Keating Calls on U.N. to Seek out Nazis Hiding Around World

Senator Kenneth B. Keating, New York Republican, urged today that the United Nations establish a special subcommission to collect and process information on Nazi war criminals who have escaped trial by fleeing to other countries.

Addressing a luncheon meeting here of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, he also urged the West German Government to consider seriously “an indefinite extension of the statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.”

Contending that the UN “should involve itself further in combating anti-Semitism,” the Senator warned that “many regimes still hope to gain political support by abusing Jewish minorities.” For that reason, he told the UJA leaders, the UN initiative he was proposing was “not only practicable and desirable; it is a moral necessity.”

Asserting that “the pernicious doctrines and practices of anti-Semitism are still alive in some parts of the world today,” he said that “hundreds of Nazi war criminals undoubtedly remain at large and unpunished.” He said anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism are flourishing in the Middle East where Arab children are taught to hate Jews and Arab soldiers prepare to threaten Israel, and in the Soviet Union where Jews are scapegoats for economic failure and denied the basic rights “of religious practice.”

He warned that anti-Semitism was increasing “in Latin America, where the Arab League is engaged in propaganda unmatched since the Nazi efforts of World War II.” He cited reports that Nazi war criminals had found sanctuary in South America and that there was “a colony of ex-Nazis living in seclusion in Argentina.”