Tag Archives: Argentina

The Evil of Colonne Henneicke

The picture above is of Wim Henneicke, a bounty hunter and collaborator. His wasn’t driven by hate or by a warped sense of nationalism, but by greed. Wim Henneicke was part of the group called “Colonne Henneicke.” The Colonne Henneicke, officially the Hausraterfassungsstelle, was a group of Dutch collaborators who were active as bounty hunters in the period between March and October 1943. The group consisted of more than fifty Dutch people who were paid to hunt Jewish people in hiding and was led by Wim Henneicke. In the six months that the organization existed, it was responsible for the deportation of eight to nine thousand people.

They were paid 7,50 Dutch guilders (the 2023 equivalent would be $62 or €58) for each Jew that was caught, regardless if it was a man, woman or child.

One of their victims was Charles Salomon Viskoop, born on 17 February 1943. In December 1943, two members of the Kolonne Henneicke found Charles Salomon at his hiding place. He was ten months old at the time. He was murdered on 28 January 1944, in Auschwitz just over a month before his first birthday.

However, Henneicke did not live to see the end of the war. On December 8, 1944, he left his home in Amsterdam in the morning and was shot dead by an unknown member of the Amsterdam resistance.

I want to focus on 2 more members of the Colonne Henneicke.

Dries Riphagen

Bernardus Andries Riphagen, known as “the Dutch Al Capone,” was even more unscrupulous than his American gangster counterpart. The man was a criminal through and through. Riphagen’s fingers were in a lot of pies in the Dutch criminal underworld, from prostitution to extortion to murder. He spent two years in the United States, first working for Standard Oil and then getting in touch with local criminal groups.

During the war, Riphagen continued with trading and expanded his business by working with the Germans as an intermediary agent of the intelligence agency of the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst (or SD), in The Hague. As more anti-Jewish policies were introduced, the collaboration between Riphagen and the Germans became more and more lucrative. When Jewish people were arrested, their property, stocks, jewellery and cash were taken before the arrestees and the remaining household items were handed over to the Germans.

Riphagen ran clandestine roulette houses, offered “ladies of pleasure” to accommodate high German officials and traded in currency, gold and diamonds on the black market with his old friends from the Rembrandt Square such as Joop Out, ‘Manke’ (Criple) Toon Kuijper, Harry Rond and Gerrit Verbeek. Having climbed the ladder from an undercover agent to a bona fide employee, Riphagen decided to join the Devisenschutzkommando (DSK), part of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The most important function of the DSK was to counteract the increasing instances of black market trading in shares. Another function was to gather the Jewish possessions that had escaped the German currency regulations. Members of the DSK received 5 to 10% of the possessions gathered in return for their work. In reality, however, most of the goods discovered ended up in the hands of individual members. From 1943 onwards Riphagen was part of the ‘Column Henneicke’

It is believed that Riphagen personally executed of Wim Baggers and John Even, two resistant fighters. Baggers and Even were arrested in September 1944 and handcuffed to each other on the Amsteldijk with a shot to the neck they were executed.
The commemoration took place three weeks after the liberation.

He managed the flee the Netherlands after the war.

Always as slippery as an eel, in February 1946 Riphagen escaped, leaving his wife and son behind without a second thought. Rumour has it that his underworld friends smuggled him across the border in a hearse. Another theory is that two Dutch secret service men, Frits and Piet Kerkhoven, organized his escape to Belgium with a hearse. From Belgium, he spent three months travelling to Spain by bicycle.

When Riphagen reached Spain in May 1946, the authorities in Huesca stopped him due to a lack of necessary identification. He was imprisoned, but again luck never left him. He was released on bail with the help of a Jesuit priest. Shortly after that, Frits Kerkhoven gave him clothes and shoes, which were hidden in the necessary papers as well as diamonds that Riphagen had previously left with Kerkhoven.

When justice finally discovered his location in Madrid, Riphagen flew to Argentina with a friend on March 21, 1948. The Dutch ambassador to Buenos Aires at the time, Floris Carcilius Anne Baron van Pallandt, filed an extradition request. However, it was denied by the Argentina Judicial Authorities due to a lack of evidence–again, the crime against humanity got away scot-free.

