Killing the SS Read online

  Most unforgettable among Ohlendorf’s offensive comments was that each murder was an act of self-defense.

  * * *

  The sentences are read on April 10, 1948. The courtroom is almost empty as the defendants are brought in one by one to hear their fate.

  Otto Ohlendorf appears, flanked by two large African American military policemen gripping white batons in front of them. Ohlendorf does not speak English, so he slips on a pair of translation headphones.

  “Defendant Otto Ohlendorf, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted, the Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.”

  Ohlendorf says nothing, betrays no emotion. He slips off the headphones and is returned to his cell.

  * * *

  Four years later, Benny Ferencz is still in Germany. Ferencz served throughout the Second World War as an enlisted man, rising to the rank of sergeant. He was granted the rank of colonel when he returned to Germany to investigate war crimes. Because of his ongoing legal duties, he and his wife, Gertrude, won’t return to America for another six years. Of the twenty-two defendants in his one and only trial, fourteen received death sentences. The others were sentenced to prison terms. All of those convicted were members of the SS.

  Of the fourteen sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead, only four will actually feel the noose. The others will be released in 1958, their crimes in the past, allowed to walk the streets as free men.3

  One of the four who will hang is Gen. Otto Ohlendorf.

  Just after midnight on June 7, 1951, the SS-Gruppenführer walks to the gallows at Landsberg Prison—the same penitentiary where Adolf Hitler dictated Mein Kampf a quarter century ago. Pope Pius XII himself has made an appeal on Ohlendorf’s behalf, requesting that his sentence be commuted. The petition was denied by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, commander of American forces in occupied Germany.4

  The last meal of fried chicken, potatoes, green peas, and carrots has been cooked thirty miles away in Augsburg to prevent anyone from slipping poison into the food. Ohlendorf was always lean in his SS uniform but has gained weight on the high-calorie prison diet. That won’t matter in just a few minutes. Wearing the uniform of black pants, black shirt, leather belt, and sandals in which his body will be hanged, Ohlendorf walks to the gallows. His wrists are tied behind his back.

  There is only one rope. With multiple men to be hanged, Ohlendorf must wait his turn. He hears the sickening thud of SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel’s body dropping through the trap. Once Blobel is declared dead, the body is pulled back up and the rope untangled from around his neck. Blobel’s corpse is placed in a coffin and the lid is immediately nailed shut.

  SS-Brigadeführer Erich Naumann is next.

  Then, near half past the hour, Otto Ohlendorf walks up the gallows steps. His ankles are bound so that he will not kick wildly once the trapdoor is sprung. A U.S. military chaplain says a prayer. The black hood is fitted over Ohlendorf’s head.

  Death comes almost instantly. Otto Ohlendorf, a man who encouraged his soldiers to save ammunition by shooting babies nestling against their mother’s breast, is spared this inhumanity. The rope is just long enough that he dies quickly.

  “The Jews in America will suffer for this,” Ohlendorf warns Ferencz shortly before his death.

  * * *

  But the work started by Benny Ferencz is not finished.

  “I had 3,000 Einsatzgruppen members who every day went out and shot as many Jews as they could and Gypsies as well. I tried twenty-two, I convicted twenty-two, thirteen were sentenced to death, four of them were actually executed, the rest of them got out after a few years.

  “The other 3,000—nothing ever happened to them. Every day they had committed mass murder.”5

  But it is difficult to hide forever. And soon, with Benny Ferencz wrapping up his work, a new generation of Nazi hunters will emerge.

  For the SS villains on the run, these men will become a scourge.

  4

  APRIL 18, 1949

  THE ALPS

  5:45 A.M.

  A quarter moon is just setting as “Fritz Hollmann” finishes his early morning preparations. A thirty-eight-year-old man, he is dressed in the boots and simple clothing of a Bavarian farmworker, a job that he has held since the war’s end. Hollmann, or “Andreas,” as he is calling himself during this clandestine journey, arrived at the Austrian side of the Brenner Pass just yesterday—Easter Sunday.

