A total of 69 members of the West German Foreign Ministry are listed as having served as diplomats under Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister, in a brochure issued here today by the Association of Persons Persecuted by the Nazis. The organization is described here as leftist in its orientation.
The brochure charged also that, of 70 West German embassies, 51 are directed by former Nazi diplomats, and that more than 80 percent of the higher rank civil servants in the Foreign Ministry served under von Ribbentrop.
The brochure named specifically, among others. Under Secretary Herbert Dittman, charging he was seriously implicated in the deportations of Jews during the Nazi regime; Dr. Heinz Treutzschler von Falkenstein, head of the ministry’s cultural section, who is accused of having been a co-author of Nazi propaganda literature; Hasso von Etzdorf, head of the Section West, who in 1938 was a high ranking Sturm Abteiling (SA) leader; and Frau Susanne Simonis, West German consul in Glasgow, who is accused of having been a functionary of the Nazi Women’s Association.
The brochure also publishes what it describes as excerpts from an article allegedly written by Dr. Fritz Schaeffer, West German Minister of Justice, in the Regensburger Anzeiger on May 4, 1933. The citation reads: “The task to which Adolf Hitler, as rebuilders of the Reich, has been called upon is so great that it would be necessary to awaken and utilize all forces so that, for the sake of Germany, the chancellor’s gigantic task will be successful.”
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.
