U.S. Asked to Bar Reunion of GI, Nazi SS Veterans
Vienna-based Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has asked the U.S. State Department to try to prevent an American veterans group from meeting next week in Germany with former German Waffen SS soldiers they once battled, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said Wednesday.
The center released a Sept. 11 letter addressed to Helene van Damm, U.S. ambassador to Austria, in which Wiesenthal charged that a meeting between the American veterans and former Waffen SS soldiers “cannot be in the interest of the United States.”
“I don’t know about the possibilities of the U.S. State Department to prevent such an event,” Wiesenthal wrote. “But it would be very important because . . . the SS will, when it comes to such a meeting . . . present it as an action of reconciliation with the SS.”
Members of the 70th Infantry Division have met with veterans of the 6th Mountain Division of the Waffen SS in Europe every two years since 1977.
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