Sher Refutes Charges USSR Fabricating Charges About War Criminals Now in U.S.

A Department of Justice official has refuted charges that the Soviet Union is fabricating evidence in order to dupe the United States into prosecuting Nazi war criminals from Eastern Europe, who entered this country illegally.

Neal Sher, director of the Office of Special Investigations, declared that those making these accusations — some members of the Eastern European communities in this country and some organs of the “emigre press” — “would very much like to see OSI disappear.”

Sher told the National Commission meeting of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith last week the OSI staff scrupulously authenticates “every scrap of evidence, obtained from whatever sources, in order to prove each case under our law, our rules, and our procedures.”

Stressing that his staff is seeking out and prosecuting Nazi war criminals at a record pace, Sher listed the OSI procedures followed in handling evidence: Original documents are sought and subjected to exhaustive scientific testing; signatures are examined for forgeries by handwriting experts; no advance notice is provided of what documents are being sought and what questions are to be answered by witnesses; corroboration of evidence is sought from other sources.

Stressing that it would be counterproductive for the Soviets to use “false and untrustworthy evidence” to embarrass the United States, he said that any propaganda gains the Russians might possibly make “would be destroyed totally should fabricated evidence be uncovered.’

Sher said that the accumulated evidence makes clear that collaboration with the Nazis by members of the native population in Eastern European countries is not “a mere fiction concocted by the KGB.”