Four prominent Polish Americans have urged U.S. Attorney General William French Smith to support continued efforts by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) to bring to justice Nazi war criminals residing in the United States.
A letter signed by Rev. Leanard Chrobot, of the Polish American Congress; Dr. Thaddeus Gromada, Secretary-General of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences; Jan Nowak, former director of the Polish Section, Radio Free Europe, and Rev. John Pawilkowski, Prof. at Catholic Theological Union, was made public today by the American Jewish Committee, which has joined with Polish-American groups in the formation of the Polish American-Jewish American Task Force.
The four identified themselves as “Polish ethnic leaders” who were “painfully aware of how the Nazi efforts brutalized millions of Jews, Poles and others.”
In their letter to Smith, the four Polish Americans said that they “firmly support continued funding of this office at a level appropriate for the thorough examination of all pending and suspected cases” and urged that the Justice Department make “every effort to allay the fears of some in the ethnic communities that the OSI will extend its mandate beyond the search for Nazi war criminals and scrupulously protect the civil rights of all who might be charged.”
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.
