The German Social Democratic Party today demanded a full-scale investigation into the release and subsequent flight of Franz Rademacher, wartime head of the Nazi Office of Jewish Affairs, who was convicted of complicity in the murder of 1,300 Yugoslav Jews.
Rademacher was convicted last March and sentenced to three years and five months’ imprisonment. He appealed the decision to a higher court which last month granted him a new trial and ordered his provisional release pending the new trial.
The Social Democrats said today that the affair had assumed the “importance of a national scandal.” They also pointed out that Rademacher was released on the very day that the late Philip Auerbach committed suicide after his conviction on charges of fraud in office in a trial which is currently under investigation by a Bavarian parliamentary commission.
The judge who presided over the Rademacher appeal and was responsible for his release has denied that the Nazi fied the country, as is generally assumed here.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
