WEST GERMANY Judgment at Frankfurt

"Even if all the defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, it still wouldn't be sufficient to expiate the deeds perpetrated at Auschwitz. For this, human life is too short." So spoke presiding Judge Hans Hofmeyer last week in Frankfurt as he sentenced 17 defendants whom a six-man jury had found guilty of murder or complicity of murder in the death of thousands of inmates at Auschwitz, the largest of Hitler's death camps.

Throughout the 20-month trial, the defense lawyers had argued that the accused were only "little men" acting on orders, and hence were themselves not responsible for the crimes. Demolishing that defense, Judge Hofmeyer declared: "It would be a mistake to say these men are not as guilty because they were only small cogs in the machinery. The man who pulled the trigger as well as the man who gave the order to fire is guilty." But he steered clear of broader questions of political or moral guilt, insisting on evidence of "concrete murder, precisely proved." Even so, there was evidence enough to sentence six men, including Wilhelm Boger, 59, the "Butcher of Auschwitz" (TIME, Jan. 17, 1964), to West Germany's maximum penalty: life imprisonment. To eleven more defendants went sentences ranging from 39 months to 14 years for complicity in the mass murders. Only three of the defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.

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