Justice Minister Moshe Nissim announced today that the Israel government and the World Zionist Organization will jointly offer a $1 million reward for information that would lead to the capture, arrest and trial in Israel of Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz death camp doctor.
In making the announcement in the Knesset, Nissim observed that capture of Mengele is now more important than ever because of a world-wide trend to play down and even forget Nazi crimes. This was an indirect reference to President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in West Germany where members of the Waffen SS are buried along with other German war dead.
The West German government has already offered a $300,000 reward for information as to Mengele’s whereabouts. Million dollar rewards for the same information have been offered by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and by the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper.
Mengele, who performed inhuman, crippling and frequently fatal medical experiments on Auschwitz inmates, earning him the title “Angel of Death”, is reported to be living in Paraguay, under the protection of the military government there.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said it will make a major effort to track down Mengele, in cooperation with the Israeli authorities.
REWARD COMMITTEE SET UP
Nissim said anyone will be eligible for the reward except employes of the Israeli government or any other government or of public bodies in Israel. A reward committee has been set up whose findings will be final and not subject to appeal.
The members of the committee include Nissim, Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel, Justice Moshe Landau, former President of the Supreme Court, Moshe Etzioni, President of the WZO’s Supreme Court, and former Attorney General Gideon Hausner who prosecuted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1961.
SHARP CRITICISM OF REAGAN
Earlier this week, Nissim sharply criticized Reagan without mentioning the President by name. He said:
“We were recently witness to declarations of reconciliation and conciliation towards those who carried out the greatest atrocities since the down of mankind. If the leader of the free world, the head of the greatest friend of Israel, can say that the members of the German Wehrmacht were the victims of the Third Reich to the same extent as the concentration camp inmates, this hair-raising declaration should shock any civilized person.”
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