A HEARING TO CONSIDER ISSUES SURROUNDING THE SEARCH FOR DR. JOSEF MENGELE BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE FEBRUARY 19, 1985 10:00 A.M. 124 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WITNESS LIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M01152R000100090021-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: February 19, 1985
• Content Type: MISC

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To Consider Issues Surrounding the Search
For Dr. Josef Mengele
Before the
Subcommittee on:Juvenile Justice
Committee on the Judiciary
February 19, 1985
124 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Witness List
1. The Honorable Alfonse M. D'Amato, United States Senator
from the State of New York.
2. The Honorable Carl Levin, United States Senator from the
State of Michigan.
3. Panel consisting of:
Mark Berkowitz, President, "Candles", New York; and
Ernest Michel, Executive Vice President, United Jewish
Appeal Federation, New York.
4. Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles,
California.
!- 5. Jack Anderson, Syndicated Columnist, Washington, D.C.
6. Lieutenant General William E.. Odom, Assistant Chief of Staff.
for Intelligence; and Mrs. Susan J. Crawford, General
Counsel, United States Army, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
.,E 7. Allan Ryan, Esq., Washington, D.C.
HCD reviewed: no objection to release as redacted
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STATEMENT BY ERNEST W. MICHEL
PRESENTED TO THE SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE
HEARINGS CONCERNING DR. JOSEF MENGELE
Washington, D.C. -- February 19, 1985
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee:
My name is Ernest W. Michel. I am a survivor of the Holocaust having
spent the years 1939 to 1945 in various forced labor and concentration camps,
including the infamous Auschwitz, BUNA/Monowitz, and Buchenwald. I was
deported from my hometown, Mannheim, Germany in September 1939, shortly
after the outbreak of World War II. I was 16 years old at the time. My
parents were deported to France in 1940; from there to Auschwitz in 1942
where they were killed. In 1981, I served as Chairman of the World
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors which took place in Jerusalem,
Israel. I am an American citizen, having come to this Country in 1945
under the Harry S Truman Displaced Persons Act. In my professional
capacity, I serve as Executive Vice President and Campaign Director of the
United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Campaign in New
York.
name Auschwitz; I certainly knew nothing about what it represented. I
found out soon enough.
We arrived at night, after spending approximately one week locked up
in cattle cars. It was a horror: we literally were herded in like cattle;
the cars were filled to capacity; we received little food; sanitary
conditions were non-existent. Many died in transit.
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In retrospect, all that comes to mind is that our arrival in Auschwitz
was like a scene out of Dante's "Inferno." All around were shouts by
SS men: "Juden-Raus!" and barking, biting dogs. We were in a state of utter
confusion; there was crying, screaming, mass hysteria. After a while, public
announcements were made directing men to one side; women to the other. Other
than that, all we knew was that we were surrounded by barbed wired fences.
The men and women were separated; the men were placed in lines, the
women on trucks. The vision of husbands and wives, parents and children
being torn apart -- the tears, the screeches, the frenzy -- still haunt.
The line moved forward slowly. It was then that an elegant but fore-
boding-looking SS officer in a long black leather coat and gloves, with
SS insignias on coat and cap, began directing us by thumb: some to the
left, some to the right. We moved like automatons, no one knew what was
happening.
We learned from older camp inmates that we were in Auschwitz; that
the officer who conducted the selection process was Dr. Josef Mengele; and
that the people sent in the other direction had been gassed. My reaction
was one of numbness, utter disbelief. We were told to undress. Our clothes
were taken away. All of our hair was shorn. Numbers were tattooed on our
left forearms (mine is 104995). We received striped prison uniforms and caps.
This is how I recall my arrival in Auschwitz and my first encounter with
Dr. Mengele.
