Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005200025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, U.S. war-crimes prosecutors say they now have an extraordinary opportunity to gain access to records that could help them track former Nazi officials previously unknown to them.
As part of the agreement reached this month, the Justice Department will also be allowed to examine prison archives at Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp in what is now East Germany.
"From an investigative point of view, this holds out great potential," said Neal Sher, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which is responsible for tracking down and deporting war criminals.
Sher said he planned to visit Eastern Europe later this year to seek similar help from other nations that have offered only limited cooperation to the United States in providing evidence from wartime files.
When Germany was divided after the war, some of the most important Nazi records were retained by East Germany.
East Germany had cooperated with U.S. prosecutors in a very restricted way, Sher said, requiring that requests for war records be highly specific and be made through cumbersome diplomatic channels.
"We'd have to ask for information on a specific person or seek information on a very specific topic," he said.
Sher said it was not likely the archives would be opened to the public.
Under the new agreement, Justice Department investigators will be allowed to search wartime archives, including files that index the material.
A Justice Department historian has already been sent to East Germany to review some of the Nazi archives in East Berlin, and Sher said he hoped to have additional investigators travel to the archives later this year.
"We want to go there and really review the files and the other holdings much more carefully," he said.
by CNB