Congressional Record: July 16, 2001 (Senate)
Page S7679-S7680
NAZI WAR CRIMINALS RESOLUTION
Mr. CORZINE. Madam President, last week I introduced a resolution
that addresses the United States' use of Nazi war criminals after World
War II. The resolution acknowledges the role of the United States in
harboring Nazi fugitives, commends the Nazi War Criminal Interagency
Working Group for serving the public interest by disclosing information
about the Nazis, and calls on other governments to release information
pertaining to the assistance these governments provided to Nazis in the
postwar period.
On July 14, 1934, the Reichstag declared the Nazi Party the only
legitimate political party in Germany. In one fell swoop, political
dissent in Germany was quashed and a tragic series of events was set
into motion--a series of events that led to the genocide of six million
Jews and five million Gypsies, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, political
dissidents, physically and mentally disabled people, and homosexuals.
After World War II, the international community attempted to come to
terms with what, by any measure, was a horrific episode in world
history.
In October 1945, a tribunal was convened in Nuremberg, Germany, to
exact justice against the most nefarious Nazi War Criminals, people who
knowingly and methodically orchestrated the murder of countless
innocent people. Some infamous Nazi war criminals were tried and
convicted elsewhere, including the infamous Adolph Eichmann, who was
found guilty by an Israeli court. Still, many of the perpetrators--war
criminals who heeded the call of the Nazi juggernaut--escaped justice.
Some of those who evaded capture did so with the help of various world
governments, including the United States.
It is natural to ask why the United States would help known Nazi war
criminals avoid punishment. The United States had just spent four years
fighting the Nazis at the cost of thousands of young, courageous
American soldiers. We had just liberated the Nazi death camps,
witnessing firsthand the carnage and degradation exacted by the Nazis
on Jews and others. Despite it all, the United States felt compelled to
hide the very Nazis they had defeated and grant them refuge in the
United States and abroad.
The sad fact is that although we had just finished fighting a war of
enormous proportions, we were entering another war--a cold war that
would last for some 50 years. In fighting this war, the United States
enlisted Nazi fugitives to spy on the Soviet Union.
The extent to which the United States used Nazi war criminals for
intelligence purposes in the postwar years is still being studied. In
January 1999, the President charged the Nazi War Criminal Records
Interagency Working Group with the difficult task of locating,
identifying, cataloguing, and recommending for declassification
thousands of formerly classified documents pertaining to the United
States' association with Nazi war criminals. In addition to an interim
report completed October 1999, in late April 2001, the IWG announced
the release of CIA name files referring to specific Nazi War Criminals.
While there is still work to be done, one thing is clear from these
documents: the United States knowingly utilized Nazi war criminals for
intelligence purposes and,
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in some cases, helped them escape justice.
The American people deserve a full accounting of the decisions that
led to the acceptance of Nazi war criminals as employees of the United
States government. It also is important that the United States work
with other countries to expedite the release of information regarding
the use of Nazi war criminals as intelligence operatives. We need to
learn more about the Holocaust and its aftermath. The international
community must learn the lessons of history, so that never again will
we face this type of evil.
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