Riphagen was never extradited to the Netherlands. Always gregariously silver-tongued, he maintained friends in high places. One was a member of the Argentine Supreme Court, Rodolfo Valenzuela, who also served as secretary to President Juan Perón.

Thanks to Valenzuela, Riphagen soon befriended the presidential couple. He kept in close contact with Perón until his death. Belgrano, a district of Buenos Aires, soon became his home where he ran a photo-press business. Also, he supported the Perón secret service whenever he could.

When Perón was removed from power, Riphagen returned to Europe where he spent his time travelling, especially in Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. He kept the company of wealthy women who could support his expensive tastes and continued to talk his way through life. His last known address was in Madrid.

Finally, in 1973 Dries Riphagen, probably the worst Dutch war criminal, died of cancer in Montreux, Switzerland.

Netflix released a movie about Riphagen a few years ago

https://www.netflix.com/ie/title/80106138

Sera de Croon

De Croon was known to be particularly fanatical and sadistic, he mistreated Jews and even personally brought Jewish babies to the Germans. At parties he liked to show a captured pre-war holiday film of a Jewish family that he himself had reported. After the Colonne Henneicke was disbanded because the work was done, De Croon moved to the east of the country. He was especially good at infiltrating various resistance groups and was behind the arrest of several resistance members. In Nijverdal, for example, the resistance member Herman Kampman was arrested and later shot.De Croon abused many of his victims.

After the liberation, De Croon couldn’t be found at first. He was finally arrested in 1948 and sentenced to death in 1949. However, this sentence was not carried out after Queen Juliana pardoned him. First his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, later this sentence was commuted to 21 years, of which he only had to serve two thirds. As a result, he was released again in the early 1960s. De Croon was traced to Alicante in Spain in 1983, where he died in 1990 from lung cancer.

It was Sera de Croon who delivered 10 month old Charles Salomon Viskoop to the Nazis.

sources

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/detail/d53a7ac2-0259-11e7-904b-d89d6717b464/media/756fa92b-6824-02e1-7027-a30c92de89d8?mode=detail&view=horizontal&q=Henneicke&rows=1&page=1

https://www.maxvandam.info/humo-gen/family/1/F48400?main_person=I128467

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/dries-riphagen-dutch-criminal.html?chrome=1

https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/2624/Riphagen-Dries.htm

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Dries-Riphagen/03/0004

https://wiesjekuijpers.nl/projecten/het-was-oorlog

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Sera-de-Croon/03/0004

Click to access Handleiding%20docenten_%20WOII%20%28VO%29_DEF.pdf

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/603/kolonne-henneicke

Adolf Eichmann

December 15th marks the 61st anniversary of Adolf Eichmann’s death sentence. I am not going too much in the history of Eichmann, there is not that much I can add to the narrative.

On December 11–12, 1961, Eichmann was convicted of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization. He was sentenced to death on December 15.

His defense was basically that he had only been following orders.

During World War I, Eichmann’s family moved from Germany to Linz, Austria. His pre-Nazi life was rather ordinary. He worked as a traveling salesman in Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) for an oil company but lost his job during the Great Depression. He had actually attended Kaiser Franz Joseph Staatsoberrealschule (state secondary school) in Linz. A certain Adolf Hitler had been a student in that same school 17 years prior.

Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in April 1932 in Linz, Austria and rose quickly through the party hierarchy. In November 1932 he became a member of Heinrich Himmler’s SS, When in 1939 Himmler formed the Reich Security Central Office, Eichmann was transferred to its section on Jewish affairs in Berlin. Up to then that section was headed by Leopold von Mildenstein. It was that same Leopold von Mildenstein who had invited Eichmann to join him.

In 1933 von Mildenstein visited British Mandatory Palestine and met with local Jews. His signature was recently discovered in a Jerusalem guestbook.

Mildenstein had been a supporter and an advocate for the relocation of Jews to the British Mandate up to 1936. He was replaced by Adolf Eichmann, who eventually helped orchestrate the mass-murder of Jews as the “final solution.”

While at the Jewish affairs Department, Eichmann was assigned to study and prepare reports on the Zionist movement and various Jewish organisations. He even learned some Hebrew and Yiddish, gaining a reputation as a specialist in Zionist and Jewish matters.

