Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Jewish Documentation Center, announced today that he has tracked down another Nazi war criminal. Wiesenthal, who played a prominent role in locating Adolf Eichmann, said he discovered a former German SS officer who committed war crimes in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II.
He said that Clement Druschke, 62, who is now a tavern keeper in Heidelberg, West Germany, was responsible for the shooting of 45 hostages in 1942 when he was head of the Gestapo police in Jesenice, Yugoslavia. Druschke is also believed responsible for having shot a 16-year-old Yugoslav boy just before the end of the war. He sent several hundred Yugoslavs to German concentration camps where most of them were killed, Wiesenthal said.
Wiesenthal said he located a witness who passed the site of the 1942 massacre almost immediately after the shootings. The witness said he saw Druschke standing near the dead bodies with a pistol in his hand. Wiesenthal said German authorities have started an investigation.
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.
