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From the JC archive: October 19 1962

Currently featured in the BBC series Ridley Road, here's the JC's report on the trial of British Nazi Colin Jordan - and in Germany, Nazis go on trial for the murder of tens of thousands of people

October 17, 2021 10:39
Colin Jordan getty
Members of the Nationalist Socialist Movement (L-R) Colin Jordan, John Tyndall and Roland Kerr-Ritchie, on their way to the Old Bailey to face charges under the Public Order Act, London, October 15th 1962. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Police chief accused of 30,000 murders

A man who at the time of his arrest in 1959 was in charge of criminal investigation in almost the whole of the Rhineland, went on trial here this week accused of committing 30,356 murders in occupied Russia between 1941 and 1944. He is 49-year-old Georg Heuser. a former member of the S.S. who was in charge of a special unit which had the sole task of exterminating Jews, gipsies and mental defectives in the region of Minsk. Charged with him are eleven other members of this special squad. Between them, Heuser and the eleven others are accused of murdering 70, 000 people. This is the first of a series of large-scale trials of war criminals to be held by the West German authorities.

Heuser was found guilty in 1963 of the murder of 11,103 people. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released in 1969. He died in 1989.

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