  The traveler is glad to leave Germany and Austria behind. Since the end of the war, both nations have been occupied by the conquering armies of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. But Italy, with its Mediterranean seaports, returned to self-rule years ago. This makes it the safest and quickest way to flee Europe.

  Hollmann spent last night at a small inn owned by Nazi sympathizer and former SS soldier Jakob Strickner. The two men rose hours ago, then took to the narrow mountain paths in darkness to avoid Italian border guards. Thanking Strickner profusely, Hollmann then walks into Italy undetected.

  Fritz Hollmann is a scientist at heart, a man who revels in documenting life’s small details. In his journal, he makes note of the quarter moon and the yellow primroses just now beginning to bloom as spring comes to the Tyrol region. He travels alone, having left his wife, Irene, behind in Günzburg, the south German city in which he was born and raised. If anyone asks, Hollmann’s final destination is unknown, though right now that is not important.

  All that matters is not getting caught.

  Due to investigators like Benny Ferencz, Germany has become unsafe for anyone with a Nazi past. And as Fritz Hollmann well knows, his real identity is extremely high on the list of wanted Nazi war criminals, infamous enough to have been discussed during testimony at the Nuremberg Trials. Hollmann considered his wartime medical experiments on twins, children, and dwarfs to be groundbreaking. Allied prosecutors do not share this point of view. To them, Hollmann committed abominable crimes against humanity, such as when, in 1943, he ordered hundreds of children under the age of five thrown alive into a fire pit to burn to death. Those who attempted to climb out were hurled back into the flames by armed guards. At the time he gave those orders, Hollmann’s rationale was that the gas chambers were an ineffective means of murdering such young children.

  So while he has been able to hide out since the war’s end, Hollmann has long known that it is just a matter of time until he is arrested and hanged—if he stays in Germany.

  The fugitive hops a train and arrives in Sterzing, Italy, shortly thereafter. He leaves the train and walks a half mile to the Goldenes Kreuz Inn.1 Despite the early hour, an Italian contact who goes by the code name Nino is waiting for him.

  “Rosemary,” says Hollmann, stating the password.

  Nino hands over an official identity card. The document expired in 1945 but clearly states that it was issued in the nearby town of Brixen. This serves as proof that Hollmann spent the war as a German citizen living in Italy.

  But the truth is, Hollmann served as an officer in the SS, working as a doctor in the death camps. His medical experiments were mostly performed on children. He was fond of whistling cheerfully as he worked. Like Heinrich Himmler, he was detained by the Allies immediately after the war. But rather than resorting to attention-getting behavior, Hollmann remained calm. He gave military police his real name, convincing his American captors that he was a simple private in the German army. All members of the SS had their blood type tattooed under their left armpit. But as a medical professional, Hollmann had successfully argued that it was unnecessary. So when the Americans made a physical examination of Hollmann and found no tattoo, they believed his story and let him go.

  Nino introduces Hollmann to a German who calls himself “Erwin.” In actuality, Erwin is Hans Sedlmeier, manager of a farm machinery company run by Hollmann’s father. Erwin brings greetings from home, along with much-needed cash to fund Hollmann’s escape.

  In the weeks that follow, Fritz Hollmann travels across north
ern Italy to the port city of Genoa. A chain of people and havens now allow Hollmann to travel undetected. In Genoa, a man named “Kurt” instructs him to visit the Swiss consulate. There, the International Red Cross issues him identity papers. The date is now May 16, 1949. These travel documents, known officially as “10.100s,” will serve as Hollman’s passport.2

  “Fritz Hollmann” can now legally travel anywhere in the world.

