The Appeal

• From the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz,  10 Feb 1971, page 2:  The Bundesgerichtshof [appeals court] has ruled that the appeal submitted by the defense of  former NS-functionary Leopold Windisch (57), convicted in the trial of 17 July 1969 at the Mainz assizes to life sentence for seven counts of murder, is unfounded.  The Bundesgerichtshof has ruled that there were no  errors at law made in reaching the verdict".
• From the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz,  10 Feb 1971, page 13: The Bundesgerichtshof in Karlsruhe has now ruled in that in the case before the Mainz Assizes against former national-socialist functionary Leopold Windisch (57), convicted of seven counts of murdering Jews and Gypsies, the appeal submitted by his defense is obviously groundless.  With this [ruling], the trial, in which the accused, who comes from Lower Austria, was convicted of murder because of racial hatred, becomes final. After a months-long process, in the course of which many witnesses from here and abroad were deposed, the Mainzer Assizes had declared its conviction in the verdict of 17 July 1969 that former SA-Obersturmbannfuehrer and Vice Regional Commissar Windisch had participated in mass executions during the German occupation of Russia in May 1942 in the Belarussian city Lida, in which at leat 5,670 Jews, men, women, and children were victims.  In that he selected the people to be shot, and supervised their collection, as well as in that he ordered trenches dug at the execution site, at whose rim the executions took place, Windisch became a murderer, in the determination of the court.  Already in fall 1941, the accused had had about 80 Gypsies arrested and executed by a Latvian execution squad, because, in the view of the accused they were members of an inferior race, and therefore undesirable from a population political viewpoint.  Windisch's defense had urged the Mainzer verdict be struck down, but this was rejected by the highest German court with the explanation, that in review, no legal errors had been found".
• From the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz, 18 Aug 1971:  Mainz (own report) All the audience seats were occupied when yesterday afternoon Landgericht Director Mueller,  foreman of the jury in the the so-called NS-trial,  announced the verdict.  The accused Leopold Windisch (56), who lived in Mainz as a merchant until his arrest, was condemned to life imprisonment for participation in group murder.  The former Stabsleiter and vice-regional Commissar in the Belorussian city Lida had his citizenship revoked for life.  The jury, so [said] the foreman in justifying the verdict, the conviction that Windisch, particularly in the preparations for the annihilation of about 12,000 people in May 1942, was not only an assistent, but accomplice.  In Lida as well as in other places in the area, then occupied by Germany, the accused took part in choosing the victims to be executed.   The jury was also convinced that as second highest representative in the occupied region the accused had also participated in a previous annihilation action in spring 1942.  At that time Jews numbering between 30 and 300 had been shot.  On the other hand, the jury also reached the decision that in spite of strong suspicion, they could not convict the accused on various other counts of acts of annihilation.
• From the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz,  6 May 1971, page 1: "The verdict against the former Stabsleiter of the NSDAP, Leopold Windisch (58), convicted in 1969 by the Mainz Assizes to life imprisonment for murder, has been upheld.  The Burndesgerichtshof has rejected the appeal filed by the defense as groundless.  Windisch was convicted of participation in mass executions in Belorussia after a trial over two years in length.

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