So much has already been written about the crimes of Eichmann, I couldn’t possibly add anything to that story.

On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced to the world that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been captured and would stand trial in Israel. He was seized by Israeli agents in Argentina on May 11 and smuggled to Israel nine days later.

Eichmann had escaped to Argentina using the alias Ricardo Klement.

Juan Perón’s government had provided refuge for thousands of German and Croat war criminals. U.S. military intelligence reports indicated that Argentina and Germany began making arrangements to transport Nazis to Argentina as early as 1944. That year, reports accused Argentina of selling fake passports to Germans through their embassy in Lisbon and the Spanish government of providing stopover points for planes flying from Germany to Argentina. Air traffic between the two countries continued even after U.S. pressure forced Perón to declare war on the Axis in March 1945.

The one thing what amazes me though is that until the very end Eichmann could not see, or could not admit that he had anything wrong. He had written a latter in which he wrote “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”

Eichmann was hanged at a prison in Ramla hours later. The hanging, had been scheduled for midnight at the end of 31 May, but was slightly delayed and therefore took place a few minutes past midnight on 1 June 1962. The execution was attended by a small group of officials, four journalists and the Canadian clergyman William Lovell Hull, who had been Eichmann’s spiritual counselor while in prison. His last words were reported to be

“Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We’ll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.”

Within hours after the execution he was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean Sea, outside Israeli territorial waters, by an Israeli Navy patrol boat.

sources

https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-a-nazi-toured-the-holy-land-to-find-a-solution-for-the-jewish-problem/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/adolf-eichmann-final-message-architects-holocaust-evil

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Eichmann

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/eichmann-trial?parent=en%2F10832

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eichmann#Early_life_and_education

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/144-peron-and-the-nazi-war-criminals

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

originally posted December 15 2021

Betraying your neighbours for greed.

fee

War brings out the best and the worst out of people, that is just a fact. It is easy to acknowledge the good but there is often a struggle acknowledging the bad, even to the extent of trying to completely erase it from history.

When it comes to the Holocaust there is no question about it that it was caused by Germany and Austria and their Nazi regimes, however they could never have succeeded without the help of others in the occupied countries, and even from people who were not in occupied countries.

Some collaborators were driven by fear and a sense of self survival but there were some who saw an opportunity to gain from the misery and horrors of others.

In the  Netherlands there were people like Dries Riphagen and Wim Henneicke, who were both members of the Column Henneicke. They would hunt Jews for the SD and SS for a reward of 7.5 Dutch guilders per Jew, which is the equivalent of $50 or €42 today.

Rip Drieshagen would sometimes befriend some of his Jewish victims prior to selling them out to  the Nazis, he would tell  them to give him their valuables and he would save it for them and return it to them after the war. He escaped being captured after the war, He fled to Argentina where he became friendly with Juan and Evita Peron, He died in Montreux,Switzerland on 13 May 1973.

Dries

On November 19, 1940 in Warsaw Poland someone who called himself Ewald Reiman, blackmailed a family he believed was Jewish, threatening to reveal their identity if not paid hush money.

Capture

“”Ladies and Gentlemen.

On the basis of accurate investigation, we have determined the truth about your Semitic origins. In view of the above, we request that you deliver to the bearer of this note the sum of 2,000 zlotys (two thousand zlotys) in a sealed envelope. … In return, we will destroy the incriminating evidence that is in our possession. Otherwise, we will immediately hand over the evidence to the German authorities.”

These type of  blackmailers made life extremely difficult  for Jews who had false identification documents enabling them to hide in plain sight and evade German orders to move into ghettos.

The Nazi regime often drew upon some Polish agencies, such as Polish police forces and railroad personnel, in the guarding of ghettos and the deportation of Jews to the killing centers. Individual Poles often helped in the identification, denunciation, and hunting down of Jews in hiding, often profiting from the associated blackmail, and actively participated in the plunder of Jewish property.

But this wasn’t only the case in Poland but in most of occupied Europe.

I know that I will get a lot of comments and emails about me suggesting there was even one Polish collaborator, but I am basing my research on facts and research of historians.

