...OSI announced the loss of citizenship and removal from the United States of a former Chicago resident. Martin Bartesch admitted to our office and the court that he had voluntarily joined the Waffen SS and had served in the notorious SS Death’s Head Division at the Mauthausen concentration camp where, at the hands of Bartesch and his cohorts, many thousands of prisoners were gassed, shot, starved and worked to death. He also confessed to having concealed his service at the infamous camp from U.S. immigration officials.

In Bartesch’s case, OSI researchers uncovered iron-clad documentary evidence of his direct, hands-on role in the Nazi genocide. Among the SS documents captured by American forces when they liberated Mauthausen was what we described as the Unnatural Death Book, a register of prisoners killed, along with the identity of the SS guard responsible for the murder.

So powerful was this evidence that, in postwar trials conducted by the U.S. military, the book served as the basis for execution or long prison sentences for many identified SS guards.

An entry on Oct. 20, 1943, registers the shooting death of Max Oschorn, a French Jewish prisoner. His murderer was also recorded: SS man Martin Bartesch. It was a most chilling document.

Bartesch’s family and “supporters,” seeking special relief, launched a campaign to discredit OSI while trying to garner political support. Indeed, OSI received numerous inquiries from members of Congress who had been approached.

After we explained the facts of the case, however, the matter inevitably was dropped; no one urged that Bartesch or his family be accorded any special treatment.



Well, there was one exception — Jimmy Carter.

In September 1987, after all of the gruesome details of the case had been made public and widely reported in the media, I... I was ... taken aback by the personal, handwritten note Jimmy Carter sent to me seeking “special consideration” for this Nazi SS murderer. There on the upper-right corner of Bartesch’s daughter’s letter was a note to me in the former president’s handwriting, and with his signature, urging that “in cases such as this, special consideration can be given to the families for humanitarian reasons.”

...As disturbing as I found Carter’s plea, and although his attempted intervention has always gnawed at me, I chalked it up at the time to a certain naivete on the part of the former president. But now, in light of Carter’s most recent writings and comments, I am left to wonder whether it was I who was naive simply to dismiss his knee-jerk appeal as the instinctive reaction of a well-meaning but misguided humanitarian.

...The exposure of Carter’s views on Israel and the Jewish lobby has shed a clearer light on his attempt to influence me in the Bartesch case.We know from his own confession that he has had lust in his heart. Unfortunately, he has given us ample reason to wonder what else is lurking there.