After a few days, some of us were transported to Auschwitz II or
otherwise called Auschwitz/BUNA or Monowitz. This was a sub-camp of
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Auschwitz and located next to the IG Farben Industrial Complex. Its
purpose was to produce Buna '(artificial rubber). I will not describe life
in the camp; those reports are legend. 'I will briefly refer only to my
personal experiences.
Following several months of heavy construction work with very little
food in the IG Farben Complex, I was reduced to a skeleton. Friends were
dying all around. Those too weak to walk were shipped to Auschwitz/Birkenau
to be gassed. These selections took place every day. Those of us still alive
were resigned to die sooner or later, there was no hope to escape.
Yet, some of us kept going, hoping that a few would survive. Our
greatest fear, aside from dying, was that nobody would be alive to tell the
world what was happening in Auschwitz -- annihilation on a scale unprecedented
in history..
In the Summer of 1943,.1 was injured while doing the construction work
to which I was assigned and had to go to the prison hospital for treatment.
We all were petrified of the hospital; we knew that anything other than a
superficial wound resulted in being "sent up the chimney." Because of my
handwriting ability -- I had learned calligraphy as a student -- I was
assigned the responsibility of recording the names and reason for death of
the thousands of inmates who were to be decreed as having died from hart
attacks. I still remember writing: heart attack ... heart attack ...
heart attack ... hour after hour, day after day!
A few weeks later I was made a regular medical assistant at the hospital.
I was assigned to the dysentery unit where I worked until the evacuation
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of the camp in January 1945. Prisoners died like'flies; malnutrition,
severe diarrhea, high fever. Every day we put them on trucks, those
dead and those barely alive. All were taken to the crematoria or gas
chambers. It was because of my stay in the prison hospital that my life
was spared.
Some time during the Spring of 1944, the SS officer in charge of the
prison hospital told me and one other male nurse to report for a special
assignment. We were told to be in front of the hospital compound barracks
to take inmates from a truck to the barrack and return them later to the
truck.
When the truck arrived I found six to eight women in various states
of despair. Among them was a beautiful teenage girl from Hungary with whom I
spoke in Yiddish and German. She told me she had arrived the day before
with thousands of other Jews from Hungary; that she had been separated from
her family; kept in isolation; and brought to our camp without any
knowledge of why. She obviously was very agitated and fearful. Other than
that, she seemed in total command of her faculties. Some of the other women
appeared more distressed. Several were screaming.
We took the women, one by one, into the barrack where a separate room
had been fixed up. A number of SS officers were in the,room. Among them
the prisoner responsible for the'hospital. His name was Bujachek. Since
I went back and forth into the room several times I saw the faces of
the officers and recognized Dr. Mengele as the officer who conducted the
selection process on our arrival in Auschwitz. Besides, he had been to the
camp a number of times.
cont'd.
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After we had taken each of ,the women into the reception room, we were
told to wait outside. We waited for over an hour and then were summoned
back to remove the women. In the room where the "medical services" were
performed one woman was still connected to an electrical machine which
was next to the cot on which she was placed, presumably for electric-shock
experimentation. We had been instructed to have a stretcher ready in
order to carry the women out, one by one. We found two of them dead, one
was the Hungarian girl; two obviously were in a coma; the others were
breathing hard and irregularly. None were conscious. I noticed that the
teeth of those still alive were clenched and that wads of paper were placed
in their mouths.
Auschwitz and its various subcamps were evacuated on January 18th.
I was transferred three times after the death march during which hundreds of
inmates died. I was sent first to Buchenwald and then to Berga. On
April 18, 1945, on a transport from Berga to an unknown destination, two
friends and I escaped. I arrived in the United States in July 1946.
Having lost my entire family, with the exception of my sister, in the
Holocaust, having borne personal witness to the savagery and inhumanity of
the Nazis during my years in the camps, and being one of the relatively few
who survived, I come before this Subcommittee to testi-,:y to the best of my
knowledge and recollection about the abominable acts of Dr. Mengele.
