History: 88-year-old German charged with involvement in one of the most infamous World War II massacres in France

Oradour-sur-Glane, France

The charges relate to Oradour-sur-Glane in central France, where 642 people were murdered by SS troops in 1944.

Many were herded into a local church into which hand grenades were thrown before it was set on fire.

Prosecutors in Dortmund said the man had been charged over the murder of 25 people and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred.

The ruins of the village have been preserved just as they were after the massacre, as a permanent memorial.

French leader General Charles de Gaulle said it should be a reminder of the cruelty of the Nazi occupation.

Some 60 soldiers were brought to trial in the 1950s. Twenty of them were convicted but all were later released.

German investigators said last year they had opened a new inquiry into the massacre.

On Wednesday, the regional court in Cologne said: "The prosecutor's office in Dortmund has charged an 88-year-old from Cologne over the murder of 25 people committed by a group, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred people."

The man was named in documents as Werner C, a former member of an SS armoured division who was 19 at the time.

His lawyer, Rainer Pohlen, told the Associated Press news agency his client was at the village but had nothing to do with the massacre.

Dortmund state prosecutor Andreas Brendel said the accused was among six men still facing possible prosecution.

On 10 June 1944, a detachment of SS troops had surrounded the tiny hamlet in the Limousin region.

It is believed by some that they were seeking retribution for the kidnap of a German officer but some say that resistance members were based in a different, nearby village.

Most of the victims were women and children.

The men had been locked in a barn. Machine-gunners shot at their legs, then doused them in petrol and set them alight.

The landmark 1970s documentary series, The World at War, both begins and ends with references to Oradour-sur-Glane.

Last September German President Joachim Gauck travelled to the village and joined hands with one of the survivors and with French President Francois Hollande, as a sign of reconciliation.

Source: BBC News, January 8, 2014

German charged over infamous French WWII massacre

An 88-year-old German former soldier was charged Wednesday for his part in the infamous 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre - one of the worst Nazi atrocities to take place on French soil during the Second World War.

The former member of a Nazi armored division was charged with 25 counts of murder for his role in the slaughter, in which 642 men, women and children were killed in reprisal for the French Resistance's kidnapping of a German soldier.

Cologne’s state court said that Werner C, whose last name was not given in accordance with German privacy laws, was also charged with hundreds of counts of accessory to murder in connection with the massacre.

The suspect is believed to have belonged to a unit that attacked the tiny village in western France, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of Limoges, on June 10, 1944.

"The prosecutor's office in Dortmund has charged an 88-year-old pensioner from Cologne in connection with the murder of 25 people committed by a group, and with aiding and abetting the murder of several hundred people," a court statement said.

The Oradour massacre, as it is known, left a deep scar in France that lasted long after the war had finished.

Virtually the entire population of the village was wiped out in the atrocity, which began when close to 200 German soldiers of the SS “Das Reich” division encircled the town and rounded up its population in what residents thought was a routine identity check.

Church and barn set ablaze

First the men were separated and moved to barns, while the women and children were forced inside the town’s church.

German soldiers then set the church ablaze and used machine guns to mow down anyone that tried to escape.

At the same time, the SS fired their machine guns at the men crowded in the barns, deliberately firing at their legs so that they were wounded but not dead. The soldiers then doused the barns with petrol and set them on fire.

Of the 642 people killed, 246 were women and 207 children. Only six survived.

The village has been a ghost town ever since the atrocity, deliberately preserved in that state as a memorial to those who died on one of the darkest days for France during World War II.

The presidents of Germany and France travelled to the village last September and joined hands with a survivor in a moment of reconciliation.

Source: FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP, January 9, 2014

Germany tries 92-year-old for Nazi war crime

Siert Bruins, a border guard in Hitler's Waffen-SS troops during WWII, is accused of killing a Dutch resistance fighter.

A 92-year-old former member of the Nazi Waffen SS has gone on trial in Germany for the murder of a resistance fighter in 1944.

Dutch-born Siert Bruins, who is a German national, entered the Hagen state courtroom using a walker on Monday. Despite his age, Bruins was found medically fit to stand trial. Trial sessions are being limited to a maximum of three hours in deference to his age and health.

Prosecutors accuse Bruins of having shot Dutch resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema after he was taken prisoner in the Netherlands.

