[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 98 (Monday, July 16, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7679-S7680]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NAZI WAR CRIMINALS RESOLUTION

  Mr. CORZINE. Madam President, last week I introduced a resolution 
that addresses the United States' use of Nazi war criminals after World 
War II. The resolution acknowledges the role of the United States in 
harboring Nazi fugitives, commends the Nazi War Criminal Interagency 
Working Group for serving the public interest by disclosing information 
about the Nazis, and calls on other governments to release information 
pertaining to the assistance these governments provided to Nazis in the 
postwar period.
  On July 14, 1934, the Reichstag declared the Nazi Party the only 
legitimate political party in Germany. In one fell swoop, political 
dissent in Germany was quashed and a tragic series of events was set 
into motion--a series of events that led to the genocide of six million 
Jews and five million Gypsies, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, political 
dissidents, physically and mentally disabled people, and homosexuals. 
After World War II, the international community attempted to come to 
terms with what, by any measure, was a horrific episode in world 
history.
  In October 1945, a tribunal was convened in Nuremberg, Germany, to 
exact justice against the most nefarious Nazi War Criminals, people who 
knowingly and methodically orchestrated the murder of countless 
innocent people. Some infamous Nazi war criminals were tried and 
convicted elsewhere, including the infamous Adolph Eichmann, who was 
found guilty by an Israeli court. Still, many of the perpetrators--war 
criminals who heeded the call of the Nazi juggernaut--escaped justice. 
Some of those who evaded capture did so with the help of various world 
governments, including the United States.
  It is natural to ask why the United States would help known Nazi war 
criminals avoid punishment. The United States had just spent four years 
fighting the Nazis at the cost of thousands of young, courageous 
American soldiers. We had just liberated the Nazi death camps, 
witnessing firsthand the carnage and degradation exacted by the Nazis 
on Jews and others. Despite it all, the United States felt compelled to 
hide the very Nazis they had defeated and grant them refuge in the 
United States and abroad.
  The sad fact is that although we had just finished fighting a war of 
enormous proportions, we were entering another war--a cold war that 
would last for some 50 years. In fighting this war, the United States 
enlisted Nazi fugitives to spy on the Soviet Union.
  The extent to which the United States used Nazi war criminals for 
intelligence purposes in the postwar years is still being studied. In 
January 1999, the President charged the Nazi War Criminal Records 
Interagency Working Group with the difficult task of locating, 
identifying, cataloguing, and recommending for declassification 
thousands of formerly classified documents pertaining to the United 
States' association with Nazi war criminals. In addition to an interim 
report completed October 1999, in late April 2001, the IWG announced 
the release of CIA name files referring to specific Nazi War Criminals. 
While there is still work to be done, one thing is clear from these 
documents: the United States knowingly utilized Nazi war criminals for 
intelligence purposes and,

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in some cases, helped them escape justice.
  The American people deserve a full accounting of the decisions that 
led to the acceptance of Nazi war criminals as employees of the United 
States government. It also is important that the United States work 
with other countries to expedite the release of information regarding 
the use of Nazi war criminals as intelligence operatives. We need to 
learn more about the Holocaust and its aftermath. The international 
community must learn the lessons of history, so that never again will 
we face this type of evil.

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