The Volkswagen Company issued a statement here today disclaiming any knowledge of the Nazi past of Franz Stangl when he was hired by the Volkswagen plant in Sao Paulo. Stangl was an employe there last March 2 when he was arrested on war crimes charges as the wartime commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps in occupied Poland.
The statement of the West German auto firm declared that all rumors that Stangl’s Nazi past had been known when he was hired was false. The statement declared that the chief of personnel and his assistant at the Volkswagen plant in Sao Paulo were Jews who had suffered persecution under the Nazis and that Stangl had been employed on the basis of his Brazilian identity papers.
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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.
