Killing the SS Read online

  BITBURG, GERMANY

  EARLY AFTERNOON

  President Ronald Reagan holds a wreath as he steps somberly toward the brick memorial tower serving as the centerpiece of the Kolmeshöhe Cemetery near Bitburg, Germany. The sky is gray. The American leader is not wearing a hat, but a light rain has prompted him to don a beige trench coat. Orange marigolds and yellow daisies grow wild in the new spring grass as a trumpeter mournfully plays “I Had a Comrade,” a German song dedicated to fallen soldiers.

  Reagan’s visit to Kolmeshöhe will be brief, but he feels an obligation to honor the German war dead. The president and his wife, Nancy, have spent part of their morning touring the site of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Along with thousands buried in mass graves on that premises are the remains of Anne Frank, the young Dutch girl who has become an iconic symbol of the Holocaust.

  From Bergen-Belsen, the president next travels to Kolmeshöhe, where he will lay a wreath in yet another show of symbolism. The fortieth anniversary of the war’s end has brought the American leader to Germany in an effort to display solidarity between the two nations. It is at the request of German chancellor Helmut Kohl that Reagan has chosen to pay homage to the young German soldiers who fought and died for their homeland.

  All is quiet as Reagan and Kohl each place their circular bouquets at the base of the memorial tower. Outside the cemetery gates, a crowd of demonstrators who have gathered from the United States, Europe, and Israel to protest this ceremony also observe this moment of silence. These protesters have traveled to Bitburg out of outrage over an act they consider an obscenity.

  For among those buried here in Kolmeshöhe Cemetery are dozens of SS personnel. Just a few short months after the United States Department of Justice announced it would be more aggressive in catching and prosecuting Nazi war criminals, President Reagan stands just a few feet away from two SS graves as he lays the wreath. Not a word is mentioned by Kohl or Reagan about SS atrocities.

  “No one could visit here,” Reagan will state to the press after the eight-minute visit to the cemetery comes to an end, “without deep and conflicting emotions.”

  * * *

  In Vienna, 550 miles to the east, Simon Wiesenthal is weighing in on Reagan’s controversial decision to honor the German dead. His desk here in the Jewish Documentation Center, as always, is covered by a messy stack of old newspapers and filing cards. There is rage in the Jewish community about the laying of the wreath, with many predicting President Reagan will never again have the complete trust of their people. Wiesenthal’s prominent position as an authority on the Holocaust and SS atrocities has attracted journalists to hear his perspective.

  Strangely, Simon Wiesenthal does not concentrate on the cemetery exposition, preferring to change the subject to the location of Josef Mengele. Wiesenthal shamed the United States this past January by proving that the Nazi was arrested by the Americans after the war but subsequently released. His information was found in declassified documents made available through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. The Pentagon responded quickly, stating that “none of the documents indicate any American units” had ever taken Mengele into custody, but Wiesenthal refuses to back down.

  The Nazi hunter, like the rest of the world, has absolutely no knowledge that Josef Mengele died six years ago.

  In fact, Simon Wiesenthal is confident that he will soon meet Mengele face-to-face. With that optimism has come more frequent updates to the media on the hunt. A few years ago, in 1982, he informed the public of the Nazi’s residence in Paraguay, but a year later Wiesenthal announced that Mengele was on the move. The Angel of Death has relocated to Parral, Chile, and spends time at various locations in Brazil.

  Now Wiesenthal tells the New York Times, among other publications, that he has hard evidence that Mengele was once again seen in Paraguay last July.

  This is more than a mere hunch. Three different people have come forth to tell Wiesenthal about the sighting. These eyewitnesses do not know one another, and each lives in a different country, giving their admissions the feel of truth.

  The Nazi hunter is so sure about the authenticity of these reports that he has written to German chancellor Helmut Kohl, requesting that he work in conjunction with Paraguayan president Alfredo Stroessner to bring Mengele to justice. Stroessner is actually of German ancestry, the son of a Bavarian father. He is soon due to return to his roots and visit West Germany on a diplomatic mission. Wiesenthal’s letter to Kohl asks that he “raise emphatically” the topic of Mengele’s extradition.

