Highly decorated Norwegian who fought for Third Reich found living in Spain.
By ETGAR LEFKOVITSdr. efraim zuroff 88(photo credit: )
A Norwegian Nazi who served in the Waffen SS and was the most highly decorated Norwegian to fight for the Third Reich has been found living in Spain, officials said Wednesday.
Fredrik Jensen, 86, was discovered by Spanish authorities living in Marbella on the Costa del Sol during a search for Dr. Aribert Heim, the so-called Dr. Death of the Mauthausen concentration camp who is the second-most wanted Nazi in the world.
Jensen, who joined the SS after the Norwegian Nazi party seized power under Vidkun Quisling in 1942, was awarded the Gold Cross by Hitler.
Spanish officials were forced to conduct the search by a German arrest warrant for Heim, according to EU rules, said Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office.
The center planned to ask Spanish authorities to try Jensen under "universal jurisdiction," since Norway's statue of limitations did not allow him to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Zuroff said.
Spain had invoked universal jurisdiction to try suspected war criminals in the past, including the late Chilean president Augosto Pinochet, he added.
Jensen served in a number of SS units and was one of the few foreigners to receive the highest decoration granted by Hitler to SS troops.
After the war, he was sentenced to three months in jail in Norway and had his citizenship rights revoked for 10 years.
After he was released from prison, he became a highly successful industrialist in Sweden.
Jensen was registered as a war criminal with Interpol and was arrested and deported from the US during a vacation in 1994.
He and his wife then moved to Spain, where he lived without attracting any attention for the last decade.
He has never expressed regret for his actions during the war.
The Wiesenthal Center also plans to urge Spanish authorities to investigate whether other Nazis are living in Spain.
"I am quite certain that many more Nazis are happily living in Spain, which was one of the most important havens for Nazi war criminals after World War II," Zuroff said.
