The one-time head of the Nazi Security Service in Holland admitted today his responsibility for the deportation of some 100, 000 Jews from Holland, and said that Erich Rajakovic was one of his aides. Rajakovic, who is now in hiding somewhere in West Germany, has denied Dutch charges that he had a key role in the deportations.
Dr. A. Harster, who has been since 1957 a high civil servant in the Bavarian Interior Ministry, made the admission and the implication of Rajakovic in an interview with the Berlin “Morgenpost.” He said he had been tried in Holland and had served a sentence. He added that Bavarian officials had full knowledge of his political past.
The former Nazi Security Service officer also said that, because of the publicity attendant on the discovery of Rajakovic in Italy and his expulsion from Switzerland last week, he had decided to apply for a retirement pension.
Dr. Harster was in charge of a department of the Nazi Reich Security office from June 1940, to September 1943. His version was that he “supervised” the transfer of the Dutch Jews to a Nazi camp in Holland. He contended, however, that he had not taken part in any further deportations. Dutch officials have accused Rajakovic of a key role in the transport of the Dutch Jews to their deaths in Nazi murder camps in Poland.
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.