According to prosecutors, Bruins and alleged accomplice August Neuhaeuser, who has since died, drove Dijkema to an isolated industrial area where they stopped and told him to go to the toilet.

As he walked away from the car, they fired at least four shots into him, including into the back of his head, killing him instantly, according to the indictment.

Age dispute

Bruins' attorney, Klaus-Peter Kniffka, said after the short 35-minute opening session that it was unlikely his client would ever address the court personally.

"In general, I think it's quite late for these things, I have to say. I think it's questionable whether a 92-year-old should be dragged in front of a court again," Kniffka told reporters outside the courtroom.

The senior prosecutor Andreas Brendel argued age should not prevent wartime suspects being brought to trial. "If I can accuse him of homicide, age plays no part," he said.

No pleas are made in the German system, and Bruins offered no statement. He faces a possible life sentence if found guilty. The trial is set to resume on Thursday and is expected to extend over 11 hearings until the end of September.

Bruins told German television in July last year that although he was present at the shooting, it was his accomplice who pulled the trigger.

Bruins was among about 30,000 Dutch citizens who collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands. He obtained German citizenship via the Fuehrer's Decree in May 1943.

Several years after the war, he was sentenced to death in his absence by the Netherlands in April 1949 for participating in three shootings, including that of Dijkema.

He fled to Germany from where he escaped a Dutch extradition order in 1978 because Germany does not hand over its own nationals.

German federal prosecutors are expected to announce they are recommending the pursuit of possible charges against about 40 former Auschwitz guards this week.

Sources: Agencies, Aljazeera, Sept. 2, 2013

Slovak Court Commutes Death Sentence of Hungarian War Criminal Laszlo Csatary

A Slovak court has commuted a death sentence imposed on a Hungarian World War Two criminal to life imprisonment although he remains under house arrest in his native country, the prosecution said on Thursday.

Laszlo Csatary, 98, was found guilty in absentia in 1948 of whipping or torturing Jews and helping to deport them to the Auschwitz death camp when he served as police commander in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice.

He was sentenced to death and lived on the run for decades until Hungarian authorities detained him and put him under house arrest in Budapest in July last year.

He has denied any guilt.

The sentence was changed to be in line with modern Slovak law. Czechoslovakia abolished the death penalty in 1990, three years before its division into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Kosice prosecutor’s office spokesman Milan Filicko said.

“Once the decision takes effect, the court will decide whether it will issue an arrest warrant or how it will get him to serve the sentence,” he said.

He said Csatary could appeal the decision, which would send the case to the Slovak High Court.

Slovakia’s Jewish community has called for Csatary to be extradited.

Hungarian prosecutors told Reuters three weeks ago that Csatary’s house arrest had been extended until May 18 and the deadline for the ongoing investigation was April 22, which could be extended if necessary.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said last year it had provided Hungary with evidence that Csatary helped to organise the deportation of around 16,000 Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.

The transports came from Kosice, the eastern Slovak capital which became part of Hungary in 1938 and was returned to Czechoslovakia after the end of the war.

According to a Czechoslovak court ruling from June 8, 1948, Csatary was found guilty of deportations to Nazi death camps, and unlawfully whipping, torturing or killing people in 1944.

Source: Reuters, March 29, 2013

Nazi war criminal Klaas Carel Faber dies in Germany

Dutch-born Nazi war criminal Klaas Carel Faber has died in Germany at the age of 90.

Faber, who served in an SS unit, was second on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre list of most-wanted Nazi criminals.

He was sentenced to death in 1947 for the deaths of 22 Jews at the Westerbork transit camp. His term was later commuted to life.

Faber escaped in 1952, was given German citizenship and died in Bavaria, where he had been living.

A hospital official in the southern Bavarian town of Ingolstadt confirmed that he had died on Thursday, according to Associated Press. He reportedly died of kidney failure.

Faber had lived as a free man in Germany despite several attempts to try or extradite him.

Germany refused his extradition on the grounds that he was a German citizen.

Recently, an Ingolstadt prosecutor filed a motion to enable him serve his sentence in Germany.

Originally from the western Dutch town of Haarlem, Faber served in an SS unit known as Kommando Feldmeijer during World War II.

The group was renowned for killing around 50 Dutch civilians considered "anti-German" as reprisals for attacks by the resistance.

In 2010, a member of the same SS unit, Heinrich Boere, was sentenced to life by a court in the German city of Aachen for the murder of three Dutch civilians in 1944.

