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Friday May 18, 2007

Nuremberg lawyer dies at 93

Abe Weissbrodt, an attorney whose career included work at the Nuremberg war crime trials, died of pneumonia in a Washington, D.C., hospital April 16, at age 93.

The Washington Post reported that Weissbrodt, born in the Bronx, N.Y., lost his father while in his teens and supported the family, putting himself and an older brother through Columbia Law School and a sister through teaching college. After graduating in 1938, Weissbrodt joined the Army Air Corps, where he won four Bronze Stars.

From 1946 to 1951, as an attorney for the U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments, he got confessions from I.G. Farben executives about the company’s manufacture and provision of Zyklon B for the Nazi gas chambers. He also prosecuted the Bosch Corp., a German producer of engine parts.

In 1951, Weissbrodt started a law firm with his brother that represented Native American tribes in their land appropriation suits against the government. He won hundreds of millions of dollars for the Omaha, Winnebago and Cherokawa tribes and others, the Post reported, and was made an honorary chief by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon.

Weissbrodt’s early passion was basketball, and he was inducted into the City University of New York’s athletic Hall of Fame. — jta

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