I am here today on behalf of all those who survived and those who did
not, including my own parents.. I remain fully conscious of their pain, their
degredation, their anguish. Josef Nengele was a key element in the evil
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perpetuated in Nazi-Germany. His role and name were known to everyone
in Auschwitz.
-There is another reason why we, the survivors, must speak out.
Efforts are being made -- in America and other countries -- to deny the
reality of the Holocaust. After losing one-third of our people in the
most savage massacre in Jewish history, we still have to prove that
there really was a Holocaust.
No matter how difficult and trying it is to re-experience those
nightmare years, I will do everything in my power to speak out until
Josef Nengele and others like him are apprehended and justice is done.
It is the least we can do -- and expect -- in and from a civilized world.
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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
Good morning.. I am Lieutenant General William E.
Odom, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence for
the Department of the Army. Accompanying me this
morning is Mrs. Susan J. Crawford, General Counsel for
the Department of the Army.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss with you
matters relating to the context and substance of the
seventeen pages of Army documents relating to Dr.
Josef Mengele. Sixteen of these seventeen pages have
been released by the Army pursuant to Freedom of
Information Act requests. The seventeenth page is a
foreign document. We have requested that that foreign
government grant us permission to release the
document. As you may be aware, the releasability of
that seventeenth document is currently a matter in
litigation between Rabbi Hier, et al, and the United
States Gove:.nment. Because of that litigation, it
would be inappropriate for me to comment on any
matters of substance relating to that lawsuit.
Although I am not in a position'to provide first hand
information on the subject of the present and past
whereabouts of Dr..Mengele, let me assure you that the
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Department of the.Army will cooperate fully with the
Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigatio-
ns, in its investigation into this matter.
We welcome the recent statements of Mr. Walter
Kempthorne and any light that he may be able to shed
on this subject. I would like at this time to supply
for the record a certified copy of Mr. Kempthorne's
service record with the United States Army. As you
can appreciate, the information provided by Mr.
Kempthorne is new to us. We will work closely with
OSI to actively investigate this new information, and
any other information which may surface, as to whether
there were any Army contacts with Mengele after World
War II.
I would now like to discuss the seventeen Army
documents. After analyzing them at length, Army
personnel have separated the documents into four
categories.
- The first category contains a one page docu-
ment. It reflects the interception by the U.S. Civil
Censorship Submission, Civil Censorship Division, U.S.
Forces European Theater (USFET), of a telegram written
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by W. Heller of Wayne University to Hermann Rotholz of
.Berlin, dated November 1, 1946. The letter identifies
Mengele as the Camp Medical Officer at Birkenau.
- The second category consists of a memorandum and
transmittal letter (each one page) from Special Agent
Ben J.M. Gorby, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC)
Detachment, to the Commanding Officer, Headquarters
430th CIC Detachment (Vienna). Both of these pages
are dated April 26, 1947. In*the memorandum, Special
Agent Gorby relates information, given him by an
undisclosed sourc-~, that Mengele was (a) arrested in
Vienna and (b) was arrested in the U.S. Zone of
Germany. The memorandum further states, "if an
interrogation of subject by CIC or upon request of CIC
is possible, it is requested that he be interrogated
with regard to the fate of approximately 20 Jewish
children who were removed by him from the'Auschwitz
Camp ... ." I would like to emphasize that the
information contained in the Gorby memorandum is not
supported by any other documents in the Army's_
possession. For that reason I am unable to shed any
light on whether the information contained in the
memorandum is true.
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- The third-category consists of Canadian initi-
ated correspondence between the Canadian and U.S.
governments (7 pages). The Visa Control Section of
the Canadian Embassy (Cologne, Germany) wrote to the
Commanding Officer, USAREUR Central Registry, seeking
information about Mengele in light of information
received that an individual residing in Canac'.a under
the name Joseph Menke might be Mengele. This letter
is dated June 18, 1962. The USAREUR response consists
of a transmittal letter, a summary of U.S. information
concerning Mengele and five data cards on Mengele,
none of which contain fingerprints or imply an arrest
of Mengele. The U.S. response is dated June 26, 1962.
