The House Foreign Affairs Committee has unanimously approved an amendment offered by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D. N.Y.) that bars United States foreign aid to Chile until that country deports infamous Nazi Walter Rauff to Israel.
“It is imperative that Rauff be expelled,” Ackerman declared, “in order to bring to justice a man responsible for the slaughter of 250,000 Jews during World War II.”
Last month, Chilean Foreign Minister Jaime Del Val refused Israel’s request to have Rauff deported.
If the Ackerman language is enacted into law as expected, Rauff’s ouster would be one of several conditions that must be met before the United States could provide assistance to Chile.
“We must press Israel’s request that Chile expel Rauff,” the Congressman said. “It is our nation’s moral obligation to see that such a heinous criminal is made to stand trial for his crimes, and it is the obligation of Congress not to support any nation that is knowingly harboring a Nazi.”
CITES VIOLATION OF UN RESOLUTION
Ackerman said that Chile’s refusal to comply with Israel’s request is in direct violation of a resolution adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in 1973, which provides principles of international cooperation with the extradition and punishment of war crimes against humanity.
Rauff developed mobile gas vans under orders to find a more “impersonal” way to kill Jews. His gas van was a direct predecessor to the gas chambers built soon after at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other death camps.
“It is incomprehensible to me that the government of Chile continues to safely harbor a major Nazi war criminal — a man who has not earned the peaceful life that government has provided for him,” the Congressman commented. “My amendment makes it known that the American government objects to Chile’s coddling of this heinous fiend,” he added.
Chilean government officials defend this policy by claiming that it would be inappropriate to expel the 77-year-old SS colonel who has been living peacefully in Chile since his escape from Europe in the 1950s. In 1963, the West German government demanded Rauff’s extradition from Chile. At that time, the Supreme Court in Chile ruled that Rauff could remain in the country on the grounds that Chile’s statute of limitations on war crimes had expired.
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.
