"BERLIN — Germany’s justice minister suggested Friday that a Nazi wanted by the Netherlands could serve his sentence in Germany but Bavaria, where the 88-year-old lives, said it needed significant new evidence.
Dutch prosecutors on Thursday issued a European arrest warrant for SS assassin Klaas Carel Faber, who has been living freely in Germany since escaping from a Dutch prison in 1952 where he was serving a life sentence.
Three previous attempts to bring him to justice have failed, and German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, amid pressure from Israel, called Friday on the state of Bavaria, which has jurisdiction on the case, "to look for alternative solutions."--LINK
"Serbia is seeking extradition from the United States of a naturalized American citizen who is suspected of serving in a Nazi unit that killed about 17,000 Jewish and other civilians during World War II, the justice minister said Friday. The American, Peter Egner, 88, was born in Yugoslavia but emigrated to the United States in 1960, gaining citizenship six years later. He has lived in a retirement community outside Seattle, fighting federal government efforts to strip him of his American citizenship, which would pave the way for his extradition. --http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/world/europe/27briefs-serbia.html
"It is possible that within a short time a court in the United States will prohibit the publication of the account before us. In the meantime, Haaretz has obtained the testimony given last month by William Gowen, a former intelligence officer in the United States Army, at a federal court in San Francisco. The testimony contains historical and political explosives. It links Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, to the theft of property of Jewish, Serb, Russian, Ukrainian and Roma victims during World War II in Yugoslavia. Many studies and stories have already been written about the thundering silence of Pope Pius XII, who reigned in the Vatican during World War II.
Now the former intelligence officer's testimony has revealed that after the war, Montini, who during the war served as the Vatican's deputy secretary of state under the pope, helped hide and launder property that had been stolen from, among others, Jews and was involved in the sheltering and smuggling of Croatian war criminals, such as the leader of the Ustashe movement, Ante Pavelic.
The smuggling and hiding of Croatian war criminals was part of the extensive network known as the Rat Lines. Senior officials at the Vatican were involved in hiding and smuggling Nazi war criminals and their collaborators so they would not be arrested and tried. Hundreds of war criminals were provided with church and Red Cross papers that enabled them to hide in safe houses and then flee from Europe, mainly to the Middle East and South America. Among them were Klaus Barbie ("the butcher of Lyon"), Adolf Eichmann, Dr. Josef Mengele and Franz Stengel, the commander of the Treblinka death camp.
The Vatican network was also used by leaders of the Ustashe - the nationalist Croatian Catholic movement that was active in Croatia and collaborated with the Nazi occupation. "The Reverend Dr. Prof. Krunoslav Draganovic seemed to be in cooperation with the Ustasha network. And he was given a Vatican assignment as the apostolic visitator for Croatians, which meant he reported directly to Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini," states an American document based on a report from the Italian police; the document was recently placed in evidence at the court in San Francisco where Gowen testified.
The leaders of the Ustashe headed by Pavelic are the ones who stole the victims' property: art and jewelry - silver and mostly gold. After the war they fled with the treasure and laundered it with the help of Vatican institutions. According to Gowen's testimony, Montini, who in 1964 became the first pope to visit the State of Israel, was also involved in the Vatican's help in laundering the wealth.--http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/tied-up-in-the-rat-lines-1.62204
"Ratlines were systems of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps Canada and the Middle East. There were two primary routes: the first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa, then South America; the two routes "developed independently" but eventually came together to collaborate.[1]
One ratline, made famous by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Odessa File, was run by the ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; "Organization of Former SS-Members") network organized by Otto Skorzeny.[citation needed]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_%28history%29
"
Spain, not Rome, was the "first center of ratline activity that facilitated the escape of Nazi fascists", although the exodus itself was planned within the Vatican.[4] Charles Lescat, a French Catholic member of Action Française (an organization suppressed by Pius XI and rehabilitated by Pius XII), and Pierre Daye, a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government, were among the primary organizers.[5] Lescat and Daye were the first able to flee Europe, with the help of French cardinal Eugene Tisserant and Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano.[5]
By 1946, there were probably hundreds of war criminals in Spain, and thousands of former Nazis and fascists.[6] According to US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Vatican cooperation in turning over asylum-seekers was "negligible".[6] According to Phayer, Pius XII "preferred to see fascist war criminals on board ships sailing to the New World rather than seeing them rotting in POW camps in zonal Germany".[7] Unlike the Vatican emigration operation in Italy, centered on Vatican City, the ratlines of Spain, although "fostered by the Vatican" were relatively independent of the hierarchy of the Vatican Emigration Bureau.[8]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_%28history%29
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