A former member of the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) who was responsible for gathering and preparing information on Nazi war criminals in Europe immediately after World War II, said here today that he was “shocked” by a Justice Department report which said CIC officials in Europe had been unaware of the activities of Klaus Barbie when the U.S. hired him for intelligence activities.
Michel Thomas, a Jewish French resistance fighter who was employed by the CIC from 1944-1947, said his responsibilities included setting up “information nets” and finding and apprehending for trial alleged war criminals. He said that while in Munich, working in the CIC office in 1945, he had established an “extensive” file on gestapo officials with profiles and activity reports, including detailed information on the activities and locations of those individuals.
One of those gestapo officials who he maintained a file on was Barbie, the notorious “butcher of Lyon,” Thomas told a press conference at the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Center. “The Barbie report was a short one, but stated that he was wanted by the French as a war criminal and for crimes against humanity,” Thomas said. “Most of the information in those profiles, which I personally prepared, had been obtained during interrogation of captured gestapo officials.”
Because of these existing files in Munich, Thomas said, he was shocked by the Justice Department report issued August 16 in Washington which said the decision to employ Barbie “was a defensible one (which) depends upon the fact that the persons who made those decisions cannot be charged with knowledge that Barbie committed, or likely committed, or was wanted for, war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
The Justice Department study was conducted by Allan Ryan Jr., a special assistant in the criminal division of the Department and the former head of the Office of Special Investigation, responsible for investigating and prosecuting Nazi war criminals living in the United States.
His 218-page report and its more than 600 pages in supporting documents admitted for the first time that U.S. intelligence employed Barbie from 1947 to 1951 and then helped him flee from Germany to South America where he lived until last February when he was returned from Bolivia to France. He currently awaits trial for “crimes against humanity.”
REPORT CALLED ‘MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE’
The Wiesenthal Center, meanwhile, called the Justice Department report “morally unacceptable” and asserted that after discussions with Thomas, found it containing “inaccuracies and omissions.” The Center said it takes “strong exception” to a statement by Ryan in the conclusion of the report which said, “I cannot conclude that those who made the decision to employ and rely on Klaus Barbie ought now to be vilified for the decision.”
The Center, in a prepared statement, said: “The history of the gestapo was and forever will be associated with genocide. To employ an individual whose very organization was dedicated to the mass murder of Jews cannot be defended under any pretext.” Furthermore, the Center described as “morally disgraceful” Ryan’s assertion that “whatever his crimes, he (Barbie) has never been in the same category as Adolph Eichmann … and other SS leaders.”
The Center has called on Congress to establish a bi-partisan, independent inquiry into the “entire issue of all U.S. utilization of Nazi war criminals after World War II.” The request for a congressional inquiry has received the support of California Democratic Representatives Mel Levine and Howard Berman.
The Center released at the press conference a packet of documents, some of them marked confidential, supporting Thomas’ statements that he was employed by the CIC and his particular responsibilities. He emigrated to the United States after his service with the CIC and lives in New York State. His family died at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
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.
