Investigating America's Postwar Complicity with Nazi War Criminals
HOLTZMAN, ELIZABETH
Investigating America's Nazi War Postwar Complicity with Criminals Between 1943 and 1949, the London-based Allied War Crimes Commission investigated allegations of Axis-power war crimes and...
...The U.S...
...collaboration with Nazis, is unacceptable...
...there can be no reason not to do the same for government dealings with Nazis...
...government agreed to gather information from abroad and kfegan actions to expel several Nazi war criminals...
...For the sake of our future—for the sake of our conscience—this story must be told...
...As a result of public outrage, the United States has now changed its position, advocating the release of files to scholars and governments, but not to the public at large...
...rocket program (see "Arthur Rudolph of Dora and NASA," April 1987...
...With continued pressure on the United States and other governments, there is some hope that these files will be opened so that all the facts can come out...
...In the case of Karl Linnas, the Estonian concentration camp official finally deported to the Soviet Union, there were...
...One year later, at my insistence, a special Nazi-hunting unit was created in the Justice Department, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI...
...This equivocation on the part of the American government is disgraceful...
...government agencies worked with Nazis abroad and even brought some of them to this country...
...In 1974, as a member of Congress, I blew the whistle on this problem...
...16 separate legal proceedings, lasting almost eight years...
...Valerian Trifa, a member of the Rumanian Iron Guard who ordered the killing of Jews, was deported...
...As is now known, at the end of World War [I the United Slates embarked on a secret policy of collaborating with Nazi war criminals...
...Thus, if a Nazi war criminal is a U S. citizen, the government must first go to the federal court to remove his citizenship Once that is done and appeals are exhausted, the government must go to immigration court, again with opportunity for appeals, before the person can be deported...
...These delays are dangerous and unnecessary...
...Today there are 26 cases pending against accused Nazi war criminals across the nation, and over 500 open investigations...
...Despite his Nazi crimes, Rudolph was brought to the United States and given a high post in the U.S...
...policy toward Nazi war criminals: we must speed up the process of deporting Nazi murderers from this country...
...In one case, a CIA official lied in a congressional hearing in order to cover up the agency's role in bringing Nazis to America...
...At present, deportation procedures are labyrinthine and redundant...
...The administration's UN delegation finally agreed that the War Crimes Commission files should be open—but only to scholars and governments, not to the public, and only after having been shamed into reversing its position...
...8...
...The attorney general finally decided to deport Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union, but only after disgracefully attempting to shuttle the war criminal off to Panama...
...The law should be changed so that the federal court that revokes citizenship can, in the same proceeding, order deportation as well...
...UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar ruled, incredibly, that only the 17 member nations of the now-defunct commission could decide on this request...
...In March 1987, they decided 16 to 1 not to release the files to the public...
...After sustained pressure, the U.S...
...Consequently, this country became a haven for many of Hitler's henchmen...
...government...
...Despite repeated allegations of atrocities committed by these former Nazis living and working here, U.S...
...Most of the charges were never even seriously investigated, and in some cases the U.S government employed Nazi war criminals, knowing of the allegations against them...
...Our government originally justified its participation in this cover-up on Waldheim and other suspected war criminals with the claim that il acted "in the interest of justice...
...Since that time, the United States has expelled 14 Nazis, including some of the most heinous criminals...
...The CIA secretly brought to the United States Gustav Hilger, a deputy in Hitler's foreign ministry who worked with the infamous Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units that murdered 1.5 million Jews in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe...
...Other cases have taken even longer...
...crimes to do so—finally spiriting him away to sanctuary in South America...
...But the initial U.S...
...collaboration with Nazi war criminals have been thwarted by a refusal on the part of government agencies—including the CIA and the Department of Defense—to provide full information about their activities...
...collaboration with Nazis involved Arthur Rudolph, chief operations officer of a slave labor rocket camp, where tens of thousands of Europeans were worked to death...
...Arthur Rudolph was forced to leave the country...
...Finally, the Reagan administration should stop equivocating...
...In addition, an estimated 10,000 Nazi war criminals came here on their own after the war...
...to spy on the French and others U.S...
...Another notorious case of U.S...
...officials, with virtually no exceptions, refused to take any action...
...army officials even shielded Barbie from trial in France—committing U.S...
...As part of our Cold War strategy, U.S...
...vole and the explanation Tor it surprised only those unfamiliar with the history of our government's past support for some Nazi war criminals and its long-term inaction on bringing others to justice...
...The Holocaust survivors who testify in such proceedings are elderly and sometimes in failing health The accused war criminals themselves are aging, and in several cases the defendants have died before they could be brought to justice...
...On the one hand, President Reagan laid a wreath on the graves of SS soldiers at Bitburg and called them victims of the Holocaust, and on the other hand, the Justice Department laudably banned Kurt Waldheim from our shores...
...But even with legal avenues to deportation now available, the full story of this country's shameful postwar relations with Nazi war criminals remains untold...
...In 1978, Congress passed legislation I wrote, explicitly authorizing the deportation of Nazi war criminals from this country...
...Investigating America's Nazi War Postwar Complicity with Criminals Between 1943 and 1949, the London-based Allied War Crimes Commission investigated allegations of Axis-power war crimes and amassed nearly 37,000 files on suspected war criminals...
...Among the nations that agreed that the files should remain locked up and closed to public scrutiny was the United States...
...When the commission disbanded, its files were turned over to the United Nations, which held them in secret...
...Nearly 40 years later, after it was revealed that these files included one on Kurt Waldheim, Israel submitted a request to open his file, and the rest of the files, to the public...
...Our immigration laws stipulate that denaturalization and deportation orders can be obtained only in two separate proceedings, even though both involve essentially identical arguments, allegations and evidence...
...This change would not involve any loss of due process but would greatly expedite the removal of Nazis from our country by eliminating years of litigation...
...Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyons," was hired by the U.S...
...At a minimum, there are seven layers of judicial proceedings before a Nazi war criminal can be stripped of his American citizenship and deported...
...government set up a special commission to examine the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II...
...Anything less than a consistent and committed effort to see Nazi war criminals brought to justice, and to disclose all the facts surrounding postwar U.S...
...Investigations by the Congress and by the General Accounting Office into U.S...
...Congress should pass a bill creating a special commission with subpoena power to investigate how and why Nazi war criminals got here, and why they were permitted to remain virtually undisturbed until 1974...
...Karl Linnas, chief of an Estonian concentration camp, was deported...
...Barbie was only one of many Nazi war criminals helped and protected by the U.S...
...Another crucial reform is needed in U.S...
Vol. 12 • December 1987 • No. 9
