West Germany has requested Brazil to extradite Franz Paul Stangl, the former commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry here told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today, He said the move was initiated by the chief prosecutor of Dusseldorf.
The spokesman added that, although there is no extradition treaty between Brazil and West Germany, “it is expected that the request will be sympathetically considered by the Government of Brazil.” A request for the extradition of Stangl to Austria had already been made to the Brazilian Government by Austria last week. Stangl, arrested in Sao Palo last Wednesday, after being traced by Simon Wiesenthal, chief of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, was an Austrian policeman before World War II, but his war crimes, it was pointed out here, were committed under Hitler’s rule.
(In Holland, where Mr. Wiesenthal is now visiting a daughter, the Jewish “Nazi tracker” said today that he expected the arrest of another “important Nazi” in South America soon. He said also that he has found that an organization of former war criminals, entitled Action for Comrades, is engaged in efforts to help former Nazis, and that he suspects the organization “had good connections with diplomats in South America.”)
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