A 56-year-old German Jewish tourist went on trial here yesterday for allegedly mistreating women inmates of the Landsberg concentration camp near Dachau in World War II. Luba Gritzmacher is charged with having been a kapo–a Jewish prisoner who gained favors for cooperating with the Nazis–and is being tried under the law providing punishment for collaborators.
Aryeh Segalson, an Israeli lawyer who was incarcerated in Landsberg’s men’s section, testified that Mrs. Gritzmacher performed cruelly and inhumanly against the women inmates. She whipped, cursed, hit, kicked and broke the fingers of some of them, he said, and lived “like a queen” while other prisoners died of hunger because she and other “officers” appropriated their food for use in orgies.
Mrs. Gritzmacher ordered inmates to sing and dance at those orgies, Segalson testified. One of the women prisoners, he said, was the defendant’s mother, who distributed bread to those more needy–including some in the men’s section. The defendant was arrested after two ex-inmates recognized her as she strolled through Israel as a tourist.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