  In fact, no one knows the location of Josef Mengele. Simon Wiesenthal’s guesswork is not an act of deception but a desperate desire to see justice served, based on the same hunches and tips that have been the cornerstone of his Nazi hunting over the years—a form of detective work leading to hundreds of arrests.

  Wiesenthal’s willingness to indulge in rumor has also had the unlikely effect of motivating others to join the search. The United States, West Germany, and Israel announced just last week that they are now working together to locate Mengele. Any individual finding solid evidence leading to his capture will receive an award of $2.4 million.

  For Simon Wiesenthal, whether the money is awarded to him or someone else is irrelevant. What’s far more important is that this bounty finally yield the prize Wiesenthal has sought for so many years.

  * * *

  Three weeks after President Reagan’s trip to Bitburg, and ten days after Simon Wiesenthal announced that Dr. Josef Mengele is in Paraguay, Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld has flown to that country to demand that Mengele be turned over to West German officials. Standing on the steps of the Palace of Justice in the capital city of Asunción, Klarsfeld holds up a sign in Spanish. She has offered a $25,000 reward to anyone who will step forward with information that will help her capture Mengele. In the meantime, she is hoping to pressure the Paraguayan president into taking action during his upcoming trip to West Germany.

  “Stroessner, you lie when you say you don’t know where SS Mengele is,” the sign reads. “Don’t go to Germany without him.”

  This is not Beate’s first public act of protest. In fact, she is becoming quite famous for the extreme tactics she utilizes to bring Nazis to justice. In 1968, at a meeting of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union political party, she borrowed a reporter’s press pass, walked onto the main stage, and slapped then German chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, denouncing him.

  For this, Klarsfeld was sentenced to four months in prison. According to reports, the act was not entirely selfless, for the East German secret police, a group known as the Stasi, allegedly paid her 2,000 deutsche marks to humiliate the West German leader as part of their ongoing effort to denounce the West as being pro-Nazi—a charge that has some validity since a few Nazi leaders have actually prospered in West Germany after the war.1

  Among these individuals is Kurt Lischka, the former commandant of the Gestapo in Paris. Lischka was responsible for the deportation of more than seventy thousand Jews to death camps. He was tried in absentia by a French court and sentenced to a life of hard labor but remains a free man because West Germany has a policy of protecting its Nazi past by not extraditing its citizens. This allows Lischka to live his life without fear of arrest and, incredibly, to also serve on the bench as a judge in Cologne, Germany, where he works under his own name.

  In 1971, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld attempted to kidnap Lischka from his home in Cologne and take him to France for trial. The plot failed, landing both Klarsfelds in a German prison.

  However, the attempted kidnapping was not entirely in vain. The notoriety of their actions led to a public outcry for Lischka’s arrest. In 1980, he was finally charged for his wartime actions. The Klarsfelds traveled to Cologne for the trial, then led a group of two thousand French Jews through the city streets to spotlight Lischka’s atrocities. Many of the protesters wore the striped prison garb of concentration camp inmates, emblazoned with a yellow Star of David. Thanks to the Klarsfeld
s, the seventy-year-old former Gestapo chief and West German judge was sentenced to ten years in prison.

  Of course, these public demonstrations have not endeared Beate and Serge Klarsfeld to the Nazi underworld. In 1979, a bomb destroyed their family car. Nobody was in the vehicle at the time. Both Klarsfelds believe ODESSA was responsible.

  And yet, Beate Klarsfeld remains fearless in her campaign against Germany’s Nazi past. The arrest and imprisonment of Klaus Barbie two years ago was her crowning achievement. Here in Paraguay this morning, she is surrounded by a small band of young people who share her views. The protest is peaceful, by design, although one hundred armed police officers watch their every move.

  Not everyone in Paraguay is sympathetic to Klarsfeld. Channel 13, a local television station with pro-government leanings, has accused her of “making a business” of Nazi hunting. El Diario Noticias, a prominent local newspaper, has written that “she is very clever and has turned her hunt into a career.”

  Another newspaper, La Patria, accuses Klarsfeld of trying “to kill the honor of Paraguay.”

