Jewish leaders said today that the report by Allan Ryan, Jr., a special assistant in the criminal division of the Justice Department, confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies concealed and utilized the services of Klaus Barbie, the wartime gestapo leader in Lyon, France, revealed a shocking chapter in American history.
Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the report “is a damning indictment of how the American law was violated to protect a notorious war criminal. We trust that those responsible for taking the law into their own hands will be tried and punished.”
Berman applauded President Reagan for “having responded positively to those of us who urged such an investigation” and said that “Now that the truth is out, we must make sure that it cannot — must not — happen again.”
Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said that “the aid, protection and employment given Barbie as detailed” in the Ryan report, “is a shocking revelation of official misconduct. To shield Barbie from justice, to help him escape prosecution for Nazi war crimes, to pay him for spying while protecting him — these actions by the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps make up a record of scandalous behavior by a branch of the government that is totally at odds with the ideals of a nation that prides itself on its commitment to justice and decency.”
Schindler said he was consoled “only by the realization that the Justice Department let the chips fall where they may and had the honesty and courage to reveal unsavory facts that reflect such grave discredit on our country.”
FURTHER INVESTIGATION URGED
Gerald Kraft, president of B’nai B’rith International, denounced those U.S. Army officers who assisted Barbie in his escape from prosecution by France and called for an investigation to learn whether other Nazi war criminals were similarly aided. The report’s confirmation of the Army’s role in shielding Barbie, “raises the question not only about those directly responsible for aiding Barbie but raises a more frightening question about still other Nazis who may have escaped facing justice for their crimes,” Kraft said,
Kenneth Bialkin, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said Ryan’s findings “sadly reveal a Nazi skeleton in America’s closet. The U.S. should make public and take appropriate action against all those who participated in this violation of the American people’s trust. It would be tragic if America and the free world learned no lesson from this shocking and sordid travesty of justice. It must never happen again.”
STUDY FOLLOWED ALLEGATIONS
The 216-page Ryan report and more than 600 pages of supporting evidence, was the culmination of a study of the Barbie case Ryan was asked to undertake last March 15. The study was made after allegations about U.S. complicity in Barbie’s escape cropped up after Barbie was extradited in February from Bolivia to France to face charges of crimes against humanity.
In a special three-part series in the JTA Daily News Bulletin last February, Charles Allen, Jr., an internationally prominent author/journalist who has been investigating Nazi war criminals now living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, revealed that in late 1949 and early 1950 Barbie was aided in his escape from Europe by the Vatican, the U.S. Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) and the International Red Cross.
Allen, in that series, disclosed that Barbie “took the so-called ‘monastery route’ an underground railroad, so to speak, for scores of wanted Nazi war criminals. The route was known to the U.S. Embassy in Rome which did nothing to stem the flow of wanted war criminals from Europe, most of them originating in the American-occupied zone of Germany.”
CLAIM BARBIE VISITED THE U.S.
Allen also reported that according to ABC-TV News network, one Robert Wilson, a self-admitted international jewel thief, knew Barbie in Bolivia where the Nazi war criminal was living under the name of Klaus Altmann. Wilson alleged that Barbie “freely confessed” his war crimes as well as his in-
Allen’s findings were corroborated several days before his disclosures appeared in the Daily News Bulletin by Dr. Erhard Dabringhause, a 65-year-old faculty member of Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich. Dabringhaus served as Barbie’s case officer in the CIC in Germany in 1948. He told NBC-TV News and the Detroit Free Press that Barbie had been secretly employed as an informer by the CIC in 1948 for the then astounding sum of $1,700 a month.
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.
