A senator, a doctor and the Anti-Defamation League have launched a public crusade to bring an alleged Nazi war criminal living in Germany.
Hans Joachim Sewering, a doctor who still practices medicine in Dachau, allegedly sent 900 disabled children to a “healing” facility, where they were starved to death, during World War II.
Last week on the Senate floor, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told the story of the Nazi doctor.
One of Sewering’s chief critics, San Francisco doctor Michael Franzblau, sat in the visitors gallery to support Santorum.
Last week, a committee of doctors headed by Franzblau and supported by ADL, ran a full-page ad in The New York Times charging the German state of Bavaria with “harboring and protecting” an accused war criminal.
The ad urged people to write or fax German officials to lobby for Sewering’s prosecution.
According to Santorum, Sewering joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and worked as a doctor a tuberculosis clinic in Dachau. The 900 children were originally patients there.
After the war, Sewering gained prestige in Germany as the head of its medical society and as a senator from Bavaria, Santorum said.
Franzblau and the Committee to Bring Dr. Hans Joachim Sewering to Justice began demanding that the German government investigate Sewering when he was elected head of the World Medical association in 1993.
ADL has been involved in the issue for three yeas, said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director.
Although Sewering, 78, still practices medicine, he resigned from his position with the association after the international outcry.
Critics say that German prosecutors have refused to look for documents that would indict Sewering and have refused to interview four Franciscan nuns who worked with Sewering at the clinic.
Santorum encouraged senators to sign on to a letter urging the German government to prosecute Sewering.
“It’s the least (Germany) can do,” Santorum told his colleagues.
“It’s the least they can do for 900 children starved to death because of their disabilities. This is an abomination.”
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.
