The recent clemency actions by U.S. authorities in Germany, resulting in commutation of sentences of 89 Nazi war criminals, represent a “mistaken tenderness toward the perpetrators of mass murder and other heinous crimes against humanity and democratic society,” major Jewish organizations declared today in a letter to Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
The letter was released to the press by the National Community Relations Advisory Council, the coordinating body for the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans of the United States, Union of American Hebrew Congregations and 27 local Jewish community councils throughout the country.
“In granting these commutations,” the Jewish organizations wrote, “expediency appears to have been a factor in seeking the approbation of those German elements whose devotion to democracy is Justifiably suspect.” The commutations are “dangerous,” the latter to Secretary Acheson says, in that they “tend to throw into doubt the entire basis procedure, and judgments of the 12 trials conducted by six United States Military Tribunals at Nuremberg.”
Declaring that the commutations were “obviously intended to placate German opinion in the effort to make Western Germany a bulwark against the real threat of Soviet aggression,” the letter warned that such a policy of “expediency” does not “accomplish its purpose and usually leads to other evils.” The United States “cannot safely copy the Soviet Union’s technique of currying favor with former Nazi leaders,” the Jewish groups added.
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