Nazi hunter

Last updated November 10, 2024

A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prominent Nazi hunters include Simon Wiesenthal,^[1] Tuviah Friedman, Serge Klarsfeld, Beate Klarsfeld, Ian Sayer, Yaron Svoray, Elliot Welles, and Efraim Zuroff.^[2]

History

With the onset of the Cold War following World War II, both the Western Allies of World War II and the Soviet Union sought out former Nazi scientists and operatives for programs such as Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim. Cooperative former Nazis, such as Wernher von Braun and Reinhard Gehlen, were occasionally given state protection in return for valuable information or services. At the time, Gehlen had been chief of the German Federal Intelligence Service or Bundesnachrichtendienst (federal intelligence agency), founder of the Gehlen Org, "a true life version of ODESSA"^[3] network, which helped exfiltrate Nazis from Europe. Other Nazis used ratlines to escape post-war Europe to places such as South America.^[4]^[5]

In response, Nazi hunters sought out fugitives on their own or formed groups, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Methods used by Nazi hunters include offering rewards for information,^[6] reviewing immigration and military records,^[7] and launching civil lawsuits.^[7]

In later decades, Nazi hunters found greater cooperation with Western and South American governments and the state of Israel. By the end of the 20th century, pursuit of former Nazis declined, because most of the generation active in Nazi leadership had died.^[7]

Notable targets

The Simon Wiesenthal Center publishes an annual report on Nazi war criminals.^[8] Some notable targets of Nazi hunters have included:

Alois Brunner, Eichmann's assistant and Commander of Drancy internment camp, was one of the key figures in implementing the Final Solution. Was pursued by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, in Syria, evaded capture until his death around 2001 in Damascus.
Herberts Cukurs, the "Butcher of Riga", was assassinated by Mossad agents in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1965.
Adolf Eichmann was pursued by Wiesenthal before being captured and smuggled from Argentina in 1960 by Mossad and was tried in Israel, where he was executed in 1962.
Boļeslavs Maikovskis, a Latvian Nazi collaborator, was pursued to Mineola, New York by Welles. Maikovskis eventually emigrated to West Germany in 1987, where he was found unfit to stand trial due to age.
Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death", was sought in various South American countries by Mossad, Wiesenthal, and the Klarsfelds. He evaded capture until his accidental death in Brazil in 1979; his remains were identified in 1985.
Erich Priebke, an SS officer responsible for the mass murder of Italian civilians, was interviewed openly in Argentina in 1994, by ABC Primetime Live host Sam Donaldson. He was subsequently extradited to Italy and, in 1998, sentenced to house arrest for life. Priebke died in Rome in 2013, at the age of 100 and was buried in a prison cemetery because no church community was willing to offer a burial site.^[9]
Eduard Roschmann was sought by Wiesenthal in Argentina. The Argentine government made plans for his extradition public in 1977, allowing him to escape to Paraguay. He apparently died the same year, but Wiesenthal was skeptical that the body was Roschmann's.
Dinko Šakić was pursued to Argentina by Zuroff. Making no attempt to hide, he made several media appearances before being extradited to Croatia in 1998, where he was sentenced to 20 years, and died in 2008.
Josef Schwammberger was traced to Argentina by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Welles. Extradited to West Germany in 1990, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992 and died in prison in 2004.
Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps, was caught by Wiesenthal in São Paulo in 1967. He was extradited to Germany in 1970 and sentenced to life in prison, where he died the following year.
Gustav Wagner, the "Wolf", was exposed by Wiesenthal in Brazil in 1978. He was arrested, but Brazil refused to extradite him to West Germany. Wagner was found dead in an alleged suicide in São Paulo in 1980.
Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon", was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983, after earlier attempts by Serge and Beate Klarsfeld to track him. Until Bolivia's transition to democracy, he had been protected by the US and German intelligence services for anti-Soviet intelligence purposes, and employed by the Bolivian army under an alias. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987, he died in 1991.

Related Research Articles

Alois Brunner was an Austrian officer who held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) during World War II. Brunner played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and Slovakia. He was known as Final Solution architect Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man.

Serge Klarsfeld is a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, he has made notable efforts to commemorate the Jewish victims of German-occupied France and has been a supporter of Israel.

Erich Priebke was a German mid-level SS commander in the SS police force (SiPo) of Nazi Germany. In 1996, he was convicted of war crimes in Italy for commanding the unit which was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre in Rome on 24 March 1944 in which 335 Italian civilians were killed in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 men of the German SS Police Regiment Bozen. Priebke was one of the men held responsible for this mass execution. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he fled to Argentina, where he lived for almost 50 years.

Josef Franz Leo Schwammberger was a German SS (Schutzstaffel) Non-Commissioned Officer, Oberscharführer, war criminal, and commandant of the camps in Rozwadów, Przemyśl, and Mielec.

The ratlines were systems of escape routes for German Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in the Americas, particularly in Argentina, though also in Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Switzerland.

Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture, and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Tuviah Friedman was a Nazi hunter and director of the Institute for the Documentation of Nazi War Crimes in Haifa, Israel.

Yaron Svoray is an Israeli former police detective, author, and lecturer, most notable for his work against Neo-Nazis. Svoray infiltrated German Neo-Nazi groups, contributed to the arrest of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, and has also been active in searching for treasure looted by the Nazis.

