NazisGustav Richter, a former SS official who had a role in sending Rumanian Jews to death camps, was sentenced to four years imprisonment by a court in Frankenthal yesterday but was immediately set free on grounds that he had served longer prison terms in Soviet jails after the war.

Richter, 69, was a consultant on Jewish affairs at SS headquarters in Bucharest in 1942. In that capacity he pressured the government to include Rumanian Jews who lived in France at the time in the “final solution.” At his insistence, the Rumanian authorities took the necessary legal measures to have Rumanian Jews in France sent a Auschwitz. According to the prosecution, 646 Jews were included in that group. Richter was found guilty of complicity in the murders of those who perished.