Congressional Record: July 12, 2001 (Senate)
Page S7596
SENATE RESOLUTION 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 HOLOCAUST, AND FOR OTHER
PURPOSES
Mr. CORZINE submitted the following resolution; which was referred to
the Committee on Foreign Relations:
S. Res. 133
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.
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