Buchenwald Physician, Arrested for Killing Jews, Seeks Asylum in Egypt

Dr. Hans Eisele, former Buchenwald concentration camp doctor who fled Germany to escape trial by a German court for the murder of at least 200 Jews during his period of service as a physician at the Nazi death camp, claimed political asylum from the United Arab Republic today.

Dr. Eisele, arrested in Cairo this week-end on an international police request for his extradition to Germany, claimed that he was a victim of persecution by the Jews who “are using” his case for “political ends.” The reports of Dr. Eisele’s plea were received by news services here. The ex-Nazi doctor is seeking legal aid from fellow former Nazis who are making their home in Cairo and have positions of importance in the Egyptian service.

It was understood here that Dr. Eisele was due to be interrogated officially today by Cairo police and that the Ministry of the Interior of Egypt would decide two questions simultaneously: the request for his extradiction, and his plea for political asylum.

(In London it was reported today that the international police organization known officially as Interpol had forwarded documents pertaining to Dr. Eisele to Cairo and expected his extradition in a matter of days.)

It was learned here, meanwhile, that the Nazi physician had been “denazified” by a German tribunal sitting in Freiburg while he was still serving a ten-year sentence in the Landsberg Prison. The Freiberg court’s action was based on the fact that an Allied military court had commuted a death sentence and later a life sentence. This, the Freiberg tribunal argued, proved that he had been convicted “essentially” only because he had been a doctor in a Nazi camp. It discounted the evidence that he had poisoned and otherwise done to death hundreds of camp inmates.