  * * *

  Though he is at his office in Vienna rather than in Paraguay, Simon Wiesenthal is energized by his Nazi hunting rival, Beate Klarsfeld. Informed in advance of Beate Klarsfeld’s intended protest, Wiesenthal’s Jewish Documentation Center has taken out a half-page advertisement informing the people of Paraguay about the substantial reward money available to anyone who helps Simon Wiesenthal locate Dr. Josef Mengele.

  Meanwhile, the West German government is publicly taking a skeptical approach to the search for Mengele. “We have assurances from the government of Paraguay that he is not here,” an embassy spokesman tells the Paraguayan press. “There are no reasons to disbelieve these reassurances.”

  For the world, however, the hunt for Nazi war criminals remains a headline-grabbing mystery—one that is about to unfold.

  * * *

  On May 31, 1985, police in Günzburg, Germany, acting on an anonymous tip, raid the home of Hans Sedlmaier. The former manager at Karl Mengele and Sons is in his seventies now, and retired from the farm machinery company. While on vacation recently, he was overheard bragging that he once sent money to Josef Mengele.

  The police visit takes Sedlmaier by surprise. As investigators enter his home, the Mengele confidant dashes into a closet and reaches for a specific jacket. The authorities wrench the coat away from him. Inside, they find a date book with addresses and phone numbers written in code.

  Intrigued, they press their search. In a study used only by Sedlmaier’s wife, the police find photocopies of letters from Josef Mengele.

  “How could you do that?” an outraged Hans Sedlmaier asks his wife. The former Nazi has been meticulous in destroying all missives from the Angel of Death.

  Because of Josef Mengele’s drowning six years ago, Sedlmaier no longer sends regular mail to or receives it from South America or needs to visit the special post office box set up for Mengele. In fact, while Sedlmaier was complicit in Mengele’s escape and life as a fugitive, the German statute of limitations for a crime is just five years. Thus, Hans Sedlmaier cannot be prosecuted.

  But these discoveries are sensational. Police demand that Sedlmaier and his wife take a seat, then immediately begin combing through the date book in an attempt to decode its contents. Within hours, they have their answers. A call is made to police officials in Brazil.

  The crimes instantly begin to unravel. A list of addresses in Brazil contained in the book leads directly to Gitta Stammer and her husband, who are identified as conspirators to hide Mengele in the 1960s and ’70s. Wolfram and Lisolette Bossert are also implicated in covering up his death. In a sign that the global community is working together to hunt down Nazis, this information is relayed to Brazilian authorities, who immediately take action.

  The Bosserts are questioned and threatened with prison. In less than an hour they admit everything. The couple lead authorities to the small hillside cemetery of Nossa Senhora do Rosario and grave 321. On the morning of June 6, 1985, the forty-first anniversary of the D-day invasion, a lone grave digger pokes his shovel into the ground and begins digging down to the coffin. He is surrounded on all sides by television crews, reporters, Brazilian police, and West German officials. Lisolette Bossert is crying.

  It takes an hour to reach the white coffin. Opening the lid, officials are confronted by a skeleton wearing clothing. The bones are handed up to a pathologist, one at a time. The dentures are passed along first. Then the skull. Each of these is placed inside a second coffin. Later, they will be tested in a laboratory to confirm that these are the remains of Dr. Josef Mengele.

  On June 21, a team of scientists from the United States, Brazil, and West Germany hold a press conference to announce that these bones are, in fact, those of the Angel of Death. When asked whether he has any doubts about the findings, American pathologist Dr. Lowell J. Levine remarks, “Absolutely none.”

  A spokesman for Simon Wiesenthal says he is only “99 percent” convinced the bones are those of Mengele. “We would be less than candid if we said we were not disappointed he was found dead,” states Rabbi Marvin Hier, an associate of Wiesenthal’s.

  “Josef Mengele is a dark page in the history of medicine,” declares Brazilian pathologist Dr. Roberto Teixeira. “He was an anti-physician, not a scientist. We must turn the page and close this book.”

  Yet there are many pages left to be written. Simon Wiesenthal believes that Martin Bormann is still alive, and other vicious members of the SS remain at large, including some lesser-known war criminals—the women of the SS.