Boere, Faber and Faber's brother, Pieter, had all been involved in the Silbertanne (Silver Pine) operation. Pieter Faber was executed for war crimes in 1948.

Source: BBC News, May 26, 2012

Israeli party ponders capital punishment bill to prevent another prisoner swap

The recent prisoner swap that saw Israel release several hundred Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit brought joy to many Israelis, but consternation to many others.

How could prisoners be released who had “blood on their hands” they demanded, referring to the fact that a large proportion of the Palestinians freed were serving life sentences (some of them multiple life sentences) for their role in terror attacks that killed Israeli civilians.

Since the exchange, several efforts have been mounted to try to ensure that such releases never take place again. One effort involves an attempt to draft a set of rules by which any future Israeli government must operate in the event an Israeli citizen is held hostage.

Another effort has been taken by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to try to ensure that no Israeli soldier is ever taken prisoner. The new directive is to the effect that Israeli soldiers must fire upon any enemy forces attempting to abduct a fellow Israeli soldier, even if such fire jeopardizes the life of the soldier being taken captive.

This week, Shas, one of the parties in the governing coalition announced it would put forward another formula for ensuring no prisoners with blood on their hands are ever released – a bill to be introduced in the Knesset that would impose a death penalty on terrorists who seek to destroy the state of Israel.

Not since 1962, when former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann was executed for his role in the mass extermination of Jews in Europe, has capital punishment been carried out in Israel. Indeed the action is not one of the legal punishments set out in almost all criminal statutes administered by civil authorities.

Such a bill as Shas has championed has a few problems to overcome, not the least of which is the fact that most Palestinians in Israeli prisons have been convicted by military courts. While Israel’s civil justice system is internationally praised for its independence, impartiality and the quality of the judiciary, the same cannot be said of the country’s military courts (nor almost any country’s military courts).

Capital punishment, still permitted in certain military court cases, has only been carried out once, in 1948, in the early days of the state.

By its very nature, a military court operating in occupied territory and trying civilians from the occupied population is hardly independent or impartial. The officers of the court are also uniformed military officers in an armed force that largely views the prisoners as the enemy.

Until 2004, when legal minimums were introduced, many of those sitting in judgment even in trials of capital offences need not have had legal training.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Israeli studies have shown that in some recent years more than 99 % of the accused have been convicted.

The practice of military courts trying civilians (as opposed to trying its own soldiers accused of breaching military laws) is widely discredited in international legal circles, and neither Israeli society, nor the international community would tolerate a situation where such a court system meted out the death penalty.

This would mean that, if the Shas or a similar bill is passed into law, a large number of the hundreds of serious Palestinian cases would have to be tried in Israeli civilian courts where processes would take far longer than the often brief, summary-style justice of the military courts. It might also result in a far lower rate of conviction.

That alone would probably guarantee that a bill introducing new terms for capital punishment will not be passed.

It is noteworthy that it is Shas that is bringing a capital-punishment proposal forward. Created in the 1980s, Shas is an ultra-Orthodox religious party that represents mostly Sephardi Jews, those descended from Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, as opposed to Northern Europe.

Capital punishment is widely condemned in Jewish religious circles and Shas is breaking from that religious position, not an insignificant matter.

It’s also worth noting what happened in that early Israeli military case of capital punishment.

An Israeli officer named Meir Tobianski was charged with treason for allegedly having passed information to Jordanian forces that allowed their artillery to hit sensitive targets during Israel’s War of Independence. Capt.Tobianski was tried by a makeshift military court in June 1948, found guilty based on evidence provided by the fledgling state’s head of military intelligence, and executed by firing squad.

A year later, an investigation determined that Capt. Tobianski had not been guilty. He was posthumously acquitted of all charges.

Source: The Toronto Globe and Mail, October 28, 2011

Film-maker Werner Herzog decries capital punishment at “Abyss” premiere

Werner Herzog

Acclaimed director Werner Herzog came out strongly against capital punishment at the premiere of his anticipated doc Into the Abyss in Toronto last night, telling attendees that no one from his generation who remembered the Nazi era could support the death penalty.

Herzog was met by a standing ovation as he took to the stage at the packed Ryerson Theatre for the premiere of his film, which launched on the 1st day of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The director told the crowd he wanted to make his position on the death sentence clear from the start. “I’m not an advocate of capital punishment,” he said. “I’m against it, but I don’t even have an argument – I have a story; the story of Nazi Germany.”

