Pressure to go on Chile

Press, 18 February 1984, Page 11

Pressure to go on Chile

NZPA-AP Washington A Nazi-hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, announced a world-wide campaign yesterday to pressure Chile into expelling a former German S.S. officer, Walter Rauff, accused of gassing 250,000 East European Jews in mobile vans during World War 11.

Mr Wiesenthal, who has tracked down many former Nazis, said that six million postcards addressed to General Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, would be distributed by religious, academic, and social agencies.

The cards read: “Mr Pinochet, what can we say to younger generations when this murderer has not spent one day in jail? In the name of humanity, justice, and Chile’s good name, we join in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s international campaign for justice in demanding that you immediately expel Rauff.”

The cards also bear a photograph of Rauff and one of the vans, which were disguised as Red Cross trucks.

Martin Mendelsohn, who during the Carter Administration headed a Justice Department office dealing with Nazis living in the United States, said that a similar international postcard campaign in 1978 had helped pressure the West German Parliament into rescinding a statute of limitations that would have prevented the prosecution of former Nazis.

Rauff, aged 76, is wanted by Israel and West Germany. His existence in Chile had been known since 1962, but came under renewed attention last year after Bolivia allowed the French authorities to arrest Klaus Barbie, known as the “Butcher of Lyons.”