It is such a pity that so many ,mainly former Eastern European communist countries are trying to whitewash their Holocaust history. To suit their own narrative but it is an insult to all the victims Jewish and Non Jewish. It is also not necessary . No one will accuse or judge anyone born after the war or those who were still children during the war for the sins of their parents,grandparents and great grandparents. In fact most people will think it is courageous when you face up to a part of a darker part of history .

However people will judge you for denying or trying to erase that part of history rather then highlighting it and learning from it. You owe to the victims and future generations to face up to all aspects of your history.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

 

 

Sources

http://somewereneighbors.ushmm.org/#/exhibitions/neighbors/un860/description

https://apnews.com/9eb9502f00724a50aeb33082ff7ce692

https://www.timesofisrael.com/poland-honors-world-war-ii-group-that-collaborated-with-nazis/

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/poland-s-holocaust-law-is-a-licence-to-whitewash-history-1.3383516

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/02/02/yes-some-poles-were-nazi-collaborators-the-polish-parliament-is-trying-to-legislate-that-away/

 

A.B.C- The Boys from Argentina

ABC

“Mengele and Eichman tour
I was here last year due to my father’s Nazi hunt in the 50s, lovely small Restaurant, even met a man in his 90s who knew many Nazis. Even had dinner in the corner with him where Mengele and Eichman once sat. You wont find anything from the past inside like old tables or chairs,but the idea what folks were talking about back then was intriguing”

The above text is from a restaurant review posted on Tripadvisor in September 2018. The restaurant is the A.B.C restaurant in Lavalle 545, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

abc rest

I was always surprised where there were never any sanctions against Argentina, and other South American countries, but Argentina appears to have harboured and still does provide a safe haven for escaped Nazi war criminals.

The A.B.C restaurant is a prime example where Nazis dined and wined in plain sight. In 1950 Adolf Eichmann escaped with help from the Red Cross to Argentina m in 1952 his family followed him. Eichmann changed his name to Ricardo Klement.

ricardo

Joseph Mengele also moved to Argentina after he had been hiding ,more or less in plain sight, in Germany, In 1949 he fled to Argentina via Genoa in Italy, using the alias Helmut Gregor, also assisted by the Red Cross via a passport and Visa he obtained from them. Now I don’t want to be too critical of the Red Cross because the whole civil administration was a chaos in the ;ate 40s in Germany.

Mengele though soon started using his own name again, be it a with a slight Spanish angle to it as Jose Mengele.

Somewhere in 1953 both men met in the German style A.B.C restaurant where they held a party for another Nazi, the propagandist Johann von Leers, who worked for Goebbels and also wrote propaganda for Juan Perón. von Leers was moving to Egypt , so Mengele and Eichmann threw him some sort of goodbye party.

There were so many Nazis who received refuge in Argentina, there is a small town called Bariloche, which made international headlines in 1995  when it became known as a haven for Nazi war criminals, such as the former SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke and SS officer Reinhard Kopps, known in Argentina as Juan Maler. Priebke had been the director of the German School of Bariloche for many years.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

 

Sources

BBC

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-long-road-to-eichmann-s-arrest-a-nazi-war-criminal-s-life-in-argentina-a-754486.html

 

 

 

 

NSNAP-The Dutch Nazi Party& the traitor Riphagen.

nsnap

The NSNAP could be considered a NSDAP wannabe. However it would be foolish to trivialize their existence.

The Nationaal-Socialistische Nederlandsche Arbeiderspartij (National Socialist Dutch Workers Party were founded in 1931 by Ernst Herman van Rappard(seen below in an SS uniform)

Ernst

He was born in the Banyumas Regency, Central Java, Dutch East Indies.His educative years he spent in the Hague and later in the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands.He subsequently studied economics in Berlin and Munich and there became supportive of Nazism.

The NSNAP-advocated the incorporation of the Netherlands into the Third Reich.Unlike its bigger counterpart, the NSB, the NSNAP’s main focus was anti-Semitism Although the NSB soon followed with anti-Semitic policies.

nsnap brlrid

The party failed to make any headway in the Dutch political scene, at the 1937 election it only achieved 998 votes. Soon the party was split in 3 smaller parties ,none of them were successful.

