The West German government gave accused Nazi war criminal Josef Schwammberger a passport while he was in hiding in Argentina and supposedly could not be located, the prosecution at Schwammberger’s trial in Germany told the judge Friday.
The Polish government has an outstanding warrant for Schwammberger’s arrest in 1954, at the time passport documents were filed at the German Embassy in Buenos Aires, said Elliot Welles, director of the Nazi Task Force of the Anti-Defamation League, who just returned here from attending the opening of the trial last week in Stuttgart, Germany.
Schwammberger, who was extradited to West Germany from Argentina last year, had already been incarcerated for war crimes in the French occupation zone of Austria in 1945. He had escaped, and his record as a commandant of forced labor camps in Poland during the war was known, observed Welles, who has been pursuing this case for many years.
Schwammberger arrived in Argentina in 1948, it is now known. He lived and worked in that country using his own name.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which mounted a large campaign to find and apprehend Schwammberger, believes he was helped by the Nazi organization Odessa. The center’s namesake also attended the opening of the trial.
Welles said Schwammberger also told the judge last week that he had Red Cross travel documents after the war. The prosecutor produced copies of documents from the German Embassy in Buenos Aires dating from 1954 and again in 1964, when Schwammberger’s passport was extended, Welles said.
Schwammberger, an Austrian who served as a lieutenant in the elite Waffen SS, is accused of shooting and torturing thousands of Jews in Poland, as well as stealing their valuables.
A PARTICULARLY FIERCE KILLER
Survivors have described him as a particularly fierce killer, who dashed babies’ heads against walls, tossed people into bonfires and shot individuals mercilessly.
Schwammberger was finally apprehended in November 1987. It was reported at the time that he had been arrested in Cordoba, in Argentina’s northern interior.
Welles said it was reported last week in the Stuttgart courtroom that Schwammberger had been found in San Carlos de Bariloche. This is a town on Lake Nahuel Huapi, some 50 miles from the Chilean border. Schwammberger had said he wanted the German passport to travel to Chile and Europe, Welles recounted Sunday.
“The point,” said Welles, “is that as orderly as they (the Germans) are,” the passport “was filed away.
“It means that the German government must have been quite aware” of Schwammberger’s whereabouts, “because his request was filed in the Buenos Aires Embassy. He had to fill out certain forms to apply for a passport,” he said.
Meanwhile, defense attorneys requested that a specialist in geriatric psychiatry be called in from Munich to examine Schwammberger to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial.
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