Berlin, Monday.
A remarkable trial is at present being held in the church of the convict prison at Sonnenberg, about sixty miles from Berlin, which has temporarily been turned into a court of justice in order to avoid the necessity of having to convey desperate criminals far from the prison.
The accused are twenty-four prison officials, from chief warders to assistants, and they are charged with fraud, embezzlement, theft and perjury, which offences they are alleged to have committed, in co-operation with some of the criminals under their charge, by stealing and selling at ridiculously low prices former war goods and other articles which had been sent to the prison for conversion purposes by the prisoners.
The latter had been allowed great liberties by a former director of the prison, who has now left, and apparently under his regime prisoners and warders formed a happy united family.
However, after a new director with other ideas of prison discipline had been appointed everything was changed, and eight convicts with life sentences, out of revenge, reported to the authorities the warders who had joined them in their misdeeds,
All the witnesses for the prosecution, in fact, are convicts of Sonnenberg Prison, whereas the defendants are men who have been many years in the prison service.
The Irish Times, January 22nd, 1929.