Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D.NY) accused the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service today of conducting a “half-hearted, dilatory investigation” of more than 60 alleged Nazi war criminals believed to be living in the United States and demanded that the INS “demonstrate that it means business and is simply not spinning wheels.”
Addressing a press conference here, Rep. Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, named nine of the alleged war criminals. She also released a letter and a memorandum addressed to Leonard F. Chapman Jr. former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, and INS Commissioner since last Nov., in which she charged that the INS investigation revealed “inaction, disorganization and lack of direction.”
Ms. Holtzman charged specifically that while the INS claimed to be giving “high priority” to its investigation of alleged Nazi war criminals residing in the U.S., its investigation was in fact headed by “three part-time bureaucrats without the background or authority to direct an investigation of this nature,” nor does it have an experienced trial attorney to guide the investigation, she said Rep. Holtzman said further that the INS has not be en in touch with the German or Israeli governments for pertinent data, has not checked the YIVO Institute in New York or the National Archives in Washington or checked with Soviet Jews now in Israel who may have information.
INS PREPARING ‘COMPLETE REPLY’
While no immediate comment was forthcoming from Commissioner Chapman, his office informed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that he is preparing “a complete reply” to Rep. Holtzman’s 18-page document containing her charges. INS public affairs officer Verne Jervis told the JTA, however, that the agency was “conducting a full-scale investigation of 33 persons.” Jervis said the INS office in New York City started work last July and was investigating 70 cases of which 17 subjects had died and two were last known living outside the U.S. He said that 18 other cases were under “preliminary investigation.”
According to Jervis, the INS office in New York has conducted 82 interviews since last July and consulted with Simon Wiesenthal, director of the war crimes documentation center in Vienna. He said 44 interviews were conducted by other INS offices in connection with the investigation.
CHARGES OF HORROR OUTLINED
Rep. Holtzman, a Harvard-trained lawyer, said that the INS has compiled a list of 73 reported Nazi war criminals in the U.S. who were charged with “crimes of overwhelming enormity and horror.” Allegations against some of the individuals named by the Congresswoman include the murder of 800 Jews in a single night in the Russian town of Chislovich; invention of methods of mass destruction used to kill 5000 Jews in Luboml; the extermination of inmates of the Ukrainian concentration camp at Tartu; Estonia’s execution of 14,000 Jews and the administration of killings in Latvia; the supervision of slave labor shipments and the liquidation of Jews in Czerkassy, Ukraine. Jews, Serha and Gypsies were among those liquidated by these war criminals, she said.
She said that of the alleged 73 war criminals believed to have entered the U.S. under false pretenses and thereby subject to deportation without statute of limitations, 36 have been identified; 17 others are unidentified and, to her knowledge, 13 are said to be dead. The whereabouts of seven are unknown. Rep. Holtzman said that 26 of the 43 alleged criminals known to be alive are naturalized U.S. citizens. Only three are known to be German nationals. Fifteen others are natives of Lithuania; 10 of the Ukraine or White Russia; six from Latvia; two from Yugoslavia; and one each from Hungary, Rumania and Estonia.
Rep. Holtzman reported that six of the alleged war criminals reside presently in New York City; six in Chicago; five in Los Angeles; three in Philadelphia; two each in Pittsburgh, Miami, Buffalo, Newark and Houston; and one each in Denver, San Diego, Seattle and Hammond, Ind.
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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.
