nazi scientists

[Edward M. Pilszak]

Got this from Sydney Morning Herald.... so, how does this differ from the
U.S. bringing nazi scientists over?
Ed

Revealed: Australia's welcome to Hitler
scientists 

By GERARD RYLE and GARY HUGHES 

Nazi scientists, including SS members and Hitler storm-troopers, were secretly
brought to Australia after World War II to work on government defence projects
and other research.

A Herald investigation reveals that 31 Nazi Party members were flown out
under the cover of a broader scheme approved by the then Labor prime minister
Ben Chifley.

At least 127 scientists and technicians were brought in under the scheme at a
time when Germans were barred from entering Australia. They were recruited
by the Australian Government between 1946 and 1951 and some were given
security clearances for weapons development and rocket research at Woomera
in South Australia.

The discovery of proven Nazis among the imported scientists contradicts a 1986
report commissioned by the Hawke government on suspected Nazi war criminals
in Australia which found that scientists recruited under the scheme were
"rejected if they were considered unacceptable due to their association with the
Nazi Party".

The findings of the 1986 report headed off any further investigation of the
scientists' backgrounds by the Australian War Crimes Tribunal.

In addition to at least 31 Nazi Party members, a further 12 belonged to other
Nazi groups, and others were key figures in the German military during the war.
Six were in the SS or had been storm-troopers with the Sturm Abteilung (SA)
brownshirts.

Dr Efraim Zuroff, director in Israel of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Jewish
organisation that hunts down Nazis, said that at least seven of the 127
scientists'
names supplied by the Herald matched suspects still wanted by the United
Nations War Crimes Commission. "We do not yet possess enough details to be
able to verify whether they are the same persons admitted to Australia," he
said.

At least 10 of the scientists brought to Australia had worked for
I.G.Farben, the
German chemical company that exploited concentration camp slave labour and
invented the Zyklon-B poison gas used in the gas chambers.

Records detail how the Nazi backgrounds of some of scientists were kept secret
because the Australian government feared it would have to abandon the scheme
if the public found out.

The Germans were brought in despite bitter protests from Australia's own
Federal security agency, which was refused permission to carry out independent
security checks on the scientists.

Previously classified documents seen by the Herald in the National Archives
show that one of the scientists recruited under the Employment of Scientific and
Technical Enemy Aliens scheme was a German Army war gas researcher.

Others included the head of the top-secret Messerschmitt jet aircraft factory,
one of the developers of the helicopter, and a nuclear physicist who did atomic
research for the German Army and later worked for the Defence Research
Laboratories in Melbourne. One former member of the Nazi Party is described
in his file as having been a "high state functionary" in the Nazi occupation
government in Poland during the war.

At least 12 scientists - six of them former Nazi Party members - were employed
at the Government's defence or aeronautical laboratories. 

One later headed the Weapons Research Establishment's propulsion division and
was one of at least two German scientists who worked on guided missile rocket
tests at Woomera during the 1950s.

Eight scientists worked for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
(later the CSIRO). A further 53 were hired by State and Federal government
departments or authorities, including the Sydney Water Board and the
Postmaster General (PMG).