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Defense Dept. Urged to Dismiss Nazi General from U.S. Army Post

October 11, 1960
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The Defense Department was asked today to publicly identify and dismiss a former Nazi general, employed by the United States Army at Dachau, West Germany, whose anti-Semitic statements caused an investigation by the Bonn Government. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, Jr., National Commander I. L. Feuer of the Jewish War Veterans of the U. S. demanded an immediate investigation of the case.

The issue emerged when Lord Russell, who was British war crimes prosecutor at Nuremberg, quoted recent remarks by an unnamed German ex-general to the effect that Dachau’s gas chamber was actually only a shower bath and that crematories were built after the war for anti-German propaganda purposes. Commander Feuer said the remarks were made at a “notorious death camp where thousands of innocent victims of the Hitler regime were brutally murdered.”

Pointing out that the German ex-general was employed by the United States Army rather than the West German Government, Mr. Feuer termed his retention “an affront to the memory of the thousands of American servicemen of all faiths who died while combatting Nazi ideology. He questioned whether a man still espousing the Nazi line was not “a security risk of confirmed totalitarian leanings.”

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