Trial 1

The material below is translated from reports in the newspapers Wiesbadner Kurier and Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz which were kindly sent me by Dr. Hans Schade of the Verlaggruppe Rhein-Main. My translations are posted here with his generous permission. Persons wishing to quote this material for any use other than educational or non-commercial should apply to the Verlaggruppe Rhein-Main for permission.
NOTE: the term I translated as "war crimes" below is "Judenmord" in the original articles. "Judenmord" literally means "murder of Jews", but there's no equally graphic English equivalent that reads as smoothly as the more euphemistic "war crimes".

From the Wiesbadener Kurier, 21 Feb. 1968: "Egon Geis (Frankfurt), as defense attorney at the Mainz assizes for a former NS-functionary alleged of murder, has brought charges of perjury against the German Consul in New York, Schacco von Estorff (46). As official of the German General Consulate in New York, von Estorff had, as of record, been present at the deposition of witnesses, who were to have testified in 1965 about mass executions in Belorussia. In reality, stated Geis, the Consul had been at the proceedings, by his own testimony, only at the beginning and reading and signing the record. On the witness stand in Mainz, von Estorff referred to the fact that the Foreign Office in Bonn had specifically permitted this deposition procedure. The General Consulate considered itself an "extended arm of the State Prosecutor's Office". Because of personnel shortages in his office, he himself had not been in a position to be able to participate in the entire course of the deposition of witnesses. Leopold Windisch (54) and Rudolf Werner (60) are defending themselves as former functionaries of the German Regional Commissariat in Lida against allegations they participated in mass shootings of Jews and Gypsies".

Procedural problems

From the Wiesbadener Kurier, 28 Jun 1968: "27. June. The "Bugging Games" of Landgericht president van de Sand has put into question the continuation of the Mainz war crimes trial. The defense team of Windisch and Werner, former members of the Regional Commissariat in Lida (Belarus), accused of murder and accessory to murder, have applied for declaration of all the professional jurors of the Landgericht district Mainz as partial. The Oberlandesgericht in Koblenz must rule on this motion by Friday, or a mistrial will be declared. The controversy surrounds a listening device that the Landgericht president - who, however, describes his actions as "purely frivolous" - had installed in the court toom during the Christmas vacation, in order to be able to follow the proceedings in his office.
From the Wiesbadener Kurier, 3 July 1968 "2 July. The professional jurors of the Mainz Assizes in the war crimes trial of the two former national socialist functionaries Werner and Windisch desire to have their impartiality validated in the Bugging Affair. As stated by the president of the jury, Amtsgerichtsrat Opitz, a substitute judiciary committee should rule whether the professional jurors knew about the listening device connecting the court room and the office of the Landgericht president, and decided not to inform the defendants and their defense attorneys of the event.

Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz,

11 July 1968

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