Herzog pointed to the huge numbers of people executed by the state during the Nazi reign of Germany – people executed for their religion, for being handicapped, or for being foreigners.

“No one from my generation, none of my peers, is for capital punishment,” he added. “It’s as simple as that.”

As for the inmates he had spoken to on death row: “None of them are monsters. The crimes are monstrous, but people are human beings.”

Herzog said that he was continuing to shoot material for the TV version of Into the Abyss, which will air on Investigation Discovery in the U.S. next year, and said that yesterday [Wednesday] he had been in Livingston, Texas, filming a man on death row who had killed a police officer. “It’s kind of grim work,” he admitted.

Of the series, Herzog said each episode of the TV version would be more focused “on one single person, and only a little bit on the crime,” adding that the overall series would be “much more coherent” than the film.

He also added that, despite the heaviness of talking with so many victims and murderers, it had not really changed his life. “When you film, you have just 50 minutes with an inmate, so you have to perform,” he explained. “But when you’re in the editing room, it’s then that the weight is on you.”

One side-effect of the intense filming: “Both Joe [Bini, the film's editor] and I had given up smoking years ago – we have started smoking again,” he said.

Source: realscreen.com, September 10, 2011

Related article:

"Into the Abyss", Werner Herzog's new documentary about Michael Perry's execution in Texas last year, The New York Times, September 6, 2011

"Into the Abyss", Werner Herzog's new documentary about Michael Perry's execution in Texas last year

Michael Perry

LOS ANGELES — “When I talk to you, it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you,” Werner Herzog, off-camera, can be heard telling the death-row inmate Michael Perry in the opening minutes of “Into the Abyss,” a new documentary about Mr. Perry’s execution in Texas last year for the murder of a 50-year-old nurse, Sandra Stotler.

“But I respect you, and you are a human being, and I do not think human beings should be executed.”

With that, Mr. Herzog begins to ask questions of Mr. Perry and those who had a stake in his life and death: Was it drugs? You had hopes? Why did the victims die?

It is a reporter’s drill, apparently designed less to resolve lingering questions about the crime — and the shotgun slaying on the same night of Ms. Stotler’s 16-year-old son and his friend — than to test Mr. Herzog’s antipathy toward the death penalty against a close encounter with murder and its consequences.

Mr. Herzog lives in Los Angeles, but has said that he would not become a United States citizen because of a deep aversion to capital punishment, born of his experiences as a child in wartime Germany. “Into the Abyss,” according to its producer, Erik Nelson, was rooted in Mr. Herzog’s plan to make a series of television documentaries about capital cases for the Investigation Discovery network.

“Werner fell down the rabbit hole of this one particular case,” Mr. Nelson said, in describing how “Into the Abyss” became a full-blown feature film.

Mr. Herzog, said Mr. Nelson, had just one filmed interview with Mr. Perry, in June 2010, about two weeks before Mr. Perry’s execution. Unlike Mr. Berlinger and Mr. Sinofsky, Mr. Herzog chose to dwell not on his subject’s claims of innocence. Instead he conducted a simple anatomy of the crime and its punishment, as did Truman Capote almost 50 years ago in his murder-case chronicle, “In Cold Blood.”

Among the details are shots of the cookie dough Ms. Stotler was making as she was gunned down, as part of a plan to steal her red Camaro, according to authorities. Mr. Perry, who confessed, then recanted and proclaimed his innocence, displays no remorse for the camera. But under Mr. Herzog’s questioning, a shaken officer, identified in the film as a member of a “death team,” renounces his support of capital punishment.

“It definitely haunted him,” Mr. Nelson said of Mr. Herzog’s experience with the movie, which will be released in theaters by IFC through its Sundance Selects label.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The New York Times, September 6, 2011

Werner Herzog’s Into The Abyss Picked Up By IFC’s Sundance Selects

Werner Herzog

In his fascinating exploration of a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas, master filmmaker Werner Herzog (CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, GRIZZLY MAN) probes the human psyche to explore why people kill—and why a state kills. In intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (scheduled to die within eight days of appearing on- screen), Herzog achieves what he describes as “a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.” Herzog’s inquiries also extend to the families of the victims and perpetrators as well as a state executioner and pastor who’ve been with death row prisoners as they’ve taken their final breaths. As he’s so often done before, Herzog’s investigation unveils layers of humanity, making an enlightening trip out of ominous territory.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:

I am not an advocate of the death penalty. I do not even have an argument; I only have a story, the history of the barbarism of Nazi Germany.

