Dr. Hans Globke, State Secretary to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, asserted today he had pretended to be friendly to the Nazis and had been able to prevent even more drastic anti-Jewish legislation by remaining in office during the Nazi regime.
Dr. Globke; who has been under heavy fire for some time on charges of participating in the Nazi anti-Jewish campaign, made the statement in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in defending his decision to stay in the Ministry of the Interior after the Nazis seized power in 1933.
Discussing charges that his commentary to the Nuremberg laws had worsened their application to the Jews, Dr. Globke said that he was then aware that his commentary might be misinterpreted later and added “If I had foreseen the later development of the Jewish question, I would not have written the commentary.” He insisted however, that the commentary had softened some of the harsher Nazi measures.
He also argued that he had been able to help many persons persecuted by the Nazis while serving in the Interior Ministry and that he had during that time maintained close connections with many clergymen and leaders of the resistance movement.
He emphatically rejected charges, made by Dr. Max Mertens, the former Nazi war administrator in occupied Greece, that he had intervened to prevent the liberation of 10,000 Jewish men, women and children from Salonika. He also told the Hamburg newspaper, Die Welt, that he was denying outright recent allegations that, as an official in the Nazi Government, he had been in touch with Adolf Eichmann.
Dr. Fritz Bauer, the Attorney General of Hesse, said here today that the refusal of Eichmann to testify to the allegation that Dr. Globke had prevented the liberation of the 10,000 Greek Jews ended the connection of an investigation of the charge by his office. He added that he had turned over the investigation against Dr. Globke to the prosecution office in Bonn.
Dr. Bauer said Eichmann had refused, on advice of his counsel, Dr. Robert Servatius, to answer the question in his prison cell about Dr. Globke.
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.
