Adolph Eichmann was responsible for implementing Hitler’s “final solution” for European Jewry and devised and supervised the plan for systematically executing millions of Jews during the war. He later escaped to Argentina, from where he was secretly abducted by Israeli security forces and brought to Israel, and was executed in 1962.
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying, “It's a tragedy the US chose to use some of Hitler’s henchmen in the aftermath of the war.” He welcomed the revelations, though he noted that the CIA's relationship with former Nazis has been known for a long time.
"It's definitely high time that documents concerning this practice be revealed and researchers be granted access to them," Zuroff said. "It's a shame these documents weren't released earlier," when the people involved could possibly have been brought to justice.
Other former Nazis known to have been employed by the CIA include Reinhard Gehlen, head of German intelligence for the eastern front during the war. Gehlen gave the CIA access to an intelligence network maintained by known Nazi war criminals, including at least 100 former Gestapo officials.
The National Security Archive revealed the information based on documents obtained through the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
Former Congresswomen Elizabeth Holtzmen of New York, a member of a committee set up to implement the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, severely criticized the lack of CIA cooperation in the past. “I think that the CIA has defied the law," she told The New York Times, "and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at the Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II."
Mark Weitzman, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against Hate and Terrorism, said, "It is imperative that our nation be honest about its relationship with the perpetrators of the Holocaust... [T]he C.I.A. still continues to sit on records relating to Nazis. The C.I.A. should be releasing these records to comply with U.S. law, to comply with our obligation as a member of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, which includes the commitment to opening archives relating to the Holocaust, and to the citizens of the U.S. It is important to find out the extent and details of our cooperation with former Nazis to complete the historical record, to ensure that, if possible, justice be served, and to create a moral compass for the future."