Poland is demanding that Israel extradite for trial a Jewish man accused of brutal tortures and mass killings in a Soviet concentration camp.
Solomon Morel, 86, was commandant of a death camp at Swietochlowice, Poland after World War II. The camp's population included many innocent Polish men, women, and children of German descent whose homes, businesses and belongings had been seized by Jewish communist authorities. The victims were then herded into numerous concentration camps, one at Swietochlowice.
Morel was indicted in 1994 by a Polish court and ordered to face charges of "crimes against humanity." Among the crimes the Jewish commandant allegedly committed: murders by bashing the heads of babies against stone walls; bludgeoning inmates to death with stools and clubs; inflicting extreme pain by forcing objects up inmates' anus; forcing women and children to parade around nude in subfreezing temperatures; making inmates eat human feces; and starving people to death.
Upon his indictment, Solomon Morel, assisted by the Israeli government, fled to Tel Aviv, Israel where he has been hiding out. American television's 60 Minutes program tracked him down and located Morel in that city. His whereabouts are known to the Israeli authorities.
Up to 80,000 people are believed to have died as a result of torture, deprivation, and starvation in post-World War II concentration camps, all of which were headed by Jewish commandants.
According to a report in London's The Telegraph, newspaper (January 2, 2005) and in John Sack's investigative book, An Eye for An Eye, "Stalin deliberately picked Jews as camp commandants in the knowledge they would show little mercy to the inmates."
The Polish public prosecutor leading the Morel case, Eva Kok, insisted that the claims could not be "swept under the carpet." She added: "The Israelis are extremely efficient in pursuing people they have accused of such crimes�and they must accept that other nations want to do the same." <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />
