Influence of Nazi past on German police assessed

BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) Germany belatedly is assessing the impact former Nazis may have had on the federal criminal police (BKA), the head of the agency said today.

''We are very tardy with this process of assessment, but it's never too late because no line should ever be drawn under these events,'' BKA President Joerg Ziercke said on Deutschlandfunk radio.

Some historians have said the influence of former Nazis over the BKA has meant that it has not been aggressive enough in pursuing right-wing extremist crimes.

The police last week began a series of three conferences involving historians and former police officials which will seek to gauge whether the working practices and attitudes instilled by former Nazis still influence police work.

''I believe that we are a very democratic police force, a police force in a free, democratic state under the rule of law,'' Ziercke said.

''But we want to know where our roots are and whether there is anything left over from this time in the 1960s and 1970s that we have not identified.'' Attempts by the allies to create a post-war civil service in West Germany that was free of Nazis quickly foundered after the end of World War Two.

Many former members of Hitler's party, including SS officers, ended up in influential positions in institutions such as the police and the domestic and foreign security services, as well as government ministries.

Most police officers who survived the Third Reich found work in the post-war force and by the end of the 1950s almost all the top positions in the BKA were held by former Nazis.

Out of 47 top BKA officials, 33 had been members of the SS, Hitler's elite paramilitary organisation that was responsible for some of the Nazis' worst atrocities.

German police officers had earlier played a significant role in the Holocaust and historians say as many as 200,000 people were murdered by police battalions.

STEP FURTHER Ziercke, who was born two years after the war's end, in 1947, said the latest effort to deal with the BKA's Nazi past would go a step further than previous assessments.

Most former Nazi BKA officials had died and none were still serving, he added.

''It's not about the personal guilt of current BKA officers, but about responsibility for what happened then and anchoring this in our consciousness so that it never happens to public institutions again,'' he said.

Ziercke said the issue of right-wing crimes was at the top of the office's agenda, along with terrorism.

''We devote a great deal of attention to this issue, I leave no doubt about that,'' Ziercke said.

''And I think that this initiative that we have started where we are publically dealing with our past proves that.

REUTERS LPB BST2004