A German politician who admitted killing six Jews in the Ukraine during World War II resigned Tuesday under fire from the Brandenburg state Parliament in Potsdam.
Gustav Just, a 71-year-old member of the Social Democratic Party, bowed to demands to quit, which came from his own party, the news media and the head of Germany’s Jewish community, Heinz Galinski.
He took the first step Monday by resigning from the Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Affairs, which he chaired.
Just was forced to concede the truth of media reports that he participated in the reprisal shooting of civilians on July 15, 1941 in an unnamed Ukrainian village, while serving as a soldier in the Wehrmacht, or German army. He was 20 at the time.
In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday that it is investigating the case to decide whether Just should be barred from entering the United States.
The investigation was initiated at the request of the World Jewish Congress, which asked that Just be placed on its “watch list” of aliens inadmissable to the United States.
The request was made by WJC Executive Director Elan Steinberg in a letter to Neal Sher, director of the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department’s unit that investigates war crimes and suspected war criminals.
Steinberg referred in his letter to media reports of a flippant comment made by Just after admitting his role in killing six Jews.
It was “not a glorious page in my resume, but it is old hat,” the former East German national was quoted as saying.
Galinski, whose German Jewish community is a WJC affiliate, called the remark “scandalous.”
Just’s 50-year-old crime was exposed Sunday by the German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The information came from the files of former East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi, which were opened in 1990. The files held up to 1.5 million names of war criminals and victims of the Nazi era, including East German war crimes suspects.
Just admitted the incident, which occurred in the early weeks of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but denied he volunteered for the mission.
“I still don’t know to this day whether they were Jews,” he told reporters.
It is not clear whether Just can be brought to trial in Germany for complicity in murder, a charge not covered by the statute of limitations on war crimes.
Most leading German newspapers said it was improper for him to remain in the Brandenburg Parliament.
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