Author Sentenced For “insulting” Dead Nazi (Press, 23 December 1960)
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Summary: Author Sentenced For “insulting” Dead Nazi (Press, 23 December 1960)
On December 21, 1960, a Munich Court sentenced Count Michael Soltikow, a German author, to a five-month suspended prison term for insulting the memory of a deceased Nazi diplomat, Mr Ernst von Rath. This ruling concluded a 12-day trial following eight years of investigations into the circumstances surrounding von Rath's murder. The diplomat was shot in Paris on November 7, 1938, by Herschel Gruenspan, a 17-year-old Jewish youth. This act precipitated the infamous "crystal night," marked by widespread violence against Jewish people, including the burning of synagogues and mass arrests. During the trial, Count Soltikow faced accusations from an article he penned in the German newspaper "Wochenend" in 1952. In this article, he suggested that von Rath's murder was not politically motivated but rather a consequence of a failure to pay Gruenspan for procuring young men. The court president labelled Soltikow's insinuation that von Rath was homosexual as a serious insult, noting that there was no evidence presented during the proceedings to substantiate this claim. Despite the judgment, the court acknowledged that the trial had not resolved the mystery surrounding the events of November 7, 1938. As a consequence of the verdict, Mr Guenther von Rath, the brother of the deceased diplomat, was granted permission to publish the court's decision in several major West German newspapers, with the costs covered by Count Soltikow. Throughout the trial, Soltikow maintained that he had received information suggesting Gruenspan was still alive and residing in a Paris suburb. This led to requests to Interpol to investigate an anonymous tip claiming Gruenspan was at a hotel in Paris. Following his arrest after the shooting, Gruenspan was handed over to the Nazis by the Vichy Government during the war. Later, on June 1, 1960, he was declared dead by a Hanover Court at the behest of his parents.
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