NAZI-HUNTERS PICK NEW TOP TARGETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404200004-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404200004-9
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ON PAGE 26 June 1985
Nazi-Hunters Pick New Top Targets
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
-With Josef Mengele now widely ac-
knowledged to be dead, leading Nazi-
huoters stave been reassessing their
priorities while primarily blaming
West Germany for the failure to cap.
ture and try the death camp doctor.
They named Alois Brunner, a former
deputy of Adolf Eichmann reported liv-
tng in Syria, and Walter Kutsch ann,
a lot met Gestapo leader recently seen
in 'Argentina, as among their top new
targets.
hesitated to rank the wanted.
"Jewish blood doesn't go from 1 to 10,"
said Elliot Weller, director of the Anti-
Defamation League's task force on
Nazi war criminals.
Some admitted embarrassment at
having placed Dr. Mengele for so long
in Paraguay when, it now appears, he
lived almost constantly in Brazil from
1961 until his drowning in 1979. The
Brazilian police and foreign experts an-
nounced last Friday that a skeleton ex-
humed near Sao Paulo this month was
unquestionably that of Dr. Mengele.
Governments Are Blamed
But others maintained it was not a
failure of the private Nazi-hunters but
of governments, particularly West
Germany's. And they claimed that
their growing pressure may have
helped-bring he long-open case to its
sudden end.
"Jlecause we pushed this case, there
was a conclusion," said Serge Gars-
fold, a Paris lawyer whose wife, Bette,
charged in Asuncion last month that
President Alfredo Stroessner of Para-
gbay was protecting Dr. Mengele.
"Not every shot can be a good shot,"
said Simon Wiesenthal, whose Vienna-
based documentation center collects
information on war criminals and who
had tracked Dr. Mengele for more than
20-years.
Mr. Wiesenthal - who last month an-
nounced a reported sighting of Dr.
Mengele in Capitan Miranda, Para-
guay, in 1964 - said in a telephone in-
terview that he may have been sup-
piled with deliberately false "disinfor.
mation" on some occasions.
in Sao Paulo who later claimed he had
been misunderstood.
"The Mengele case is only one of
many cases," he said. "For the people
who followed only one case, they should
be embarrassed."
He said he had helped find two other
major war criminals around Sae
Paulo: Franz Stangl, the former com-
mandant of the Treblinka death cam
who was extradited to West Germany
in 1967 and died three years later while
serving a life sentence; and Gustav
Franz Wagner, former deputy com-
mandant of the Sobibor death camp,
who died amid extradition p
in 1980. With Dr. Mengele, he said, the
three found in Sao Paulo accounted for
the deaths of nearly 1.7 million people,
or nearly one-third of the victims of the
Holocaust.
Mr. Wiesenthal also said that as far
back as 1963 he had learned of contacts
between Dr. Mengele in South America
and Hans Sedlmeier, a manager of the
Mengele family farm machinery facos
tory in Giinzburg, West Germany, andi
had )Sassed the information and subee.
quent tips to the Frankfurt prosecu-
tor's office.
"When the prosecutor is not observ-
ing Sedlmeier, it's not my guilt," he
said.
West German officials said it was
while searching Mr. Sedlmeier's house
on May 31 that they found letters of Dr.
Mengele and other documents that led
them to Sao Paulo.
Rabbi Marvin Hier. dean of the
Simon Wiesenthal enter for Holocaust
es tau Angela, Los ac mow a ed
come of the en e e case. But he said
it just shows you at without re-
jsourc- es m ]or mte gene aaencier
ancimovernments involved. that's what
Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Panama
and the United States in efforts to find
Dr. Mengele. But he said he had no di-
rect answer to the question of why the
authorities had not searched the Sedl-
meier house long ago or monitored
mail of the Mengele family in Gdnz-
burg.
'Right Under Their Noses'
"Why blame the Israelis?" said Mr.
Wells of the Anti-Defamation League.
"It was the task of the West Germans
- it was right under their noses." In
fact, he said, the Israelis had closely
missed capturing Dr. Mengele along
with Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1980.
Mr. Klarsfeld in Paris said of the
West Germans, "They were never seri-
ous." He commended the sincerity of
the Frankfurt prosecutor, Ham-Eber-
hard Klein, but said, "He couldn't do
much; 'he didn't want to take the re-
sponsibility to go into houses and make
surprise investigations."
He said that some time ago he pro-
vided the prosecutor with the Amer-
ican Express card number of Rolf Mena
gale, Dr. Mengele's son, in an effort to
study his travels but that he never
knew what, if anything, had been done
with the information.
Mr. Klarsfeld said he felt no embar-
rassment over his and his wife's long
focus on Paraguay as Dr. Mengele's
likely sanctuary. "It's obvious they
protected him completely," he said of
the Stroessner regime. "It's natural to
believe he was there."
STAT
'One of Many Cases'
In another instance, in which he
stated - incorrectly - that one of the
families that sheltered Dr. Mengele in
Brazil was Jewish, Mr. Wiesenthal said
the information had come from a rabbi
Mr. Klarsfeld said he believed that
the cancellation of President Stroess-
ner's visit to West Germany last month
had something to do with the disclosure
of Dr. Mengele's death. The lawyer
said he thought the Paraguayan leader
had known of the Nazi doctor's death
and urged the family to have it made
public to spare him further bad publici-
na.
11 nos West Germany's effort was just ty.
public relations," he said, "and Amer- Judicial sources in Paraguay, mean-
ica and Israel just weren't interested." while, said Mrs. Klarsfeld would face
Officials of the Justice Department's charges of slandering President
Office of Special Investigations, which Stroessner.
joined the Mengele hunt this year, were
out of the office and unreachable yes-
terday.
A spokesman for the West German
Embassy in Washington, Peter Mende,
said that his Government over the
years had contacted Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404200004-9