Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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. . . . And Walther Rauff, Too!

 

COMMENT: Adding to the already long list of heinous war crim­i­nals who found shel­ter and employ­ment with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, is the BBC”s dis­clo­sure that Walther Rauff found a niche with the BND.

Orig­i­na­tor of the mobile gas chambers–vans that fed lethal car­bon monox­ide into the pas­sen­ger area–Rauff worked for the then West Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice, which aid­ed his legal defense.

Hav­ing escaped Europe through the Vat­i­can-gen­er­at­ed “Rat Lines”, Rauff was lat­er report­ed by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al to have worked for the Pinochet regime in Chile as an “inter­roga­tor.”

“Want­ed Nazi Walther Rauff ‘Was West Ger­man Spy’ ”; BBC News; 9/27/2011.

EXCERPT: A high-rank­ing Nazi offi­cer who helped devel­op a mobile gas cham­ber became a spy for West Ger­many after World War II, archives have revealed.

For­mer SS offi­cer Walther Rauff worked for West Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice, the BND, between 1958 and 1962.

In hind­sight, his recruit­ment was “polit­i­cal­ly and moral­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble”, said BND his­to­ri­an Bodo Hechel­ham­mer.

Rauff died in Chile in 1984, hav­ing evad­ed tri­al for war crimes.

The charges relat­ed to his time as an offi­cial of the crim­i­nal tech­ni­cal insti­tute of the Reich secu­ri­ty main office, which he joined in 1941.

As US intel­li­gence lat­er put it, Rauff designed gas vans used to mur­der Jews and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties.

With Ger­man defeat he fled to Chile and changed his name to Enri­co Gomez.

But the BND traced him and recruit­ed him as spy, osten­si­bly to go to Cuba to spy on leader Fidel Cas­tro.

He was denied entry but still earned more than DM70,000 ($18,000, £11,500) dur­ing his time with the ser­vice.

Pub­licly he became a want­ed man when his wartime role was brought to light but — even after his arrest by Chilean police in 1962 — he was being sup­port­ed by the BND.

Mr Hechel­ham­mer dis­closed that the agency was pay­ing his legal bills as he fought extra­di­tion.

Rauff was freed by Chile’s Supreme Court five months lat­er in 1963, on the grounds that his crimes had been com­mit­ted too long ago.

The gov­ern­ment of Gen­er­al Augus­to Pinochet, who seized pow­er in Chile a mil­i­tary coup in 1973, resist­ed all calls for Rauf­f’s extra­di­tion to stand tri­al in West Ger­many or Israel. . . .

 

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