Franz Rademacher, German diplomat of the Hitler era, who disappeared two years ago after he had been convicted as the executioner of Serbian Jewry, is reported in German press dispatches today to have been seen in Cairo and other Arab capitals.
Counselor of Legation Rademacher, now 47, headed the Jewish Section of the German Foreign Office from 1940 to 1943. He drafted the 1940 plan to evacuate all Jews from Europe to Madagascar. In 1941, he came to Belgrade especially to order the execution of thousands of Jews. Thereafter, he prepared the Jewish deportations from Belgium. He has also been charged with similar crimes in Croatia, Bulgaria, Holland and France.
In early 1952 he faced a Nurnberg court during a six-week trial remarkable for the frantic efforts of the present Bonn Foreign Office to help and protect him. The prosecutor had asked that he be given life for responsibility in the killing of 4,900 Serbian Jews and for “incitement to murder in thousands of cases,” but the court was content to impose a brief prison term, ruling that there had been “no base motives” behind his actions. Then the court released Rademacher “pending appeal.”
Last year the German Supreme Court criticized the verdict as untenably mild and referred the case back to a different court for retrial. By that time, however, Rademacher had already fled abroad.
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