Do Germany protect old nazi-criminals?

14.6.2011

Germany should arrest a Nazi war criminal

Jun 1, 20118:31 PM| By Sapa-AFP

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TheNetherlandssaid thatGermanymust arrest and imprison a Nazi war criminal who was convicted in a Dutch court and has lived freely in the German state ofBavariafor decades.

Klaas Carel Faber, a member of the Nazi SS unit, was sentenced to death by a Dutch court in 1947 for murdering 22 Jews, but escaped prison in 1952 and fled toBavaria, settling inIngolstadt. His sentence was later converted to life in prison. TheNetherlandsissued a European arrest warrant for Faber in November and sought his return to Dutch custody but Bavarian officials have so far refused to execute the warrant. In 1957, a German court dropped all charges against Faber for lack of evidence and Bavarian officials have said theNetherlandsmust produce new evidence before Faber can be arrested again. Germanyalso recognises the citizenship Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler gave to all those serving in the SS, and does not extradite its own citizens. “A country that refuses to execute a European arrest warrant because the the individual is one of its citizens, must, according to European regulations, execute the sentence,” the Dutch justice ministry said in a statement. “The Dutch Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten wrote to his German counterpart and the justice minister ofBavariato explain that Klaas Faber should serve his life prison sentence inGermany,” the statement added.

Faber is third on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of wanted Nazis. From 1943 to 1944 he worked at transit camp where famed diarist Anne Frank was held. His unit killed Dutch civilians deemed “anti-German” in reprisal for resistance attacks against the Nazi occupation. Faber escaped from theBredaprison in westernNetherlandsin 1952 with six other former SS men and later worked for the German car maker Audi.

In Germany displaying the swastika,  placing a copy of Mein Kampf in a shop window,

signing a letter or e-mail with the words “Heil Hitler”  or otherwise glorifying the former Nazi leader is illegal

and can bring a three-year jail term – for humans, that is. 

 

Wiesenthal Center have called upon German authorities to open the files of escaped nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on 10.1.2011 called upon the German Security Service (BND) to open its files on escaped Nazi war criminals in the wake of recent revelations that the German authorities already knew of the whereabouts in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann in 1952, eight years before he was abducted by the Mossad to stand trial in Israel for his critical role in the implementation of the Final Solution. In a statement issued here by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center noted the importance of such information, which clearly shows the utter indifference of the German authorities at that time to the necessity of bringing such key Holocaust perpetrators to justice.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff: “The time has come to reveal the truth about the efforts, or lack thereof, of Germany to apprehend and bring to trial the individuals responsible for the mass murder of European Jewry and millions of other innocent victims. There is important historical research which must be done on this topic, but which cannot proceed without the opening of the pertinent archives. We call upon the BND to finally grant full access to its records and to allow the full story, as problematic as it might be, to be made known to the public. The Nazis’victims, as well as the rest of the world, deserve no less.”

SOURCE: www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter.