JEWISH GROUP SEEKS VATICAN PROBE OF NAZI'S ESCAPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120072-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 72
• Publication Date: May 10, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-012
ARTICLE AP EARn.
ON PAGEE
WASHINGTON POST
10. May ? 1984
08R000100120072-1
Jewish Group Seeps Vatican Probe
'of Nazi's Escape
By Thomas OToole
Waahln$ton P Staff WAter
NEW YORK, May 9-A Jewish
scholarly organization based in Cal-
iforpia..asked the Vatican today to
investigate whether the late Cardinal
Ildefonso Schuster, archbishop of
Milan during World War II, helped
an accused Nazi war criminal escape
from Italy to Chile almost 30 years
ago.
Walter Rauff, now _78, a former
Nazi official, is still living in Chile.
"Outside of the infamous Dr. [Jo-
sel Mengele, Walter Rauff is the
most notorious of all the accused
Nazi war criminals still at large to-
day, a man who symbolizes the. Ho-
locaust to millions of Jews," Rabbi
Marvin Hier, dean. of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center at Yeshiva Uni-
versity in Los Angeles, said.
"We believe it is incumbent on
Pope John Paul II to launch a for-
mal inquiry to find out if there was
any connection between Rauffs es-
cape from justice and high Vatican
church officials," Hier? said.
Rauff was a colonel in the Nazi
SS who has been accused of. devel-
oping and directing the mobile gas
vans by which the SS Einsatzgrup-
pen murdered 250,000 Jews in Po-
land and the Soviet Union from
1941 to 1943. Rauff then was trans-
ferred to Milan, where he headed the
SS in northern Italy.
Arrested by U.S. Army counter-
intelligence troops in 1945, Rauff
escaped from the Allied Detention
Center in Rimini in December, 1946,
and allegedly made his way to Rome,
where he hid for almost a year 'and a
half before leaving from Genoa-on a
ship bound for South America.
Rauff and his family eventually set-
tled in Chile.
State Department. and U.S. Army
documents released by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center suggest that
Rauff had numerous meetings and
exchanged letters and even gifts with
` two high-ranking Catholic church
officials while he lived in Milan. One
was Msgr. Don Giuseppe Bicchierai,
who is still living in Milan; the other
was Schuster, who died in 1954.
At the time of his death, the New
York Times said Schuster was "one
of the outstanding churchmen of
Italy who was regarded as a possible
choice" for pope in 1939.
There have been numerous
charges that anticommunist Catholic
priests helped Nazis escape capture
and find refuge after the war. The
charge leveled today, however, is the
first time high-ranking church offi-
cials have been mentioned in the
context of a so-called "Vatican es-
cape route."
The documents released today,
which were acquired through the
Freedom of Information Act, show
that Rauff knew Bicchierai and
Schuster while he was SS leader in
Milan. Bicchierai was Schuster's sec-
retary, the documents show.
The two acted as envoys for .,the
Vatican while Germany and Italy
negotiated secretly with the Allies to
surrender.'The documents also dis-
close that Rauff was involved in
these negotiations and often dis-
cussed prisoner exchanges and re-
leases with Bicchierai and Schuster.
Hier said the documents contain
"no smoking gun," but added, "Let's
find out if there is one."
In a telephone interview, Dr. Eu-
gene Fisher, secretary for Catholic-
Jewish Relations of the National
STAT
Conference of Catholic Bishops, said
the documentation "does not indi-
cate any special intimacy between .
Rauff and Cardinal Schuster outside
of the fact that they arranged pris-
oner exchanges and were involved in
surrender negotiations together." .
"The documentation comes no-
where near to validating the charges.
that have been made," he said.
Meanwhile, the editors of the Na-
tional Catholic Reporter have called
for an independent, interfaith panel
to examine Roman Catholic involve-
ment in the Holocaust. _ .
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120072-1