The head of Poland’s Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes has sharply criticized West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for urging that Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former deputy, be pardoned, the World Jewish Congress reported here. Kohl last month sent letters to the leaders of the four wartime Allies — the U.S., USSR, France and Great Britain — asking that they agree that Hess be pardoned and released from Spandau Prison where he is now the only inmate He had been sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials 40 years ago and had been captured in 1941 after mysteriously parachuting into Scotland.
The director of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, Kazimierz Kako, said the Kohl was “disregarding the fact that revanchist forces in West Germany are trying to make Hess a symbol of an evil cause.”
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