The German invasion of the Netherlands didn’t benefit the NSNAP at all.

invasion

By December 14 all political partied with the exception of the NSB were banned in the Netherlands. van Rappard joined the Waffen SS and most of the remaining members joined the NSB.

One of these members would become one the nation’s most evil and devious*if not the most evil) collaborators.

Dries Riphagen was a Dutch criminal involved in prostitution and jewelry fraud.During the war, Riphagen continued his clandestine businesses by working with the Germans as an intermediary agent of the  Sicherheitsdienst (or SD), in Amsterdam.

Riphagen

He was very manipulative and would gain the trust of many Jews by promising them either a hiding place or escape abroad. In return they would have to handover their valuables, again he promised that he would only a small bit of the valuable as a sweetener for th SD, he would keep the majority safe for and return it to them after the war.

In fact he kept most of their belonging for himself and betray the whereabouts of the Jews to the SS. He betrayed hundreds of Jews and would also receive a reward for every Jew captured.

Riphagem was also responsible for recruiting Jews in helping find more Jews or infiltrate i the resistance network. He would blackmail the Jews,often young attractive Women, by threatening to send them and their families if they wouldn’t co-operate.

One of these women was Beje Wery.

Betje

Betje aka Bella Tuerlings ,agreed to work for the Devisenschutzkommando(part of the SD) as a so-called Vertrauens-Frau (V-Frau), or as a spy, in order to safe her mother who was Jewish and her Father who was half Jewish/ She had been arrested for not weaing a yellow star and spent a day in Westerbork, her Husband ,Frans Teurlings, managed to get her released. He died in 1943 in a car crash.  In 1944 she infiltrated in her late husband’s network who created fake ID’s and other documents and traded in black market bonds. She handed over several of the network  to her Riphagen, they were executed.

Riphagen was arrested after the war but he managed to escape , he ended up in Argentina where he became a oersonal friend to Juan and Evita Peron.

peron

Not only was he friend ,Riphagen also worked for Perón’s secret service as an instructor in anti-communist tactics.

After Peron was overthrown, Riphagen returned to Europe. The Dutch government were not aware of this. In 1988, they asked for Riphagen to be extradited from Argentina but he had died in 1973 in Switzerland from cancer.

Beje Wery was arrested after the war and sentenced for life, but she was released in the 1950’s . She died in 2006.

Ernst Herman van Rappard died of a brain hemorrhage in the central prison hospital in Vught, on January 11,1953.

In 2016 ,director Pieter Kuiper shot the movie “Riphagen: The Untouchable” about Dries Riphagen. Which is currently available on Netflix.

film

 

 

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources

Go2war2.nl

The rupturedduck

Wikipedia Netherlands

 

 

 

 

 

Mengele’s arrival in Auschwitz

2018-05-24

On May 23rd 1943 Dr Joseph Mengele started his ‘work’ at Auschwitz. I am not going to say too much about this evil personified individual.

He particularly found pleasure in working in Auschwitz

The Doctors in Auschwitz were all scheduled according a work rota for the selections when new victims arrived by train, but Mengele was the only one to volunteer for the selections and would sometimes ask if he could take over a slot in the rota.

1

He came from a very privileged background and had a Phd  in Anthropology as well as a Doctorate in Medicines.He made weekly visits to the hospital barracks and sent to the gas chambers any prisoners who had not recovered after two weeks in bed.

Auschwitz gave him the opportunity to conduct experiments in order to continue his anthropology studies. The Nazi regime allowed him to experiment in the vilest of way without impunity.

He was especially interested in twins.They had to undergo weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes by Mengele himself or one of his  assistants.  Experiments performed on twins included unnecessary amputation of limbs, intentionally infecting one twin with typhus or other diseases, and transfusing the blood of one twin into the other.

josef-mengele-twins-experiment.jpg

He was  transferred to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia  January 17, 1945, bringing along  2 boxes of examples and records of his experiments.

He managed to escape Gross-Rosen on 18 February, a week before the Soviets arrived, disguised as a Wehrmacht soldier .

