Conservative Premier Defends Nazi-Era Judge

"Hans Filbinger was not a National Socialist," said Günther Oettinger, the Christian Democratic premier of the state of Baden-Württemberg, at the service on Wednesday in Freiburg.

Filbinger, Baden-Württemberg's premier from 1966-1978, died on April 1 at the age of 93. He had been a military judge under the Nazis and was allegedly responsible for proclaiming death sentences even after Germany's World War II capitulation. The Christian Democrat resigned from office after a 1978 play by Rolf Hochhuth revealed that he had been involved in sentencing German soldiers to death.

"There is no sentence from Hans Filbinger due to which someone lost his life," Oettinger said. "He didn't have the power to make decisions nor the freedom to make decisions that his critics allege."

Oettinger said Filbinger was an opponent of the Nazis but was forced to bow to the pressures of the times.

"Sadistic Nazi"

"I find the comment atrocious and it also conveys the wrong message," responded Dieter Graumann, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in an interview with German news agency dpa. "It glosses over the actual guilt of a man like Hans Filbinger."

Graumann said it was a fact that Filbinger had been involved in sentencing people to death and that he had indeed supported the Nazi regime.

"Up to the last moment, he didn't recognize that and apparently his successor doesn't either," Graumann said.

Playwright and author Hochhuth deemed Oettinger's comments a "barefaced fabrication" and said it had been proven that Filbinger personally killed a man in British captivity, because the judge was a "sadistic Nazi."