Protests mounted today against the admittance to the United States of a former foreign minister of the Nazi puppet regime in Slovakia during World War II.
Congressman Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he was trying to find out how Ferdinand Durcansky, charged with being a war criminal and Nazi collaborator, had managed to enter the United States. Rep. Celler, speaking at a meeting of the American Jewish Congress, said he had been advised that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had no record of Durcansky’s arrival here.
While Mr. Celler was addressing the Jewish Congress group, Mr. Durcansky was being honored at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria yesterday by the Slovak League of America, A protest against Durcansky’s admittance to the U. S. has been made by the Council of Free Czechoslovakia, which charged that the Department of State had given assurances Durcansky would never be allowed to enter the United States.
“It is incumbent upon Durcansky to state how he got to this country, what his business here is, and who sponsored him, “Rep. Celler declared. He cited proceedings of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, in which Durcansky was accused of having worked closely with the Nazis, resulting in the deportation of 68,000 Slovak Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Rep. Celler said the record indicated Durcansky, who served as Foreign Minister of the Slovak puppet regime, had escaped trial by fleeing to Argentina after the war.
Prior to the luncheon, Dr. Durcansky listed passages from the tenth volume of “Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945,” published by the United States Government Printing Office, Washington, in 1957. One document, written by a German official to the German Foreign Office in 1939, suggested that Dr. Durcansky was not cooperating in the implementation of German foreign policy. Dr. Durcansky also said that Volume 9 listed accusations against him by the same German official, who reported that Dr. Durcansky was anti-Nazi and pro-Jewish.
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