Kohl, a correspondent for Süddeutsche Zeitung,
recounts with the cadence of a Greek tragedy a case of perverted justice in Nazi Germany. The case, made famous by the film Judgment at Nuremberg
(with Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster), involved the friendship between Irene Scheffler, a pretty 22-year-old Christian photographer, and 60-year-old Leo Katzenberger—a successful Jewish entrepreneur, and colleague of Irene's father, who asked him to keep an eye on Irene in Nuremberg—is captured in harrowing detail. Kohl describes how neighbors in Katzenberger's building, where he had found Irene an apartment, spied on her. They concluded, without any evidence, that Katzenberger's visits to Irene signaled an affair. The neighbors' malevolence resulted in Katzenberger's 1942 trial and conviction for racial offenses. He was sentenced to death by Judge Oswald Rothaug, motivated, as Kohl reveals, by virulent anti-Semitism and ruthless ambition. At Rothaug's postwar trial in Nuremberg, Irene endured a cruel cross-examination by Rothaug's defense attorney, but Rothaug was sentenced to life imprisonment; his sentence was commuted, however, and he was released on probation in 1956. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Sept. 19)
Forecast:
Given the familiarity of these events from
Judgment at Nuremberg, this could reach beyond the usual readers of Holocaust literature.
