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Bundestag Vote Will Help Moves Against Wanted War Criminals

July 5, 1979
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The Bundestag’s vote yesterday to abolish the statute of limitations may enable the West German authorities to open criminal proceedings against known. Nazi war criminals who up to now have evaded prosecution, Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld said here today. According to Klarsfeld; an attorney, most of these wanted Nazi war criminals are in West Germany but others are hiding out in Latin American or in Arab countries.

Heading the list of wanted men abroad is Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz physician responsible for mass murders and inhumane experiments on some 200,000 children and a like number of other inmates. Mengele is believed to be in Paraguay. Other wanted men are former SS Col. Walter Rauff, last seen in Santiago, Chile, who was in charge of the mobile gas chambers in Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, and Alois Bruner, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy for Austria, Greece and France.

Three war criminals definitely known to be in West Germany are Kurt Lishka, who was Gestapo chief in France from 1940-43 and was responsible for the deportation of French Jews; Herbert Hagen who was a special advisor to the SS in France and Ernst Heinrichson, who was deputy head of the Gestapo’s “Jewish section” in France “According to Klarsfeld, several hundred war criminals are believed to be alive and to have escaped detection until now More than 6000 war criminals have already been tried and sentenced by. West German courts.

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