  * * *

  The name for the path Hollmann follows to freedom is a “ratline.” There are several in place, with some going through Genoa and others through Spain. Their specific purpose is to smuggle influential Nazis out of Europe. A variety of unlikely organizations are assisting in this process, among them the Swiss government, the Red Cross, and even the Vatican. Pope Pius XII first compromised with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933, when he negotiated the Reichskonkordat, guaranteeing the rights of Catholics in Germany to practice their religion. There were many at the time who believed that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli—later renamed Pius XII upon ascending to the papacy in 1939—legitimized the Nazi Party through this document. The pope said nothing when German troops rounded up Jewish citizens of Rome in October 1943. Hitler reciprocated by allowing the Vatican to function throughout the war without German occupation.

  Like many in Europe, Pius XII is deeply threatened by the Soviet-led rise of atheistic communism. He is also concerned by the decline of the Church throughout Europe and aspires to see the faith once again on the rise. This is why he appeals for the clemency of a convicted Catholic like Otto Ohlendorf and assists Nazis who might join the fight against global communism.

  “The Vatican of course is the largest single organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants,” reads a secret May 1947 report from the U.S. embassy in Rome to the State Department in Washington. “The Vatican further justifies its participation by its desire to infiltrate, not only European countries, but Latin American countries as well, with people of all political beliefs as long as they are anti-Communist and pro–Catholic Church.”

  Stopping the Communist threat is also the focus of the new U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as well as the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). These organizations now consider the Soviets to be the primary enemy and assist former Nazis in their escape from prosecution in exchange for spying and intelligence information. Klaus Barbie, who will one day be synonymous with Nazi war crimes in France, is among those aided by the Americans.

  Barbie’s acts of brutality are infamous, but the most inhuman occurred on April 6, 1944. In a carefully orchestrated roundup mission, three German trucks traveled fifty miles from Lyon to the village of Izieu. The trucks stopped at the farmhouse owned by a naturalized French woman named Sabina Zlatin, who was born in Poland. Barbie had received information that Zlatin had been smuggling Jewish children over the border into nearby Switzerland. There were reports that she was harboring even more young Jews. Indeed La Maison d’Izieu was a secret home for Jewish orphans and refugees.

  It was breakfast time as the trucks came to a halt. Hot chocolate was being prepared in the kitchen when soldiers under Barbie’s command surrounded the farmhouse. The children had been hiding for a year without incident, but now soldiers grabbed them and hurled them into the back of the vehicles “like sacks of potatoes,” in the words of a villager who witnessed the raid. Some children were as young as four. The oldest was seventeen. Their cries and screams echoed up the valley in the still dawn air.

  Some of the children were lucky, having seen the approaching trucks—they ran away. But forty-four of them were caught. These innocents, along with seven adults running this small orphanage, were arrested. Under the orders of Klaus Barbie, all of the prisoners were loaded onto a train the next morning and shipped to Auschwitz to be gassed. Sabine Zlatin was not arrested, but her husband was. Miron Zlatin was shipped to the Tallinn death camp in Estonia, where he was executed by firing squad.

  Barbie could not have been more pleased. He returned to his office in Lyon after the raid and typed up his mission report. He mistakenly underestimated the number of children taken captive.

  “This morning the Jewish children’s home ‘Children’s Colony’ in Izieu-Ain was liquidated. Altogether forty-one children aged three to thirteen were arrested. Furthermore, it was possible to arrest the whole Jewish staff consisting of ten persons, including five women. Cash or other valuables could not be seized.”

  Almost every one of the individuals taken prisoner at La Maison d’Izieu on April 6, 1944, was murdered in a death camp. Just one lived to tell the story. Her name was Léa Feldblum, one of the adult administrators. And she would remember these children forever. “I loved them very much. The tiniest ones cried. The others sang … they burned all of them.”

  Now, the same Klaus Barbie who took glee in murdering innocent children, is employed—and protected—by the U.S. government. He makes no attempt to conceal his true identity, much to the amazement of his coworkers.

  “This guy killed, on one occasion I know of, two hundred Frenchmen himself, hung ’em up by the thumbs in the basement of his headquarters,” one CIC agent will later recall of his eight months working with Barbie.

