More than six weeks after being granted bail, a suspected Nazi war criminal is still in jail, not because he can’t afford the $150,000 bail but because he is afraid to leave, according to his attorney.
Helmut Albert Rauca, 73, was arrested June 17 in Toronto at the request of the West German government. He has been charged by West Germany as having participated in the murder of 10,000 Jews in the Kovno ghetto during World War II. Four days after Rauca was arrested, he was granted bail and an extradition hearing was set for September 20.
Rauca’s defense attorney, William Parkery said his client could have left jail and gone to stay with friends until the extradition hearing but has decided not to, for fear of endangering them as well as himself.
Parker said he will try to obtain an adjournment of the extradition hearing because he hasn’t been given enough time to prepare his defense against evidence from the West German Government, which he says he still hasn’t received. The Canadian government now has all the evidence against Rauca and will soon forward it to Parker, a Justice Department spokesman said.
At a bail appeal hearing last week the Canadian Jewish Congress filed with the court translations from Yiddish books and periodicals published in Munich in 1948, three years after the war’s end, which dealt with the liquidation of the Jews in Kovno in October 1941. All the reports made copious and frequent reference to Rauca and his role in the extermination.
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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.