Efraim Zuroff is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal Center and the author of its annual "Status Report" on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which includes a list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herberts Cukurs</span> Latvian aviator and Nazi war criminal (1900–1965)

Herberts Albert Cukurs was a Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator. He served as the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit that carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews during the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, the accounts of multiple Holocaust survivors, including Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to personally supervising and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for the duration of the German occupation of Latvia. His crimes included shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity, burning Jews alive, and sexually assaulting Jewish women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eduard Roschmann</span> SS officer (1908–1977)

Eduard Roschmann was an Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmführer and commandant of the Riga Ghetto during 1943. He was responsible for numerous murders and other atrocities. As a result of a fictionalized portrayal in the novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth and its subsequent film adaptation, Roschmann came to be known as the "Butcher of Riga".

Charles Zentai was a Hungarian-born resident of Australia accused of a Holocaust-related war crime. He resided in Perth, Western Australia for many years after living in the American- and French-occupied zones of post-World War II Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aribert Heim</span> Austrian SS doctor

Aribert Ferdinand Heim, also known as Dr. Death and Butcher of Mauthausen, was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) doctor. During World War II, he served at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, killing and torturing inmates using various methods, such as the direct injection of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims.

The Eichmann trial was the 1961 trial in Israel of major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann who was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. Eichmann was a senior Nazi party member and served at the rank of Obersturmbenführer (Lieutenant-Colonel) in the SS, and was one of the people primarily responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution. He was responsible for the Nazis' train shipments from across Europe to the concentration camps, even managing the shipment to Hungary directly, where 564,000 Jews died. After World War II he fled to Argentina, living under the pseudonym "Ricardo Clement" until his capture in 1960 by Mossad.

Sándor Képíró was a Hungarian gendarmerie captain during World War II accused of war crimes committed by Hungarian forces.

Algimantas Mykolas Dailidė was a Lithuanian Nazi collaborator who was an official of the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian Security Police (Saugumas) during World War II. After the war, Dailidė sought refuge in the United States, saying he had been a "forester." While in the United States, Dailidė lived in both Florida and Cleveland, Ohio. He was a real estate agent until he retired to Gulfport, Florida. His citizenship was revoked in 1997, and he fled to Germany in 2004.

The Jewish Historical Documentation Centre was an office headed by Simon Wiesenthal in Linz. The centre collected and promulgated information about war crimes, specific mainly to crimes against the Jewish people as perpetrated by Nazi Germany in Europe during the Second World War.

<i>Hunting Eichmann</i> Book by Neal Bascomb

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi is a book by Neal Bascomb. It chronicles the efforts to capture Adolf Eichmann, a top official in the SS during World War II and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, in the years following the war. A network of concentration camp survivors and Nazi hunters in Europe, including Simon Wiesenthal, pursued leads on Eichmann's whereabouts and passed information to the government of Israel and its foreign intelligence agency, Mossad. A team of agents from both Mossad and Shin Bet traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Eichmann was hiding, and captured him in May 1960. He was taken to Israel, tried and convicted of war crimes in 1961, and executed by hanging in June 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">László Csatáry</span> Hungarian alleged Nazi criminal

László Csizsik Csatáry was a Hungarian citizen and was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in 1948 by a Czechoslovak court as a Nazi war criminal. In 2012, his name was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.

References

↑ "Simon Wiesenthal: Nazi hunter". BBC News . 28 December 1999.
↑ "Operation: Last Chance". swcjerusalem.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.
↑ Joel Levy (4 November 2004). Secret History: Hidden Forces That Shaped the Past. Summersdale Publishers Limited. pp. 37–41. ISBN 978-1-84839-640-1.
↑ Parton, Nigel R. "Book Review: The Beast Reawakens." European History Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2000): 291–294.
↑ "Mendes, Alfred. "Bosnia, Bohemia & Bilderberg: The Cold War Internationale." In Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference, vol. 16, pp. 5–15. 1994" (PDF). Retrieved July 22, 2023.
↑ David Crossland (14 January 2008). "Nazi Hunters More Than Double Reward to $25,000". Spiegel Online International. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
1 2 3 Jason Cato (15 April 2007). "The Nazi hunt continues for ex-guards". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Archived from the original on 18 August 2008. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
↑ Zuroff, Efraim (April 2013). "Simon Wiesenthal Center 2013 Annual Report on the Status of Nazi War Criminal" (PDF). Simon Wiesenthal Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-09-03. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
↑ Agnew, Paddy (Nov 8, 2013). "Priebke buried in prison cemetery". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2020-09-02.

External links

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[1] "Simon Wiesenthal: Nazi hunter". BBC News . 28 December 1999.

[2] "Operation: Last Chance". swcjerusalem.org. Retrieved July 22, 2023.

[Levy2004-3] Joel Levy (4 November 2004). Secret History: Hidden Forces That Shaped the Past. Summersdale Publishers Limited. pp. 37–41. ISBN 978-1-84839-640-1.

[4] Parton, Nigel R. "Book Review: The Beast Reawakens." European History Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2000): 291–294.

[5] "Mendes, Alfred. "Bosnia, Bohemia & Bilderberg: The Cold War Internationale." In Common Sense: Journal of the Edinburgh Conference, vol. 16, pp. 5–15. 1994" (PDF). Retrieved July 22, 2023.

[6] David Crossland (14 January 2008). "Nazi Hunters More Than Double Reward to $25,000". Spiegel Online International. Retrieved 26 May 2011.

[ptr-7] 1 2 3 Jason Cato (15 April 2007). "The Nazi hunt continues for ex-guards". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Archived from the original on 18 August 2008. Retrieved 8 May 2017.

[8] Zuroff, Efraim (April 2013). "Simon Wiesenthal Center 2013 Annual Report on the Status of Nazi War Criminal" (PDF). Simon Wiesenthal Center. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-09-03. Retrieved 2013-07-30.

[Priebke_Irishtimes-9] Agnew, Paddy (Nov 8, 2013). "Priebke buried in prison cemetery". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2020-09-02.

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