  “I reported to headquarters: ‘You know you’re working with a real war criminal?’ The answer comes back: ‘Yes, we know all about it. But he’s still valuable.’”

  * * *

  In 1947 alone, an estimated eight thousand members of the SS safely travel to Canada and the United States utilizing false documents.3

  But Fritz Hollmann has chosen not to go through Allied channels.

  His Italian contact, “Kurt,” has booked passage for him on the ship North King, due to sail for Argentina on May 25. Hollmann’s escape from the Nazi hunters now seems inevitable.

  But after more than a month of flawless execution, Hollmann’s journey hits a snag. Kurt has bribed an Italian official and instructed him to stamp Hollmann’s exit visa. But this bureaucrat has chosen to take the day off. Thinking quickly, Hollmann slides a 20,000-lira note into his documents and steps forward to get his stamp from an official unaware of this skullduggery.4

  Hollmann’s attempted bribe immediately lands him in prison. Days pass, with the impending departure of North King looming closer and closer. If Hollmann misses the ship, the next departure won’t be for two long months. Once again, it is Kurt who comes to the rescue, using his connections within the Genoa police department to free Hollmann. Kurt’s reputation precedes him, for the once-haughty polizia municipale now treat Hollmann with astounding deference as they release him. Italy has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of refugees since the war’s end. Distinguishing among prisoners of war, wanted war criminals, and refugees has become nearly impossible for the police. Unable to determine Hollmann’s true identity, the polizia ask if he is a Jew—a remark the former SS officer chooses to ignore.5

  On May 25, as North King leaves her berth and sails into the Mediterranean Sea en route to Argentina, Fritz Hollmann stands at the rail. He is surrounded by hundreds of refugees, almost all of them Italian—or at least pretending to be—escaping chaotic postwar Europe for a new life. As the hours pass, the Italian coastline slowly slips from view and with it the threat of Hollmann’s prosecution for his Nazi past.

  “Waves,” he will write of the sea that now provides his escape. “All is waves.”

  On June 22, 1949, four weeks after setting sail, Hollmann steps onto Argentine soil at Buenos Aires, a free man. There, he presents his passport and other travel documents to immigration officials. The Red Cross papers give Hollmann a new identity: Helmut Gregor. It states that he was born in Italy and makes his living as a mechanic.

  In fact, Argentina’s newest citizen is actually the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, the butcher who spent the war practicing his own twisted version of medicine at the Auschwitz death camp.

  There, he was given the one true name that will follow him the rest of his life: the Angel of Death.

  5


  AUGUST 22, 1951

  BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

  5:00 P.M.

  More than one million Argentineans roar their approval as President Juan Perón steps onto the narrow balcony looming over the boulevard known as Avenida 9 de Julio. It is a Wednesday, but many in this working-class crowd have taken a day off to secure a place in the throng. Tall and physically powerful, with neatly groomed black hair and the regal posture of a former general, Perón projects the very image of political authority. However, El Presidente is a corrupt man leading an equally immoral government, and for that he is unloved by many in the crowd below.

  The same cannot be said of his wife.

  For it is not Juan Perón these Argentineans have come to see. They have endured a long winter day on their feet to hear the words of Maria Eva Duarte de Perón—or, as she prefers to be known—“Evita.”

  Yet the regal lady is nowhere to be seen.

  José Espejo, leader of Argentina’s largest trade union, the General Confederation of Labor of the Argentine Republic, follows President Perón onto the balcony. The CGT, as the labor organization is more commonly called, has spent lavishly on this political rally, erecting the stage and hanging enormous sixty-foot-tall banners bearing the images of Juan Perón and Evita. This is to be the evening in which the union formally endorses the fifty-four-year-old Perón’s reelection. His efforts to eradicate poverty and support labor have made him popular with the powerful CGT, giving him a huge advantage in the election.

  Evita Perón, shown here with her husband, Argentine president Juan Perón, in 1950

  But as Espejo begins his opening remarks, the chanting crowd drowns him out.

  “Evita!” they cry. “Evita!”