Dr. Wise Asks for Investigation of Commutation of Koch’s Sentence.

Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, today appealed to Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal to investigate the commutation of the life sentence imposed by an American military court against Ilse Koch to four years imprisonment.

At the same time, Dr. Wise expressed the alarm of the World Jewish Congress that the Ilse Koch case further confirms the trend in the U.S. zone of Germany toward discontinuing any vigorous campaign against Nazi war criminals. “Such trends,” said Dr. Wise, “favor those who murdered and exterminated millions of Jews and other peoples and lend the greatest encouragement to the recrudescence and revival of the forces of darkness in Germany and render virtually impossible the imperative tasks of democratization and degasification.”