Dr. Hans Eisele, former Buchenwald concentration camp physician who fled to Cairo last week when it was revealed that he was responsible for murdering at least 200 Jews during the Nazi reign, was arrested by Interpol police in Cairo yesterday, according to word received here today.
Meanwhile, Max von Decker, Bavarian State Prosecutor, has been suspended from office as a result of Dr. Eisele’s escape from Germany. Minister of Justice Willi Ankermueller, who suspended von Decker, announced that Dr. Eisele’s arrest in Cairo had been requested by the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Government authorities believe it is possible that the United Arab Republic may consent to Dr. Eisele’s extradition.
A German News Agency correspondent in Cairo, who interviewed the physician before the arrest, reported Dr. Eisele disclaimed the accusations against him. The doctor was quoted as saying “I never killed a human being in all my life” and as declaring that he left Germany because “the political atmosphere is such that it would have been impossible for me to get a fair trial.”
Before his arrest, according to information received here, Dr. Eisele made contact in Cairo with Johannes von Leers, a former Nazi propaganda writer who had himself converted to Mohammedanism and is reportedly propaganda chief to Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Minister of Justice Ankermueller conceded today that, in his opinion, the judiciary department, and not the police, was responsible for Eisele’s escape. Dr. Ankermueller called the Eisele case “the most unfortunate failure and the greatest scandal in the German judiciary since the war.”
The Minister said that, when he looked into von Decker’s dossier, following his suspension, on Friday, he made the “startling discovery” that von Decker had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1931. Von Decker was reinstated to office, the Justice Minister found, because he had held no office in the Nazi Party and because persons who had been persecuted by the Nazis had vouched for him.
Von Decker’s dossier showed that, in 1954, he had shunted aside charges of perjury against Dr. Eisele when the physician denied charges showing he had injected hundreds of Buchenwald prisoners with poison. At that time, Dr. Eisele was accused of having shown, at Buchenwald, “a sheer lust to kill.” But von Decker’s department did not press prosecution against the physician.
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.
