Death Penalty News

Seventy years ago, thousands of Germans gathered in the Bavarian town of Landsberg to demonstrate against the death penalty for Nazi war criminals. The event shows how little awareness of guilt there was among Germans. The people of Landsberg am Lech, some 60 kilometres (35 miles) west of Munich, decided to dress up for the occasion on January 7, 1951. It was a Sunday, and 4,000 people — almost a third of the town’s population — came to the historic market square.  Less than six years after the end of World War II, Germany was recovering and experiencing its so-called economic miracle.  The demonstrators claimed to have a Christian cause: They demanded that the Americans suspend the death penalty for 28 men imprisoned in Landsberg . The sentences had been handed down by the judges of the US military justice system.  And, in Landsberg, rumour had it that the executions were imminent. The director of the European Holocaust Memorial in Landsberg, Manfred Deiler, describes th...

Austria has unveiled plans to "neutralise" the building where Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler was born, by turning it into a police station. The government bought the building under a compulsory purchase order in 2016 after a lengthy dispute. Officials announced it would be turned into a police station in November. Now an Austrian architecture firm will carry out the changes designed to stop the site, in Braunau on the border with Germany, attracting neo-Nazis. "A new chapter will be opened for the future from the birth house of a dictator and mass murderer," Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told reporters on Tuesday. RELATED | Hitler's old house gives Austria a headache The winning company - Marte.Marte, picked from among 12 candidates - submitted a plan which will cosmetically change the façade of the building and give it a new roof.  Work is expected to be completed by 2023 and will cost about €5m ($5.6m; £4.5m). ...