[Congressional Bills 107th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 133 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







107th CONGRESS
  1st Session
S. RES. 133

Expressing the sense of the Senate that information pertaining to Nazi 
war criminals should be brought to light so that future generations can 
           learn from the Holocaust, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 12, 2001

 Mr. Corzine submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 
                   the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Expressing the sense of the Senate that information pertaining to Nazi 
war criminals should be brought to light so that future generations can 
           learn from the Holocaust, and for other purposes.

Whereas in the 1930s and 1940s, the German National Socialist Party, the Nazi 
        Party, methodically orchestrated acts of genocide resulting in the 
        deaths of 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000 Gypsies, Poles, Jehovah's 
        Witnesses, political dissidents, physically and mentally disabled 
        people, and homosexuals;
Whereas the term Holocaust is used to describe the systematic extermination of 
        Jews and others by the Nazis during the period beginning on March 23, 
        1933, and ending on May 8, 1945;
Whereas in 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared the 
        Shutzstaffel or SS, the elite corps of the Nazi Party, to be a criminal 
        organization guilty of persecuting and exterminating Jews; of 
        brutalities and killings in the concentration camps; of excesses in the 
        administration of the slave labor program; and of mistreatment and 
        murder of prisoners of war;
Whereas Nazi war criminals include any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or 
        otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, 
        religion, national origin, or political opinion, during the Holocaust, 
        under the direction of, or in association with, the Nazi government of 
        Germany;
Whereas not all of these Nazi war criminals were brought to justice as required 
        by the Nuremberg Tribunal;
Whereas in the 1970s, information began to surface that the United States 
        intelligence community harbored Nazi war criminals, including Klaus 
        Barbie, a Nazi war criminal later found responsible for the torture and 
        death of more than 26,000 people, in order to spy on the former Soviet 
        Union and for other purposes;
Whereas in 1998, the 105th Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed 
        into law the ``Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act'', which provided for the 
        declassification of records relating to Nazi war criminals, Nazi 
        persecution, Nazi war crimes, and Nazi looted assets, including those 
        held by the Central Intelligence Agency;
Whereas the Nazi War Criminal Interagency Working Group was convened by 
        Executive Order on January 11, 1999, to (1) locate, identify, inventory, 
        recommend for declassification, and make available all classified Nazi 
        war criminal records, subject to certain specified restrictions; (2) 
        coordinate with Federal agencies and expedite the release of such 
        classified records to the public; and (3) complete work to the greatest 
        extent possible and report to Congress one year after passage of 
        legislation;
Whereas the Interagency Working Group recently declassified and analyzed 
        documents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the 
        Central Intelligence Agency, revealing that the United States used Nazi 
        war criminals for intelligence operations against the former Soviet 
        Union;
Whereas the declassified documents reveal further that the OSS assisted Nazi war 
        criminals in evading capture and prosecution and, in a few cases, 
        facilitated their immigration and assimilation in the United States; and
Whereas it is unknown to what extent the former Soviet Union and other nations 
        used Nazi war criminals for spy operations: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
            (1) the Nazi War Criminal Interagency Working Group served 
        the public interest by investigating and publicizing the extent 
        to which the United States used Nazi war criminals for 
        intelligence purposes following the Second World War;
            (2) the Administration should work with the international 
        intelligence community to expedite the release of information 
        regarding the use of Nazi war criminals as intelligence 
        operatives in the aftermath of the Second World War, especially 
        by the former Soviet Union; and
            (3) information pertaining to Nazi war criminals should be 
        brought to light so that future generations can learn from the 
        Holocaust.
                                 <all>