c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The Nazi movement was a malignant cancer that killed tens of millions of people, engulfed the world in an horrific war, and fostered murderous hatred of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the physically disabled, the mentally infirm and a long list of other “inferior” peoples and groups.

Although World War II ended in 1945, the Nazi cancer has continued to fester _ sometimes in a latent form, sometimes more visibly. But make no mistake, Nazism, as a lethal pathology, did not die 61 years ago.

A recent event validates this dire diagnosis.

Because of the continuing efforts of Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Democratic congresswoman from New York, and the 1998 Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act co-sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., our government was forced to release 27,000 pages of archival material that had been kept secret for decades. Holtzman is a leading member of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.

The newly revealed official reports, memos, cables and letters contain the shocking (but not surprising) revelation that in 1958 the CIA knew that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was living under a false name in Argentina. The West German intelligence community had informed the CIA that Eichmann, the leader of the Gestapo office that directed the mass murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust, had gone undercover with a new identity: “Clemens.” The actual pseudonym was “Ricardo Klement,” surely a close enough match for even amateur intelligence agents.

Eichmann was a high-priority Nazi, but the CIA did not follow up on the lead, nor did it share this vital and accurate information with Israel, a country that had been hunting Eichmann for years.

In 1960, two years after the CIA knew about Eichmann/Clemens/Klement, the Israelis, using their own intelligence resources, discovered the same information. They captured the Nazi killer near Buenos Aires and placed him on trial in Jerusalem. He was found guilty of many crimes against humanity and, in the only case of Israel’s use of the death penalty, hanged in 1962. His ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean, guaranteeing his grave would never become a Nazi shrine.

But why didn’t the CIA pass on the 1958 data to its ally, Israel? The answer is a troubling insight into the fact that our government used Nazi leaders after 1945 as spies, “experts” and “consultants” in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The U.S. simply had no interest in tracking down Nazi criminals, even a prominent one like Eichmann.

While the U.S. employed many Nazis during the Cold War, Eichmann was not one of them. Yet, the CIA was fearful that his capture and the public revelation that “ex-Nazis” were employed by the American intelligence service would blow the cover of its nest of agents, some of whom also worked for the USSR.

Some day historians will determine whether the cynical use of Nazis against the Soviets (who used their own “ex-Nazis” against us) was even effective. When the 27,000 pages were released in early June, Holtzman had it right: “Using bad people can have very bad consequences … the CIA failed to lift a finger” in capturing Nazi murderers, including Eichmann.

She added: “Is it ever right to deal with mass murderers or their accomplices? They force us to confront not only the moral harm, but also the practical harm of using them.”

This latest episode is one more chapter of the U.S. government’s tortured record in confronting Nazism. Thank God, our nation was a leader in physically destroying Hitler’s Germany. Still, many disturbing questions remain about the government’s indefensible behavior: in the 1930s, when the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees when Nazism was consolidating power in Germany; during World War II, when the U.S. should have bombed rail lines that transported millions of victims to death camps; and now, when we have the post-war record of utter indifference to capturing Nazi leaders once the Cold War intensified.

Let the historical investigations begin. The issues are too important to be neglected. The Nazi cancer must always be aggressively opposed. Otherwise it will continue to emerge, with more disastrous results.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/LF END RUDINEditors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.