The “profound pain” of the Israel Government and people over the decision of the United States High Commissioner in Germany authorizing commutation and reduction of sentences pronounced by the Nuremberg military tribunal on a large number of major war criminals was formally communicated to the United States today by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett.
Mr. Sharett handed to Monett Davis, the American Ambassador in Tel Aviv, a memorandum expressing and discussing the Israel Government’s views. He referred to the landsberg documentary report issued by High Commissioner James J. McCloy on the subject and pointed out that the report stressed the calculated sadism of the crimes perpetrated by the war criminals whose sentences have now been reduced.
The victims of these harrowing deeds, he said, “unprecedented in man’s history,” were mostly men, women and children slaughtered for no other cause than that they were Jews.
The memorandum refers to the fact that even the seven death sentences which it said the American authorities in Germany had no choice but to uphold had not yet been carried out and were now subject to renewed appeals.
The High Commissioner’s action, it went on, to a large measure had undone the great achievement of the Nuremberg trials which had established the basic principle that there were certain basic rules of morality which no state or no government can disregard with impunity and individuals found guilty of their violation are to be held personally liable and not to be permitted to escape on the ground of “superior orders.”
The Israel Government, the memorandum added, “believes the action now taken inevitably will be interpreted as having introduced the consideration of political expediency for what was, throughout, regarded as a Judicial and humanitarian issue, and the deterrent effect of the sentences therefore gravely impaired.”
The Israeli Government, the Foreign Minister told the American envoy, felt that it was bound to place on record its most anxious concern over what it cannot but regard as an unjustified and dangerous measure of clemency to Nazi war criminals.
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