He  managed capture by  the  Allies until June 1945 , when he was picked up by an American patrol. He was traveling under his own name at the time, but the wanted criminal list hadn’t been efficiently distributed and also he did not have the SS blood group tattoo.so  the Americans let him go. Mengele spent some time working as a farmhand before deciding to skip out of the country in 1949.

On 17 April 1949. withe the aide of  a network of former SS members, Mengele traveled to Genoa, where he managed to get  a passport under the alias “Helmut Gregor” from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He sailed to Argentina in July.

3.JPG

Despite many attempts to catch him he was able to elude justice. I have always been skeptical about this, I think that the allied never really wanted to catch him because if they did, it would have been easy enough to do so.He was more or less hiding in plain sight in Argentina.

He eventually drowned in 1979 while swimming in the Atlantic ocean, after suffering a stroke.

wanted

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

Source

Yad Vashem

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do cry for me Argentina- The other side of Evita Peron

eva2

The former first lady of Argentina has been accused of accepting Nazi treasures stolen from wealthy families during the Holocaust in return for using her country as a safe haven. 

According to a new book, Eva Peron and her husband, former president Juan Peron, kept quiet about the number of Nazis who were hiding out in Argentina after the Second World War.

peron

Among those who fled to the South American country was Adolf Eichmann, a key orchestrator of the concentration camps.

Germany Eichmann Files

He lived under a false name and worked for Mercedes Benz until 1960, when he was kidnapped by Mossad agents and taken to Israel.He was later faced trial and was hanged for the war crimes he committed.

Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ responsible for human experiments on Holocaust victims, also found refuge in Argentina and lived in South America until his death in 1979 at the age of 67.

mengele

In ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Latin America,’ authors Leandro Narloch and Duda Teixeira wrote: ‘It is still suspected that among her [Eva Peron’s] possessions, there were pieces of Nazi treasure that came from rich Jewish families killed in concentration camps.
evita

‘Peron himself even spoke of goods of ”German and Japanese origin” that the Argentine government had appropriated,’ they added.Switzerland is said to have launched an investigation into whether Argentina deposited stolen Nazi loot in Swiss banks after the war.

In 1947, then First Lady Eva Peron included a brief trip to Switzerland during a publicity tour of Europe to try and boost the image of her husband’s regime abroad.

According to historians, she may have opened at least one secret Geneva account to stash funds and valuables she allegedly received from Nazis in exchange for Argentine passports and visas.

Records  emerging from Swiss archives and the investigations of Nazi hunters, an unpublicized side of Evita’s world tour was coordinating the network for helping Nazis relocate in Argentina.

This new evidence of Evita’s cozy ties with prominent Nazis corroborates the long-held suspicion that she and her husband, Gen. Juan Peron, laid the groundwork for a bloody resurgence of fascism across Latin America in the 1970s and ’80s.

Besides blemishing the Evita legend, the evidence threatens to inflict more damage on Switzerland’s image for plucky neutrality. The international banking center is still staggering from disclosures about its wartime collaboration with Adolf Hitler and Swiss profiteering off his Jewish victims.

The archival records indicate that Switzerland’s assistance to Hitler’s henchmen didn’t stop with the collapse of the Third Reich.

And the old Swiss-Argentine-Nazi connection reaches to the present in another way. Spanish “superjudge” Baltasar Garzon is seeking to open other Swiss records on bank accounts controlled by Argentine military officers who led the so-called “Dirty War” that killed and “disappeared” tens of thousands of Argentines between 1976-83.

The second wife of Juan Peron, Evita was given the official title of ‘Spiritual Leader of the Nation’ by the Argentine Congress before her death from cancer in 1952 at the age of 33 and is still regarded as a national heroin.

Eva speech

 

 

Walter Kutschmann- the escaped butcher of Lwow.

Walter Kutschmann (24 July 1914 – 30 August 1986) was a German SS–Untersturmführer and Gestapo officer, a member of an Einsatzkommando, based first in Lwów, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine), and later in Drohobycz. He was culpable for the massacre of 1,500 Polish Jews in Lwów, Poland in the years 1941–42.

tumblr_m6ec02vbeW1qk6uvyo2_1280

At the start of the Second World War, he moved to Leipzig, where he joined the SiPo (Security Police) forces commanded by Karl Eberhard Schöngarth. He was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer and was the commanding officer of an Einsatzgruppe that operated in Drohobycz, Poland. Under his leadership, Kutschmann participated in the massacre of Lwów professors in 1941.