  24

  SEPTEMBER 21, 1989

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  AFTERNOON

  In the lower Nob Hill section of the city, on the top floor of a run-down five-story apartment building with a communal bathroom, Elfriede Huth is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of her arrival in the United States. It is a quiet commemoration, known only to Elfriede, for she likes to keep her past a secret.

  At age sixty-seven, the plump German-born woman with dyed red hair is happily married to a singing waiter named Fred Rinkel. The two met at a dance held at the local German club. He is Jewish, she is not, though there have been times over the course of their twenty-six-year marriage when she has attended synagogue: something that would seem unfathomable in her youth.

  The truth is that Elfriede Huth was once a concentration camp guard. Huth was a member of a group known as the weiblichen SS-Gefolges—“female civilian employees of the SS.” At the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Northern Germany, this brutal group terrified and ultimately executed women and babies. So evil was this group, they were given a special name: the Raven’s Women.

  * * *

  Located fifty miles north of Berlin, on the shores of Schwedt Lake, with its clear blue water, the Ravensbrück camp was built before the war began. The entire six-acre facility is surrounded by a sixteen-foot-high gray wall. The air smells of pine from the local forests. There are no guard towers or gun emplacements, but a high-voltage fence rings the perimeter. The Lagerstrasse—main street—running through the center of the camp features a canteen for the SS guards that includes an extensive kitchen. The street is lined with a dozen barracks where the prisoners sleep on three-tiered bunks. Each incarcerated woman is allowed a mattress filled with wood shavings, a simple sheet, and a blue-and-white blanket. The camp is surprisingly bucolic, with chicken coops, rabbit hutches, orchards, and vegetable gardens—all there in an attempt to keep Ravensbrück as self-sufficient as possible. Red salvia flowers and linden trees are interspersed among the barracks. The centerpiece of the camp is the Appellplatz, a broad dirt area the size of a soccer pitch where prisoners stand each morning for roll call.

  Between its opening in May 1939 and forced closing in 1945, tens of thousands of lesbians, Gypsies (also known as Roma), political prisoners, prostitutes, Jews, and gentile women known as “race defilers”—Aryans who had sex with Jews—populate the ca
mp. Also among the prisoners are nuns, captured Allied spies, women who had abortions, and assorted other enemies of the Third Reich. All the inmates are women, sentenced to slave labor.

  SS men essentially run the camp, but the day-to-day supervision of the prisoners falls to SS women. Almost all are under thirty years old. They rise along with the prisoners at 4:00 a.m. for roll call and supervise the camp routine, which begins with a breakfast of watery turnip soup. After that, the inmates are marched off to perform labor while singing German patriotic songs.

  A select group of women guards known as Hundeführerin are armed with lethal weapons, not guns but dogs.

  Elfriede Huth is among those armed.

  Heinrich Himmler, himself, personally orders that Ravensbrück’s female guards not carry firearms. To the female populace, Himmler believes, a ferocious dog is far more terrifying than a gun. These German shepherds are not intended just to snarl and bark. In Himmler’s own words, the animals should be “trained to savage to death anyone except their handler.”

  The first sound women prisoners hear upon their arrival at Ravensbrück station is the barking of vicious dogs, straining at their handlers’ leashes. Guards cry out “Achtung, achtung”—“Attention, attention”—to inspire fear, then shout insults such as “whore” and “slut.” The prisoners are made to stand at attention, then marched into the camp, where they are stripped and deloused before being handed their striped inmate dresses and caps. Should any prisoner fall down or faint while disembarking from the cattle trucks, the dogs are set free to attack. Any prisoner attempting to help the fallen is also targeted. Likewise, if a prisoner is too ill or weak to stand during the morning head count, guards set the dogs upon them. Well trained, the animals circle the stricken prisoner in small packs, awaiting the signal to attack.

  Elfriede Huth is not forced to become a Hundeführerin—she volunteers. Ravensbrück offers female guards fine compensation, spacious living accommodations in villas just outside the main camp, and higher status in the Nazi Party. Twenty-one-year-old Elfriede has spent most of the war working in a munitions factory in her hometown of Leipzig, overseeing slave laborers. It was early in 1944 when she received a letter from the camp commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren, informing her that she had been chosen to work as a guard. An elated Elfriede reports to work on June 15.