There were thousands and thousands of cases of capital punishment; there was a systematic program of euthanasia, and on top of it the industrialized extermination of six million Jews in a genocide that has no precedence in human history.

The argument that innocent men and women have been executed is, in my opinion, only a secondary one. A State should not be allowed – under any circumstance – to execute anyone for any reason. End of story. - Werner Herzog

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Criterion Cast, September 5, 2011

Norwegians protest lax penalty for shooter

Swat team on Utoya Island

The fact that Norway's maximum penalty for any crime is 21 years in prison is facing rising criticism in the wake of the twin attacks that killed 93 people, with many deeming the penalty too lax.

Ever since Norwegian media named 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik as the prime suspect, calls have been growing for the maximum penalty under the Norwegian penal code to be extended.

If found guilty, Behring Breivik's 21 years in prison would equal a penalty of 82 days per killing.

"So many innocent people have been killed that I think he doesn't have the right to live," Mari Kaugerud says on her Facebook group "Yes to the death penalty for Anders Behring Breivik" that already has 1783 members.

Dozens of similar groups have sprung up since Friday's killings, some calling for the death penalty, others for natural life in prison.

"People like that shouldn't be able to get out among normal people," says 31-year-old Mustafa. "If he gets 21 years, how old will he be? 53! No, he's ruined too much to ever get out," says the Iranian-born shopkeeper.

Like most people that AFP spoke to on Sunday, Mustafa is against the death penalty, but he wants the suspect, who has admitted responsibility, to spend his natural life in prison.

Norwegian law does allow for a convict to spend more than 21 years locked up, as experts can keep him or her behind bars up for additional five-year stretches if the prisoner is deemed dangerous.

"But how many times will that happen?" says Daniel de Francisco, a 25-year-old chef.

"European governments go too soft on this. Let's put them away for life," he says, drawing bitterly on his cigarette.

Helen Arvesen, a 21-year-old student, agrees that the sentence would be too lenient, but "I don't like the death penalty".

Even if he is released "he'll be facing a lot of angry people so he'll not be safe any more", she says, her mother standing next to her nodded in agreement.

As soon as Behring Breivik was arrested, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg tried to rally the famous spirit of tolerance in Norway, where prisons are comfortable and crime and repeat offending rates are low.

Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the response to the carnage was "more democracy, more openness, more humanity, but without naivety". He did not mention any eventual punishment.

Norway abolished the death penalty for most crimes in 1902, and for all crimes including war crimes in 1979.

The last execution dates from 1948, three years after that of Nazi collaborator leader Vidkun Quisling, who was shot for high treason.

Source: AFP, July 24, 2011

Israel: IDF expected to seek death penalty for killers of Fogel family

Death sentences were occasionally handed down against terrorists in the early years of the state, but were always commuted.

The army will apparently seek the death penalty for the murderers of 5 members of the Fogel family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar in March. This would be the 1st time it has sought a sentence of death since the mid-1990s.

Such a request would most likely be purely symbolic, since the only case in which a death penalty was ever actually carried out in Israel was that of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1962. Death sentences were occasionally handed down against terrorists in the early years of the state, but were always commuted.

The victims of the Itamar settlement attack, 10-year-old Yoav Fogel, Udi Fogel, 37, four-year-old Elad Fogel, 3-month old Hadas Fogel and Ruth Fogel, 36.

Yet even to seek such a penalty would be a departure from longstanding army policy: Since the mid-1990s, not even the most heinous terrorist acts have resulted in a request for capital punishment.

Military prosecutors are expected to demand the death penalty this time due to the extreme nature of the case: Udi and Ruth Fogel and 3 of their children, ranging in age from 3 months to 11 years, were killed in their beds shortly after the family finished their Shabbat dinner.

The Shin Bet security service has wrapped up its investigation into the murders and indictments are expected to be filed shortly against the two suspects, Hakim and Amjad Awad of the village of Awarta, near Itamar. Both confessed to the killings under interrogation. On Tuesday, a military court ordered them held in detention for another 10 days.

