Professor Theodor Oberlander, the West German Minister for Expellees and War Victims, was quoted today as flatly denying charges that he was responsible for the extermination of Polish Jews in Lwow during World War II.
The charges were first made public last week in Der Spiegel, a leading West German news magazine, which asserted that Oberlander had been affiliated with the psychological warfare section of Hitler’s SS and SA units.
In Israel, Moshe Reiss, a survivor of the Nazi Ghetto in Lwow, told reporters that Oberlander had several hundred Jews killed during the first few days of the German occupation and that later, 5,000 Jews were murdered near Lwow under Oberlander’s orders. Reiss expressed readiness to go anywhere and testify under oath.
The West German official was quoted as declaring: “I never had any contact with the Jewish population of Lemburg and I am not responsible for a single murder. I have been an ordinary army officer. I have never been with the SS and really have no clue that Jews were killed in Lemberg when our battalion was stationed there.”
He said he believed that such charges were from Communist sources, “who want to incriminate me as the responsible German Minister for Refugee Affairs.”
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