A Justice Department report offers new evidence that the United States created a "safe haven" in America for Nazis and their collaborators following the end of World War II, The New York Times reports. The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has reportedly tried to keep secret, describes the roles of the lawyers, historians and investigators at the agency’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in pursuing the most notorious Nazi cases of the past 30 years.
According to The Times, the report also details the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the German SS officer and physician known as the “Angel of Death”; the former Waffen SS officer killed in New Jersey; and the story of the government’s mistaken identification of the man known as "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at the Treblinka concentration camp.
The Justice Department report, which the agency reportedly had resisted making public since 2006, describes what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors.” It goes on to say that investigators learned some war criminals “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the U.S., despite the fact that government officials knew of their past histories.
The report also mentions the divide among government officials over the effort to seemingly protect Nazis. And, according to The Times, it states that the number of Nazis who made it into the United States is likely far fewer than 10,000, the number often cited by government officials. Accused Nazis who have been deported, had their citizenship voided or been blocked from coming to the United States since the creation of the OSI, number more than 300.
Also, the Justice Department report says that the agency often kept secret the information known by U.S. officials about Nazis living in America, according to The Times.
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