- The final category is of correspondence among
various Army units and between the U.S. Tracing Bureau
and the British Government in 1945 and 1946. It
.concerns. the request of H.H.B. Mosberg, a resident of
London, to be named substitute plaintiff on behalf of
his father who died at Auschwitz, for any War Crimes
proceedings against Mengele (4 pages). Also, the Army
possesses an affidavit from Doctors Lucie Adeisberger
and Marie Stoppelman, notarized in The Netherlands,
stating that Dr. Bernard Mosberg was, sent to the gas
chambers at Auschwitz (2 pages).
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-.The seventeenth page is merely a cover sheet of
our Mengele file and states only his name.
Let me state for the record that the documents
give no indication that Dr. Mengele was the subject of
Army intelligence interest.
If I may, I would now like to discuss the manner
in which our search was conducted. Prior to Rabbi
Hier's Freedom of Information Act request, a file
containing five of the seventeen pages on Mengele was
located in response to another request. Included in
this file was the 28 April 1947 letter of Ben J.M.
Gorby. At that time, further checks were made for
additional records on Mengele with negative results.
In response to a request by Rabbi Abraham Cooper,
Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center, in October
1984, our records were once again examined, and the
five-page file again identified. Those five pages
were released to Rabbi Cooper in November 1984. That
same month Rabbi Hier provided us a list of aliases
allegedly used by Dr. Mengele over the years. Although
we were unable to locate any additional records under
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the aliases, by varying the spelling of Mengele's
name, e.g. "Megele", further searches in our microfilm
holdings were triggered. Also, through recovery of
further internal indices within the microfilm hold-
ings, the microfilm officer was able to establish a
cross-reference to a file concerning Dr. Bernard
Mosberg. That file included the foreign government
information on Mengele. Additional variations on
Mengele's name were developed and further searches
conducted, however, these searches, and searches on
various aliases used by Mengele, as supplied by Rabbi
Hier, have proven futile. For the record, I have
attached to my statement copies of all correspondence
pertaining to these searches.
I hope I have adequately addressed the Subcom-
mittee's questions concerning the seventeen pages of
Army documents relating to Dr. Josef Mengele. Let me
again assure this Subcommittee that we shall fully
cooperate with the Justice Department in its investi-
gation into the past and present whereabouts of
Mengele. I thank you for your attention sand will
gladly try to answer any questions that you may have.
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ALLAN A. R YA N, J R.
1700 K STREET, N W. SUITE 1100
WASHINGTON. D. C. 20006
TESTIMONY OF ALLAN A. RYAN, JR.
BEFORE THE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON JUVENILE JUSTICE
SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
CONCERNING DR. JOSEF MENGELE
February 19, 1985
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to honor. your request that I appear
today to assist you in defining the issues surrounding the
efforts to locate Josef Mengele, the."Angel of Death" at
Auschwitz.
From 1980 until 1983 I was the Director of the
Office of Special Investigations, Criminal Division, U. S.
Department of Justice. As. such, I was responsible for the
investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the.
United States.
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I left the Department of Justice in September 1983
and I now practice law in Washington. I have written a
book, Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in
America, which was published last November by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich. I emphasize that I appear before you as a
private citizen and do not represent the Department of
Justice.
The case of Josef Mengele cannot be examined in a
vacuum. The fact that he. is at-large today should not
surprise anyone who is fami.liar with the world's efforts --
and America's efforts -- to investigate Nazi crimes.
In the years after World War II, Nazi war criminals
came to the United States in great numbers, encouraged by
the Displaced Persons Act, a law passed by Congress that
gave immigration preferences to the very nationalities
whose degree of collaboration with the Nazis had been among
the highest in Europe. The fervor of anti-Communism in this
country was so great that we assumed anyone fleeing the
Soviet Union or other Communist regimes in Europe must be
anti-Communist and therefore a worthy immigrant to our
shores.
