Gość: A.D.
IP: *.mco.bellsouth.net
25.10.03, 01:36
>>Dobra wiadomosc dla dany33, bowiem tatus jej moze dostac darmowy bilecik
na wakacje w Polsce.
Jew Accused Of German Genocide
By Nargaret Neighbour
The Scotsman
10-23-3
POLAND is seeking the extradition from Israel of an elderly Polish-born Jew
on charges of genocide for the deaths of German prisoners in a communist
camp he commanded after the Second World War.
The suspect, Solomon Morel, 83, is accused of causing the deaths of more
than 1,500 inmates at the end of the war.
Morel, who was held in Auschwitz and had more than 30 members of his family
wiped out by Nazis and collaborators, was made the commander of the
Swietochlowice camp in November 1945.
He is accused of keeping German prisoners and Nazi collaborators in barbaric
conditions, subjecting them to torture, beatings and starvation.
An attempt to extradite him five years ago on charges of torture failed,
after Israel ruled that the statute of limitations on the charges had run
out.
Polish special prosecutors have now upgraded the charges to genocide, for
which there is no statute of limitation.
Andrzej Arseniuk, a spokesman for prosecutors at the Institute of National
Remembrance, which investigates Second World War and communist-era crimes,
said that the new charges are based on testimony from former prisoners at
the defunct camp, near the southern city of Katowice.
"The testimony from former inmates living now in Germany significantly
enriched the evidence. It documented Morel's torture of at least 13 inmates
known by name," said Leon Kieres, the head of the institute. "Now the
charges say his intention was to exterminate for national and political
reasons."
'They told us: You are here, and you are here to die.'CAMP INMATE
Mr Kieres said the extradition request, which will be made by a regional
court in Katowice in a few weeks, will be Poland's final attempt to bring
Morel to justice.
The new charges accuse Morel of seeking to exterminate German prisoners by
starving them to death, depriving them of basic medical care and carrying
out and sanctioning torture by his subordinates - including imprisoning
prisoners in small cells filled with water, trampling them or making them
stand for long hours, singing Nazi songs.
Morel was born in 1919 in the Polish village of Garbow. He was 20 when
Germany invaded Poland and the Nazis began to round up Polish Jews. About 30
members of his family, including his mother and father, both brothers,
aunts, uncles and cousins, died in the Holocaust.
In Christmas 1942, Nazi collaborators arrived at the family home while Morel
and one of his brothers were out. His mother was forced to watch as her
husband and son were shot dead before she was killed.
Morel witnessed the murders with his other brother, Yitzhak, from the top of
a haystack in a field, before they fled and took refuge with a local family.
Within a few months, the two brothers had joined the Polish Jewish
partisans.
Morel's brother was later ambushed and shot by Nazi collaborators while
driving a sleigh for the partisans. Morel was eventually imprisoned in the
Auschwitz death camp. He moved to Israel in 1994, to flee Polish
authorities.
Mr Kieres said Morel is believed responsible for at least 1,538 deaths at
the camp.
Speaking after Israel's rejection of the first extradition request five
years ago, Dorota Boriczek recalled the almost commonplace brutality in the
camp.
"I knew Morel in the camp. He was a very brutal man," she said. "He was
young then. He would come in at night. We could hear the cries of the men
then. They would beat them and throw the bodies out of the window.
"I was taken there when I was 14, with my mother. I still don't know why we
were there, and I still want to know. They told us when we arrived: 'You are
here, and you are here to die, although nobody will shoot you, because
ammunition is too expensive'."
Mrs Boriczek said conditions at the camp were barbaric. "There was nothing
to eat, a hunger that you cannot imagine. We were lucky to have a piece of
bread once a day, nothing else, and water," she said.
"Both my mother and I had typhus. We were separated and I didn't know she
was alive. I had a high fever and when I opened my eyes, I was sleeping next
to a lady from Switzerland. I slept with her under one blanket. I was happy
that she was dead, because that meant I could have her blanket."
The investigation against Morel is the only one in Poland against a Jew
accused of retaliating against the Germans.
Polish historians generally agree that the communist government imprisoned
100,000 Germans, mostly civilians, who were deemed threats to the state. At
least 15,000 died due to ill-treatment and the rest were freed by 1950.
www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=1172982003