The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, for the first time since its inception, forcefully addressed the issue of Nazi war criminals and the role of the American government.
Addressing the issue on three fronts, the Gathering was the site of a Senate Subcommittee hearing where survivors presented eye-witness testimony against Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and a panel discussion on bringing war criminals to justice, that culminated in a resolution urging Congress to change legal “loopholes” used by war criminals to avoid deportation from the U.S.
At an official hearing of the juvenile justice subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Arlen Specter (R. Pa.), testimony included accounts by victims of Mengele, the notorious doctor at Auschwitz who performed inhuman experiments on camp inmates.
EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS
Among the eye-witnesses who testified were Pearl and Helen Herskovic from Illinois, twin sisters who were in the early 20s when at Auschwitz. Pearl recalled that she had asked another inmate where her family was and the inmate pointed to smoke bellowing from the chimney of the crematorium and said, “there is your family.” Herskovic added, “Meanwhile, ashes were falling on our arms.”
Hans Brown, a gypsy inmate at Auschwitz, now living in Ontario, said he witnessed a small gypsy child being experimented on by Mengele. He said he saw a syringe break off while Mengele was injecting a substance into the spinal area of a young child. The child died soon thereafter, he said.
Neal Sher, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), told the subcommittee that Attorney General Edwin Meese is “fully supportive” of the OSI’s work, that the OSI staff and budget is sufficient and that he is “getting all the cooperation we seek” from government agencies. Six out of a staff of 50 are assigned to the Mengele case, Sher said. The budget for fiscal year 1985 for the OSI is $3.2 million.
WARNS OF NEW FORM OF INDIFFERENCE
Elizabeth Holtzman, the Brooklyn District Attorney, meanwhile, said at the panel discussion that the question of Nazi war criminals “arises from indifference during the war” and that today “we face a new form of indifference — the spirit of reconciliation.”
Holtzman, a former Congresswoman and long active in the pursuit of Nazi war criminals in the United States, called for creation of a government commission to uncover the full story of how and why the U.S.allowed entry of and collaboration with Nazi war criminals. “We must expose the people who are responsible,” she said. “If they can’t be tried by our courts they can be tried by the verdict of history.”
Charles Allen Jr., author and expert on Nazi war criminals, called for adherence to the Nuremberg principles stated in the Moscow Declaration of 1953 that Nazi war criminals should be “delivered to their accusers in order that justice may be done.”
He and Holtzman addressed the issue of attacks on the OSI by various Baltic and Ukrainian groups that have been accused of trying to undermine OSI efforts. Holtzman said we now have “pro-Nazi forces” standing up in favor of people the government is trying to deport. Allen tied the efforts of the emigre groups to thwart the OSI to neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism and racism.
Martin Mendelsohn, a former Justice Department official and now Counsel to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that Nazi war criminals could be punished only in countries where their crimes were committed. He expressed gratification over the recent U.S. court decision that war criminal John Demjanjuk be extradited to Israel to stand trial for his war crimes.
GATHERING ADOPTS A RESOLUTION
The Gathering also adopted a resolution urging that Congress change legal procedures “so that the criminals cannot exploit the loopholes in the law to further delay their deportation to the countries where they will face the bar of Justice. “The resolution also referred to statements by “ethnic Americans” criticizing the work of the OSI.
It was also announced that the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors formed itself into a national membership organization, with Benjamin Meed of New York City, a survivor, as its president.
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