Accused Nazi war criminal Josef Schwammberger, held responsible for the killings of at least 5,000 Jews, was handed over to West German authorities Wednesday by Argentina.
Schwammberger, 78, accompanied by a prosecutor from Stuttgart, West Germany, boarded a plane in Buenos Aires Wednesday afternoon for his extradition to West Germany.
The former commandant of the Przemysl and Mielec concentration camps in Poland is to stand trial in August in Stuttgart for the murder in 1943-44 of at least 5,000 Jews.
Schwammberger was arrested in 1945 in Innsbruck, Austria, where he confessed to killing 35 Jews by shooting them in the back of the neck at point-blank range.
He escaped two years later from an Austrian prison and made his way to Argentina, possibly with the help of the Odessa organization of escaped Nazis. He became a citizen in 1965.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called Schwammberger “one of the most notorious “hands-on” murderers in the Nazi period.
“The fact that there are in excess of 50 surviving eyewitnesses who saw him commit murder is an indication of how many people he killed,” Cooper said.
“This marks the first time a Nazi war criminal has been extradited from Argentina,” noted Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which assisted West German authorities by locating many eyewitnesses.
Hundreds of Nazis are believed to have found safe haven in Argentina after World War II, often blending in with the large German population there.
‘IMPORTANT SYMBOLIC STATEMENT’
The Argentine Supreme Court in March upheld the West German extradition order, which was filed in 1973 by a court in Stuttgart.
Schwammberger’s extradition “is an important symbolic statement by Argentina to itself,” Cooper said. “This could only happen in a democratic Argentina.”
Schwammberger was arrested in November 1987 in rural Cordoba province, where he worked in a civil service job under his own name. His arrest came a month after the Wiesenthal Center called Schwammberger its “most wanted” Nazi war criminal and began circulating his photograph in the Argentine news media.
When caught, he expressed surprise at how long it had taken Argentine authorities to find him.
Schwammberger’s trial will be more important than his expected life prison sentence, Cooper said.
“This is a time when young people in Germany, especially in East Germany, need to know what Nazism was all about,” Cooper said. “Schwammberger’s trial will go a long way to educate them about the Nazi period.”
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