THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602270133
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT McCASKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
Since 1983, Norfolk native Elizabeth White has been on the front line of searching out illegal Nazi immigrants living in or trying to enter the United States.
As chief of investigative research for the Office of Special Investigations with the U.S. Justice Department, White personally has opened more than 200 official investigations of suspected Nazis living in this country. She returned to Norfolk last week to give a lecture at Old Dominion University.
``Some people may be surprised that any Nazis are still here and that the government is still interested in investigating them,'' White said. ``... The fall of communism opened up access to more Nazi documents than ever before. We're currently working on over 300 cases.''
More than 75 people - young and old - attended her discussion.
``We're Jewish, and any time we can get information on this subject we have to be there,'' said Nancy Kanter, who came from Chesapeake with her husband Eugene.
White said that thousands of Nazi refugees and their collaborators illegally entered the United States after World War II. Nazis were barred from this country if they were determined by the U.S. government to have had taken part in any persecution on the basis of a person's race, religion or natural origin. But uncovering many of the suspects' true backgrounds was hindered by the veil of communism.
The U.S. government didn't begin ardent investigation of illegal Nazi immigration until 1979, when the attorney general assigned Nazi war criminal investigations to the criminal division of the Justice Department and created the Office of Special Investigations.
``The required investigative resources and personnel were not made available prior to 1979,'' White noted.
Since that time, the Office of Special Investigations has grown into a sophisticated information-gathering network. The organization has opened 1,470 cases, with 53 individuals being denaturalized - loss of U.S. citizenship - and 45 deportations. A total of 87 Nazis and their collaborators have been barred from entering the United States.
White has been directly involved in the investigation of 21 cases that resulted in denaturalization or deportation and has been a key investigator in all but one of the 87 barrings. She has put more than 60,000 people on the watch list of aliens prohibited from entering the United States.
White, 41, who lives in Falls Church, Va., with her husband and two children, grew up in the Algonquin Park section of Norfolk. She is a graduate of Norfolk Academy, received her bachelor's degree from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and holds a doctorate in European history from the University of Virginia, specializing in German history.
After returning from a grant study program in Germany during the early 1980s, White soon was hired by the Justice Department for her knowledge of the country.
She took part in the special investigations of Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious ``Angel of Death,'' and Kurt Waldheim, a former head of the United Nations who was implicated in crimes in the Balkans and now is barred from entering the United States.
``Although I spend most of my time tracking people, some of the things I've read are horrifying,'' White said. ``Since I've had kids, it's especially hard to think of the things that happened to the children.''
Many of today's suspected Nazis live in or around industrial areas, where they went to find work after the war. Cleveland, Chicago and New York are among cities considered to have the greatest concentrations of former Nazis.
White said she couldn't comment on any ongoing investigations and would not say if any suspects live in the Hampton Roads area.
The Office of Special Investigations has an extensive data base for its operations, cross-referencing information from the death camps, police reports, governmental department lists and witness accounts.
Among her more recent investigations was the case of Wasyl Lytwyn, who was in the auxiliary guard service for the death camps and Jewish slave-labor compounds. He also participated in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Lytwyn, who lived in Chicago for nearly 40 years, was prosecuted, found guilty and denaturalized in 1995. He left the country before being deported.
In addressing widely accepted allegations that the U.S. government illegally allowed Nazi scientists to immigrate to this country to work on the rocket and burgeoning space program, White confirmed that the Army indeed knew about but looked the other way in the case of Arthur Rudolph, a Nazi scientist. Rudolph was involved in crimes, including hangings, at the infamous Dora-Nordhausen slave-labor missile factory. In the United States, Rudolph oversaw the building of the Saturn rocket, which took U.S. astronauts to the moon. When his past was uncovered, he did not fight the investigation and chose to leave the country in 1984.
While many barriers have been eliminated since the fall of communism, there still are obstacles.
``Nazis hid and scattered incriminating documents all over Europe,'' White said. ``They're not easy to track down.''
Also hindering the search is the downsizing of the Office of Special Investigations, reduced from about 50 full-time employees in the early 1980s to about 25 today. In addition, the job brings anonymous threats from time to time.
Still, White says the hunt is well worth the effort: ``It's very exciting to seek out and find these old records. We've struck some gold in recent months.''
Since being formed, the Office of Special Investigations has initiated legal action in some 90 cases. The government has lost five times. There are 17 cases now in litigation, more than 300 being researched and additional investigations expected to open throughout 1996.
``One fact that really has been driven home to me in doing this is that wars are fought by young men,'' White said. ``It's now 50 years later and we're still prosecuting them in court.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Norfolk native Elizabeth White is chief of investigative research
for the Office of Special Investigations with the U.S. Justice
Department.
by CNB