Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D. NY), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee responsible for tracing alleged Nazi war criminals in the United States, today welcomed the appointment of a veteran lawyer, Walter Rockler, as head of a new investigatory unit in the Department of Justice. Rockler, 58, a senior partner in the Washington law firm of Arnold and Porter, had served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials.
Noting the appointment of Rockler is the Justice to me to upgrade and intensify efforts to bring Nazi war criminals in this country to justice, ” Holtzman added that the selection of Rockler ” appears to be a good one, particularly given his experience at Nuremberg.”
Holtzman noted that more than 175 cases of alleged war criminals “require further intense study.” She also noted that Martin Mendelsohn, who will serve as deputy director to Rockler, will now be able to “devote the bulk of his time to litigating the several important cases in which he is currently involved.” The cases will go to trial in the next few months.
Mendelsohn headed the unit in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) directed to hunt alleged Nazi war criminals. Holtzman and others in Congress protested the INS unit had not been efficient and urged a shift in responsibility to the Justice Department with a larger staff and more funding authorized previously by Congress.
Philip Heymann, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department’s criminal division, said in announcing the change that the new unit will coordinate the government’s efforts to locate, denaturalize and deport the criminals.
Discussing these criminals, Rockler said: “There have been people who have suspected there are probably a fair number of war criminals–Nazis–hanging around the U.S. It’s probably worth looking into.” Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal had estimated during a visit here recently that there may be as many as 3000 Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran in World War II Rockler was a prosecuting attorney from 1947 to 1949 in the U.S. War Department’s Office of Chief of Counsel on War Crimes.
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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.