Warszawa-IBB-PAN-Pawinskiego5-TablicaLwowskichProfesorow

In 1942, he ordered the murder of 1,500 Polish intellectuals in the Lwów region, in Brzeziny and Podhajce in what is now part of Ukraine. Witnesses said that the Ukrainians who were ordered to dig the graves for the killings were themselves later slain on Kutschmann’s orders. Witnesses also claim that Kutschmann shot a 17 or 18-year-old Jewish housemaid in Drohobycz in 1941, after he accused her of having transmitted a venereal disease to him.

In 1944, on the orders of intelligence officer Hans Günther von Dincklage, he was transferred to Paris, where he was briefly associated with Coco Chanel during Operation Modellhut.

1024px-Coco_Chanel,_1920

While in France at the end of 1944, Kutschmann defected to seek refuge in Vigo, Spain under the guise of a Carmelite monk named Pedro Ricardo Olmo Andrés, residing in Vigo.

When the French government began to investigate Nazi fugitives in 1947, he sought protection in the ODESSA network

odessa

https://dirkdeklein.net/2016/08/30/odessa/

and traveled by sea on the motorboat Monte Amboto, under the guise of a Catholic monk, arriving in Argentina on 16 January 1948. He was assimilated as part of the management of Osram, a lighting manufacturer, where he served as purchasing manager. There in August 1973, he married Geralda Baeumler, a citizen of German origin, a businesswoman and a veterinarian. They settled in the resort town of Miramar, Buenos Aires Province.

1024px-Miramar_view_from_the_beach.jpg

Kutschmann lived there until January 1975, when he was found and exposed by journalist Alfredo Serra.

Renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna arranged the extradition of Kutschmann. In 1975, after checking Kutschmann’s citizenship and marriage, which proved false, Interpol requested his arrest. The Argentine government attempted to arrest him, but he escaped, thus losing his trail. In 1975, his Argentine citizenship was revoked. A second extradition request was made in 1985, and he was again arrested by Interpol agents in the town of Vicente López. Given his precarious health, he was kept in a hospital prison in Buenos Aires, where he died of a heart attack before he could be extradited.His supposed wife was reported to the authorities for animal abuse, specifically for euthanizing homeless dogs in gas chambers.

Had he been extradited, Walter Kutschmann would have been the first Nazi fugitive handed over by Argentina

Operation Tabarin

tabarin

During the Second World War the British Government mounted a secret mission, code-named Operation Tabarin, to establish a permanent presence in Antarctica to assert its territorial claims. This involved the building of the first permanent British bases in Antarctica, and formed the foundations of Britain’s continued involvement in Antarctica for the last seventy + years.

1a119

In 1943, at the height of World War Two, the British Government launched a top-secret expedition to the Antarctic. Code-named Operation Tabarin, after a Paris nightclub, the expedition established Britain’s first permanently occupied research stations on the continent.

In 1941, as the Second World War continued to rage, the German ship Pinquin captured two Norwegian factory shops, one supply ship, eleven whale catchers and 23,000 tons of whale oil in the Southern Ocean.

hk_pinguin_01

With whale oil, used to make margarine, essential to war-rationed Britain, the HMS Queen of Bermuda was dispatched to protect the whaling fleet.

 

Whilst there, it visited the whaling station at Deception Island to destroy coal and fuel oil supplies that could be used by the enemy. In February 1942 the Argentine warship Primero de Mayo visited Antarctica to take formal possession of the territory, leaving plaques, flags and records of visits in copper cylinders at sites.

In 1943 the British HMS Carnarvon Castle retaliated by flying British flags, leaving records and removing Argentine records.