Though the death penalty has never been used against terrorists, Israel Defense Forces regulations in the West Bank allow its imposition subject to various conditions: Incriminating evidence must be presented at the trial even if the defendants have confessed; the judges trying the case must hold the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher; and the sentence must get the judges' unanimous consent.

A death sentence is automatically reviewed by a 5-judge appellate panel even if the defendant does not seek to appeal. If the appellate court upholds it, the military commander in the territories must then review the sentence as well and consider commuting it.

Source: Ha'aretz, May 20, 2011

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Israel: Death Penalty Unlikely for Itamar Massacre Terrorists

Israel is very unlikely to mete out the death penalty for the two terrorists who slaughtered five members of the Fogel family, but calls are mounting to make it mandatory in such cases.

Israeli civilian law allows the death penalty only for Nazi criminals, and the only time it has been implemented was for Adolf Eichmann. Military courts could impose a death sentence on terrorists in Judea and Samaria, which are under military law, but this has never happened.

Chava Chai, the neighbor of the Fogels and whose house was the first to be entered by the terrorists while the Chai family was away for the Sabbath, told The New York Times, “We hope they will receive the same justice as the Fogel family. They should be given the death penalty.”

The death penalty is the least that the terrorists deserve, said National Union Knesset Member Uri Ariel, quoting a saying by Rabbinic sages that “whoever takes mercy on cruel people will eventually be cruel to merciful people."

Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely also called for a change in legislation to allow the death penalty for terrorists, explaining that doing so would serve as deterrence. She was joined by Druze Likud MK Ayoub Kara.

National Union KM Dr. Michael Ben-Ari also called for the death penalty for what he called "monsters.”

Source: IsraelNationalNews.com, April 18, 2011

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Ohio executes Frank G. Spisak Jr.

Frank G. Spisak Jr.

Serial killer Frank G. Spisak Jr., a Hitler devotee whose 1982 murder spree on the Cleveland State University campus terrified a city, was executed Thursday morning, the state said.

The death sentence was carried out at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility via intravenous lethal injection. The time of death was 10:34 a.m. His sentence was imposed in 1983 by the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Spisak, 59, read his final statement — a German language reading of Revelation 21:1-7 — which begins, “Then I saw a new heaven and earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away."

In a prepared statement, Cora Warford, the mother of one of Spisak’s victims, said, “In memory of my baby boy, Brian Warford, I can finally say justice has been served. Spisak will have to stand before a higher court one day as we all will, and may God have mercy on his soul.”

Witnesses to Thursday’s lethal injection were to include Brian Warford’s two brothers, the daughter of victim Timothy Sheehan, and John Hardaway, who survived being shot by Spisak. The lead prosecutor in the case, Donald Nugent, now a federal judge, also was to witness the execution. Spisak’s attorneys and a friend, Bill Kimberlin, were to witness on his behalf.

Kimberlin is a professor of psychology at Lorain Community College who studies death row inmate. Kimberlin became acquainted with Spisak while doing that research, said Carlo LoPara, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Spisak, 59, arrived at the Lucasville prison from death row in Mansfield just before 10 a.m. Wednesday. “His mood was calm and reserved,” LoParo said.

He ate a “special meal” of spaghetti, tossed salad, chocolate cake, root beer and coffee Wednesday night, LoParo said. He spent the night resting in bed and listening to music. He wrote a letter.

Two priests conducted a Roman Catholic Mass for Spisak at the death house at 7 a.m. Thursday, three hours before the scheduled execution. “There was an indication during the Mass he was a bit emotional,” LoParo said.

He said Spisak’s body is to be cremated and the state will handle disposition of the remains.

A self-acknowledged disciple of Adolf Hitler, Spisak, 59, killed 3 men, wounded Hardaway and shot at a woman. He later admitted he went on “hunting parties” to kill blacks in hopes of fomenting a race war in Cleveland.

The survivors later identified Spisak as their assailant. Spisak admitted to the crimes, but unsuccessfully argued at his 1983 trial that he was legally insane.

In a clemency report last month that unanimously recommended against sparing Spisak’s life, the Ohio Parole Board told Gov. John Kasich that Spisak remains fascinated by Nazis and still reads books about Hitler, though he says he no longer agrees with Hitler’s philosophies. Spisak has said he learned racial tolerance by associating with blacks on death row.

“Spisak’s expressions of remorse for his victims are insincere and manipulative,” the report said. It noted that in 2004, Spisak wrote a threatening letter to the son of one of his victims. The son, Brendan Sheehan, was an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor and is now a common pleas judge.

