Sept. 18, 1964 - Josef Klehr (pictured), a former SS sergeant and a chief defendant in the Frankfurt trial of Auschwitz concentration camp guards, “killed a thousand people like another man would kill a fly,” Karl Lill, an East German witness, told the court today.
The 56-year-old witness from East Berlin, an interpreter, testified that he had seen Klehr drop the gas into the gas chambers at least 35 times in the one-year period following his arrival at the camp in 1942.
He said Klehr did not once show the faintest emotion when climbing up to the roof of the chamber to toss deadly crystals of prussic acid on to the doomed prisoners below.
Mr. Lill, who was sent to the camp because of his Communist background, said he had overheard Klehr brag that he had killed 9,000 prisoners with injections of carbolic acid. Previous witnesses testified that the accused had killed 20,000 to 30,000 inmates this way.
Klehr insisted once again on his innocence. He said he would “fall over dead” if he lied now.
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