The West German Prosecutor’s Office has rejected calls of several organizations here to arrest Arthur Rudolph, a missile specialist, who has taken up residence in Hamburg after leaving the United States last spring. The Prosecutor’s office said it has virtually no evidence against Rudolph who had been director for production of V-2 rockets in a factory attached to the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp. A third to one-half of the 60,000 prisoners there died because of inhumane working conditions.
Last week, Rudolph was forced to renounce his American citizenship for concealing his Nazi activities during World War II. He became an American citizen in 1954 and was brought to the United States in 1945. He spent two years rebuilding the V-2 rocket systems at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. He was also loaned to the British to assist in their testing of V-2 weapons.
Rudolph was one of about 900 German scientists brought to the U.S. after the war to work on American rocket and missile programs. He was employed by NASA and was a resident of San Jose, Calif., when the Justice Department investigators discovered his Nazi past.
Between 1951and 1961, according to reports, he served as a manager of and technical director of the Pershing System, recently deployed in Europe. In 1965 he was made director of the Saturn V program that produced the rocket that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. For his contributions to the space program, he was given the Distinguished Service Medal, NASA’s highest honor.
The calls in West Germany for Rudolph’s arrest came from various groups, including the Frankfurtbased Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime. It said in a press release that the West German government apparently wants to wait until the case becomes a public issue, which would provide a basis to move against Rudolph.
The Association demanded that the government immediately make public files on Rudolph and all other former Nazis who left the United States and setled down in Germany. By failing to do so, the government is evading its responsibility to the victims of Nazism. Government authorities said that the Rudolph file has been classified inactive for lack of evidence against him.
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.
