with the Germans to the death camp at Sobibor near Maidanek in Poland. Under the direction of the camp commandant, Ernst Berg, they took part in the killing of as many as 15,000 persons on some days in the gas chambers. In keeping with Soviet policy, Krasnaya Zvezda did not identify the victims as Jews. The chief witness at the trial in Kiev was Aleksandr Pechersky, a Soviet officer in World War II who now works at a plant in Rostov. Pechersky is a common name among Soviet Jews.
