50 of those and held them in a number of local hotels. The best-known of these massacres was that of the sixteen prisoners held at the Hotel Meina, at Meina. On 19 September the involved officers of the division held a meeting in which it was decided to shoot the Jewish men, women and children and to sink their bodies into the lake. The Jewish prisoners were taken in small groups from their hotels at night on 22 and 23 September and taken to a local forest where they were shot. The bodies were then placed in sacks filled with stones, rowed out in boats and sunk in the lake. A number of other Jewish prisoners were murdered and then buried in mass graves. Only very few of the prisoners escaped, with one family surviving because of their Turkish passports and assistance from the Turkish consul who arranged passage to Switzerland for them. Apart from the sixteen murders at Meina on 22 and 23 September, fourteen Jews were killed at Baveno between 14 and 22 September, two at Pian Di Nava, near Premeno, on 15 September and nine at Arona, three at Mergozzo and two at Orta San Giulio on 16 September. The following day, 17 September, four Jews were killed at Stresa. In October 1943, members of the same battalion murdered the Jewish banker Ettore Ovazza and three of his family members at Intra, near Verbania, also on the Lake Maggiore, and buried the bodies. The exact number of victims varies, but at least 50 Greek and Italian Jews were murdered by the division in September and October 1943 during the Lake Maggiore massacres, and as many as 56 victims are stated in what has been described as the first German massacre of Jews in Italy during World War II. Aftermath The case received international attention after one of the bodies washed ashore in Switzerland and the case was reported in a local Swiss newspaper. This forced an investigation into the events by two judges of the Leibstandarte division. While members of the division were interviewed no outcome has been recorded and the division was soon moved back to the Eastern Front. Trials Five members of the Leibstandarte, Hans Krüger, Herbert Schnelle, Hans Roehwer, Oskar Schultz and Ludwig Leithe, were charged by a court in Osnabrück in 1968 with 22 cases of murder. The court found the first three