Although Nazi criminals were technically barred by
the Displaced Persons Act, lies were simple to concoct and
difficult to detect,, especially with the extremely lax
screening provisions in the DP camps. A death camp guard
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from the Ukraine, for example, who said he had been a
farmer during the war years could easily qualify for a
visa. It is my estimate -- and it is, a conservative
estimate -- that the number of Nazi war criminals who
entered this country in the post-war years was no less than
10,000.
Once in this country, they were literally home
free. No one cared. Congress did nothing; the Executive did
nothing; the press said nothing. The Nazis had been
defeated militarily; Nazism as a political force was dead;
the threat of the Soviet Union and its satellites was a
real one, and few people thought to ask what had become of
the hundreds of thousands of Nazi criminals who had carried
out the Holocaust in Europe.
Congressional apathy, and public apathy, came to an
end only in the late Seventies, when the Immigration
subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee began holding
hearings on the whole matter under Congresswoman Elizabeth
Holtzman and her predecessor Congressman Joshua Eilberg.
These hearings culminated in the creation of the Office of
Special Investigations in 1979. OSI was given the
responsibility, in the Justice Department, of enforcing
U.S. laws against-Nazi war criminals in this country in
order to seek their denaturalization and deportation
through judicial proceedings.
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Since that time, OSI has filed nearly 36 cases
against Nazi war criminals. During my tenure as Director of
that Office, with a dedicated and professional staff, we
went to trial in 21 cases and won 19 of them, and that
success rate has been maintained since my departure.
Several Nazi criminals have been deported from this
country, and several more face imminent deportation as
their seemingly-endless appeals now run out. These deported
Nazis include:
-- Feodor Fedorenko, a guard at the Nazi death camp
Treblinka;
-- Hans Lipschis, a guard at the Auschwitz death
-- Valerian Trifa, a Romanian demagogue and
propagandist who became head of the Romanian Orthodox
Episcopate in this country;
-- Arthur Rudolph, production supervisor at the V-2
rocket works, a man who worked 20,000 slaves to death and
who later became the head of the Saturn V program at NASA.'
As a legal matter, Rudolph left this country voluntarily,
but he did so after being confronted with the evidence
against him, and in lieu of going to trial;
-- John Avdiej, a collaborationist mayor in the
occupied USSR who oversaw the annihilation of all Jews in
the region;
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-- Anatoly Hrusitzky, a Ukrainian policeman who
took part in the murder of innocent Jews.
As we face the question of Josef Mengele,
therefore, we do so with the realization that this
country's concern over the issue of Nazi war criminals is a
relatively recent one, and that the efforts of the Justice
Department, no matter how vigorous, have faced and will
continue to face extraordinary obstacles posed by the
passage of decades between crime and investigation.
As the subcommittee knows, the Attorney General
recently announced that the United States has launched an
international effort to locate and apprehend Josef Mengele.
The investigation is being conducted by my successor as
Director of OSI, Neal Sher, and knowing Mr. Sher and his
staff as I do, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind
that the investigation will be thorough and professional.
Whether it will also be successful -- that is, whether it
will result in the arrest and extradition of Mengele -- no
one can know.
It is my understanding that the Justice Department
has declined this subcommittee's invitation to appear today
and discuss the investigation. I support that position.
Indeed, it is the same position I myself took when I was
appointed by the Attorney General two years ago to
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investigate intelligence ties between the U. S. government
and Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo "Butcher of Lyon."
Investigations of this nature cannot be conducted in
public. When the investigation is completed, I trust that
.the Justice Department will provide to the Congress and the
public a full account of its findings, as it did at the
conclusion of the Barbie investigation in August 1983.