Kasich denied clemency, and a federal appeals court on Tuesday denied Spisak’s last-minute bid for a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in.

Spisak’s attorneys attempted to halt the execution by quoting anti-death penalty statements this year by former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, a Republican who helped to write the state’s death penalty law while in the legislature. Pfeifer said he no longer supports the death penalty and the process lacks the proper reviews.

Spisak is to be the last Ohio inmate to be executed using the drug sodium thiopental, whose production in Italy has been discontinued amid controversy about its use in capital punishment.

The state intends to use another single drug — Pentobarbital, also known as Nembutal — in future executions, beginning with that of Johnnie Baston of Toledo on March 10. Including Spisak, 9 executions are set for 2011 in Ohio.

Spisak becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 42nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Spisak becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1241st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Related article: "Two voices, one story", Gamso for the Defense, Feb. 17, 2011

Sources: Springfield News Sun, Rick Halperin, Feb. 17, 2011

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Condemned Ohio killer of 3 asks panel for mercy

A condemned Ohio inmate with Nazi sympathies who killed 3 men at Cleveland State University is asking the state's new governor for mercy.

Frank Spisak blamed the 1982 murders on his hatred of gays, blacks and Jews and also claimed his crimes were sparked by mental illness related to confusion about his sexual identity.

His attorneys planned to tell the Ohio Parole Board Thursday that Spisak suffers from a severe bipolar mood disorder that was not diagnosed until years after he was convicted.

The lawyers argue the information could have led jurors to consider a different sentence.

Spisak's plea to spare his life will be the 1st death penalty case to come before newly sworn-in Republican Gov. John Kasich

Source: Associated Press, January 13, 2011

Germany remembers Stauffenberg on execution anniversary

The commemoration ceremony for Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (left) and his co-conspirators took place at the site of his execution, the Bendlerblock, on Tuesday. The Bendlerblock is now the German Defense Ministry.

July 20 marks the 66th anniversary of the execution of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the German army officer and leader of a resistance movement that very nearly assassinated Adolf Hitler in 1944.

The large number of politicians, senior military officers, reporters, and representatives of various memorial organizations present at Tuesday's ceremony are a testament to the importance Germany still attaches to the resistance movement that crystallized around Stauffenberg during World War Two.

Stauffenberg's actions shaped the principles of the post-war German army

The resistance hero was executed along with four of his co-conspirators in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock building, and the first commemoration took place here in 1952, under the supervision of Ernst Reuter, Berlin's 1st post-war mayor.

Reuter's central message that day – that the failure of Stauffenberg's plot did not mar its moral importance for Germans after the war – was taken up by the current mayor, Klaus Wowereit, as his own guiding theme.

" 'Their work was not in vain' - Ernst Reuter's sentence has become the motto of this commemoration in the past 58 years," Wowereit said in his speech. "By their actions, the women and men of the resistance set ethical benchmarks, and so became role models."

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg echoed the mayor's sentiments, and spoke of the emotional intensity with which the resistance movement's actions still resonate directly today. "They show us living today that even in the darkest days of dictatorship, there was another, a better Germany," he said.

The mutiny that defined the German army

But the most impressive speech was delivered by the venerable US historian Fritz Stern, who spoke of the vital legacy that the resistance bequeathed to the German army. "The idea of a citizen in uniform is the role model of the German army," he said. "The warning that even a soldier must follow his conscience – to the point of disobedience – is the legacy of the resistance."

Drawing comparisons with the French resistance, Stern also spoke of the new, wider perspective with which the German resistance movement is being regarded in Europe, and quoted former French Europe Minister Noelle Lenoir, who honored one of Stauffenberg's surviving co-conspirators - Philipp von Boeselager - in 2004 with generous words. "With their blood, they wrote one of the most heroic and horrifying pages of German history," Lenoir had said, "Their sacrifice did not spare Germany, but it saved Germany's honor." Stern called this, "A striking tribute!"

After his speech, the military band and the laying of wreaths, Stern warned that the commemoration of resistance fighters should not be reinterpreted for modern political purposes.

"It should never be, as the saying goes, instrumentalized," he told Deutsche Welle. "It shouldn't be manipulated. People should know about it, recognize it and honor it. Period."

Source: Deutsche Welle, July 20, 2010