NAZIS WHO ARE ALIVE AND WELL MAY FINALLY BE LIVING IN FEAR
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00965R000100550009-5
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
January 5, 2012
Sequence Number:
9
Case Number:
Publication Date:
March 3, 1985
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
File:
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
CIA-RDP90-00965R000100550009-5.pdf | 122.25 KB |
Body:
ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100550009-5
r
NEW YORK TIMES
3 March, 1985
Nazis Who Are I
Alive and Well ,
May Finally Be Living in FearBy RALPH BLUMENTHAL Special Investigations to study any possible involvement
Over the years, he has been reported in a lot of
places, including Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bo.
Livia, Peru, West Germany, Austria, Portugal, Miami
and even Mount Kisco, N.Y. As the 40th anniversary of
V-E day nears, Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz
death camp doctor, is presumably alive at the age of 73,
and, with a $1.4 million price on his head, is the center of
a growing international clamor that erupted anew in
Congress last week.
The whereabouts of Dr. Mengele is overshadowed by
even more troubling questions. For years, long after
'their names became symbols for evil, he and other long-
time fugitive Nazi war criminals like Adolf Eichr: ann
and Klaus Barbie lived not underground but openly and
unmolested in cities and towns where they were well
known to the police and populace, including members bf
.the Jewish community.
From 1945, when he fled Auschwitz, until 1949, Dr.
'Mengele is believed to have lived in his home town of
Gunzberg in Bavaria, where his family operated the
Mengele farm machinery factory. For a time in the
1950's, according to Serge Klarsfeld, a French lawyer
and Holocaust archivist, Dr. Mengele lived under his own
name in Buenos Aires, a city with a large, If nervous,
Jewish community. In Paraguay in the 1970's reports
that Dr. Mengele was heavily involved in illegal narcot-
i skin reached the attention of the Central Intel-
ligence Agency, according to censo agency docu-
mots released last Elek two e u c .n Senators,
Alfonse M. D'Amato o New York and Arlen Specter of
Similarly, Adolf Eichmanm, before his 1960 seizure
and subsequent execution by the- Israelis for master-
minding the "final solution" for the Jews, lived openly in-
Argentina, barely concealing the identity of his child at
school as "Klemeat-Eichmann," Mr. Klarsfeld said.
Klaus Barbie, for at least 10 years until his extradi-
tion from Bolivia to France in 1982, was a prominent Gov-
ernment confidant and frequenter of the cafes of La Paz.
He is scheduled to stand trial later this year in Lyons for
crimes against humanity, though not for one he is widely
accused of: the torture-murder of France's greatest
resistance hero, Jean Moulin.
Alois Brunner, an Eichmann deputy who arranged
the deportation deaths of Jews from Salonika, Vienna
and Berlin, continues to live today as "George Fischer"
in Damascus, according to Mr. Klarsfeld, who has been
pressing for his extradition to West Germany.
And Andrija Artukovic, former Interior Minister of
the Nazi puppet state of Croatia, has lived in Seal Beach
near Los Angeles since 1948 when he entered the country
illegally under a false name. A court is hearing an extra-
dition request by Yugoslavia for his involvement in the
killing of up to 750,000 Jews, Serbs and gypsies.
For political and other reasons, th e climate has
clearly shifted. In Washington last week, the re ease o
the C.I.A. documents on Dr. Menge le drew considers e
press attention, as did a h the week before by Sena-
or Spector 's subcommittee on Juvenile justice which ex-
ercis jurisdiction apparently because of the Nazi doc-
tor's experiments on young twins.
Outgoing Attorney General William French Smith
also recently directed the Justice Department's Office of
by the United States in Dr. Mengele's flight from justice,
an inquiry similar to one It conducted into the Barbie
case in 1983. The Army announced its own inquiry.
A former member of the special investigations of-
fice, John J. Loftus, a Boston lawyer, released declassi-
fied Army documents that he said showed American in-
telligence efforts to join forces with a
group of Byelorussian Nazi collabo-
rators let into the United States after
World War II. And the General Ac-.
counting Office is preparing a report
for Congress on the Government's
handling of cases involving suspected
war criminals who entered the coun-
try illegally after the war.
Substantially the same informa-
tion on German war criminals has
been available for decades. Why the
upsurge of interest?
According to Allan A. Ryan, Jr.,
former director of the special investi-
gations office and a Washington law-
yer who has written a book on war
criminals in America, the 1970's
marked the end of a long period of re-
luctance to deal with issues of the
Holocaust, the killing of six million
Jews by the Germans and their col-
laborators.
"There was a reawakening of in-
terest - same would call it a reawak-
Pnina of conscience - in the Holo-
caust," he wrote last year in his book, "Quiet Neighbors:
Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America." "A quar-
ter century after the war ended," he continued, "a cur-
tain of silence lifted, not least in America. No single
event was responsible. It was the coming of age of a new
generation, a generation that had not lived through the
war and had pressing questions for those who had."
In Paris, Mr. Klarsfeld had a
similar explanation. "When the Jews
came back, they were ashamed to
say they had been deported," he said.
"Today, to have been a hero Is less
important than to have been witness
to this phenomenon. With the passing
of time the importance of the Holo-
caust is growing, and questions of the
fate of these Nazi criminals are grow-
ing with it."
To some extent, Mr. Klarsfeld
said, the reawakening is a response
to efforts by neo-Nazis and historical
revisionists to dismiss the Holocaust
as a Jewish myth. As such, he said,
their charges have served to stimu-
late counterefforts to document
every aspect of the genocide. He is
working on a large book on every
aspect of the construction of the gas
chambers.
"In a century, children may ask,
'What exactly were the gas cham-
f `err?' " he said. "Thanks to our ene-
m1BC- WP. Will he AhlP to tP.11 thorn "
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100550009-5