Until that time, it must be allowed to proceed without the
glare of publicity.
There are, I believe, three questions that are of
primary importance to the United States as it begins this
investigation.
First, did Josef Mengele ever have any connection
with the U. S. government? I am highly skeptical that the-
evidence,.when it is gathered, will show any such
relationship. Unlike Klaus Barbie, whose Gestapo duties
included counter-intelligence, Josef Mengele spent the war
as a torturer in a death camp and, even setting aside the
moral question, I am at a loss to discern what skills or
information he might have had that would have been of any
use whatever to American intelligence after the war.
Second, did the United States have Mengele in
custody after the war and, if so, how did he leave our
custody? Did he escape or was he released? If released, did
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U. S. officials know his background and if so why did they
release him?
The information that has been developed on this
question to date is very fragmentary. It consists of a 1947
report by an Army CIC officer who was passing along
information he received from an informant who is otherwise
unidentified, and a recent report by a former soldier who
says that in 1945 he saw a prisoner he was told was Mengele
in a U. S. military camp. I am not questioning the
integrity of either of these men when I say that far more
definitive evidence will be needed if any sound conclusions
are to be reached.
On this point, I see no reason why the
investigation must be limited to the knowledge or actions
of the United States. Indeed, if there is a need for
investigation. into the post-war movement of Mengele -- and
there is -- the historical record would be disserved if
that investigation does not extend to the actions of all
Allied governments after the war.
Third, and most important, where is Josef Mengele
today? Obviously the primary objective of this
investigation should be to locate and apprehend Mengele and
turn him over, through the legal process, to a country that
is prepared to place him on trial and, upon conviction,
punish him.
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A warrant for Mengele's arrest and extradition to
the Federal Republic of Germany has been outstanding for
some time. I trust the FRG will pledge its utmost
cooperation in the search for Mengele and that it will
contribute substantially to the resources that will be
necessary to succeed.
Indeed, I would expect that every nation in the
world, and particularly in Europe and South America, would
stand ready to work together with the United States in what
must truly be an exercise in international cooperation. The
Attorney General announced this investigation in Washington
in the hope that, however late the date, justice might
still be done in this notorious case. I trust that that
hope is shared in Moscow, Bonn, London, Asuncion, Buenos
Aires, and beyond, and that it will be made tangible
through the sharing of information and resources.
Let me conclude my prepared statement with a brief.
description of the actions of OSI regarding Josef Mengele
during my tenure, that is from January 1980 to September
1983. The mandate of OSI, as I have said, was to
investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals in America --
an important and difficult responsibility. I am aware of no
evidence that Mengele has ever been in the United States.
Nonetheless, it was my policy that no information
or allegation we received or might develop concerning Josef
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Mengele was to be disregarded. Every suggestion, regardless
of its source, that Mengele might be, or might have been,
in the United States, was scrutinized. I sent investigators
to Texas, California, New York and elsewhere at various
times to pursue such leads. None of these leads ever
produced evidence of Mengele's presence here.
Shortly before my appointment, reports were
received that Mengele might be arriving in Miami on a
flight from South America. The flight was staked out with
federal agents, but the report proved to be false.
The nature of OSI's work was such that we received
a great deal of information, rumors and speculation about
Nazi criminals in America. As a former prosecutor and
counsel to the Warren Commission, Mr. Chairman, you are
surely familiar with the fact that every prosecutor or'
investigator must assess the reliability of information
before deciding whether or how to act on it, and that was
the general rule that OSI followed.
But for Mengele we made an exception. My attitude
was very simple: God forbid Josef Mengele might be in the
United States and we might be ignorant of it and lose the
opportunity to apprehend him.
Now that the Attorney General has directed OSI to
expand its search world-wide, I join with this subcommittee
and the American people and decent peoples everywhere in
the fervent hope that the investigation will succeed.
Approved For Release 2010/03/16: CIA-RDP87M01152R000100090021-4