Sen. Arlen Specter (R. Pa.) announced here yesterday that formal Senate hearings on the Josef Mengele case will be convened in Washington on February 19. Spector, who chairs the juvenile justice sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told a press conference at the Wiesenthal Center that the hearings “come at a time of heightened international interest in bringing the notorious ‘angel of death’ of Auschwitz to justice and will focus on the testimony of survivors of Mengele’s gruesome experiments during World War II.”
The Senator added that “We will seek to uncover new leads and information as to the nature and extent of involvement of American, Canadian and other Western governments with the fugitive Nazi war criminal from 1945-85.”
RELEVANT DOCUMENTS TO BE RELEASED
Specter also indicated that “a number of the documents relevant to the Mengele case, previously withheld by the U.S. Department of the Army from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, will be released” to his committee.
The documents in question are part of those sought by the Wiesenthal Center under the Freedom of Information-Act. The information already released to the Center last month of previously classified U.S. Army intelligence documents suggested that Mengele may have been arrested and freed by U.S. military authorities in Austria in 1947 and that he may have entered Canada under an alias in 1962. Mengele, now 73, was reportedly last seen in Paraguay.
Among those scheduled to testify at the hearings are Rep. Alfonse D’Amato (R. NY); Marc Berkowitz, a surviving twin of Mengele’s experiments and president of CANDLES, an organization of survivors of the Auschwitz doctor’s experiments; a representative of the U.S. Department of the Army; and Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center.
Also invited to testify are Gen. (Ret.) Telford Taylor, who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal and the recent conference in Jerusalem on Mengele’s crimes, as well as representatives of the Departments of State and Justice.
The Justice Department announced last week that it will conduct an investigation into the where abouts of Mengele. Similarly, it was announced in Ottawa that an independent commission has been appointed to investigate Nazi war criminals living in Canada.
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