The president of the West German Evangelical Church, Ernst Wilm, in a letter to Dutch government officials urged The Netherlands to release the remaining three Nazi war criminals held in Breda Prison. In a letter dated Dec. 19 but only made public this weekend, the Protestant leader urged the release of the three in view of their poor health and confessions of guilt and repentance. One of them, Joseph Kotaella, 66, is partially paralyzed and has lost his power of speech due to a stroke he suffered early last Oct. The other two are Franz Fischer. 71, and Ferdinand aus den Fuenten. 75.
Justice Minister Andries van Agt, in a press conference over the weekend, acknowledged that he and Premier Joop den Uyl had received Wilm’s letter last Dec. He said the present Dutch Cabinet had not yet discussed the matter. Van Agt called Wilm, who spent three years in Dachau concentration camp, a “highly respectable man” but had no good word for the “bund heimkehrer” in West Germany which is likewise campaigning for the release of the three war criminals.
Van Agt’s acknowledgement of the letter comes at a particularly sensitive moment, the eve of the annual commemoration of the anti-Nazi “February strike” which took place in The Netherlands on Feb. 25-26, 1941. Dutch Communists are expected to use the occasion for a separate mass demonstration in Amsterdam to express their demands which include opposition to the release of the Nazi war criminals. Exactly two years ago, the contemplated release of the three by the previous Dutch Cabinet caused such a furor that the idea was abandoned. At the time, Van Agt was among those who proposed pardoning the war criminals.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