1024px-Postcard_RMMV_Carnarvon_Castle

But in the same year Primero de Mayo returned to replace these British markers with Argentinean. Not wanting to set a precedent that might encourage incursions elsewhere in the Empire, but also not wanting outright conflict with Argentina as the war dragged on, the British launched Operation Tabarin in 1943 to establish a permanent presence in Antarctica. Originally a secret mission, details were shared by the BBC Overseas Service and published in The Times newspaper on 24 April 1944, in which the reasons cited for the Operation were the resumption of scientific and survey work in Antarctica, as well as ‘protecting vital interests and safeguarding the whaling industry’

The role of Tabarin was ostensibly to deny safe anchorages to enemy raiding vessels and to gather meteorological data for allied shipping in the South Atlantic, Tabarin actively reinforced British territorial claims in the Falkland Islands Dependencies at a time when this was being challenged. From the outset survey and science work were planned by an advisory committee – Antarctic veterans James Wordie, Neil Mackintosh and Brian Roberts. In the field, the expedition was directed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies via the Governor of the Falkland Islands.

The expedition was put together and led in 1943-44 by James Marr, a marine zoologist, who along with 2nd-in-command Victor Marchesi, Captain of the support ship HMS William Scoresby, set up bases on Deception Island (Base B) and Port Lockroy (Base A).

 

1a201_3-1025x600

Andrew Taylor, a surveyor from the Royal Canadian Engineers, led the 2nd year, establishing Hope Bay (Base D) as the centre for dog-sledge-based fieldwork on the mainland.

1a1_29

By the end of 1944, plans to establish the main base of operations at Hope Bay early in 1945 were well underway, with Marr now also planning to establish a base on Stonington Island after assisting Taylor, who would be Base Leader, with the setup up of Hope Bay. In addition, the Scoresby and Fitzroy would seek to establish an unmanned base at Sandjefjord Bay. On 3 February 1945 the Scoresby arrived at Port Lockroy carrying the new base team, and stores and men bound for Hope Bay and Stonington Island were loaded onboard.

By 5 February the Scoresby arrived at Deception Island, where stores for Hope Bay were transferred onto the Eagle along with the newly arrived husky dogs. During this time on Deception Island, Marr relinquished his command on the grounds of ill health, stating his desire to return to England and passing command over to Taylor. With this decision it was decided to postpone plans to set up the base on Stonington Island. With Marr’s health deteriorating, he left for the Falkland Islands on 9 February 1945.

Imagegen (1)

With Taylor now in command, the Eagle left Deception Island on 11 February, arriving at Hope Bay the following day and, with conditions much better than the previous year, he picked the site for the new base that afternoon.

1a8_0

Unloading and construction of ‘Eagle House’, the main base hut, began the next afternoon, and by 11 March the men had moved into their permanent accommodation.

Imagegen

On 14 January 1946, after a frustrating and ill-informed wait, the men were unexpectedly relieved and, after loading up themselves and their supplies, and leaving members of the new team to settle in, arrived at Deception Island the next day. By 16 January they were back at Port Lockroy to relieve the team there, and left the next day with stores including penguins bound for London Zoo. On 21 January 1946 the men arrived back in the Falkland Islands, and by 11 February were on their way back to Britain. On arrival in London on 9 March 1946, and with their request for a salary advance ignored, three of the men with no friends or family in London were forced to sleep rough that first night. With little mention made of their return, the men submitted their reports and then went their separate ways.

In all 14 men wintered the first year, 21 the second. From July 1945 the expedition was put on a permanent footing as the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS). The three bases were relieved in March 1946 and most expedition members returned to the UK.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00

Reinhard Kopps & Erich Priebke-No honor among murderers.

 

Reinhard Kopps (29 September 1914 Hamburg – 11 September 2001 Bariloche, Argentina) was an SS Officer for the Nazi Party during World War II. Following the defeat of Germany in World War II, he helped Nazis escape to Argentina, finally fleeing there himself. Under the assumed name of Juan Maler, Kopps was hiding in the small town of Bariloche in the Andes Mountains. Bariloche was the home of many Germans after World War II.

 

Nazi archives opened in 1994 caused ABC News to research Nazi war criminals. After research revealed many Nazis living in Argentina, Sam Donaldson confronted Maler on camera,getting him to admit that he was Reinhard Kopps, a former Nazi, and that he assisted Nazis to leave Germany and settle in Argentina. The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused him of having organized ethnic crimes in Albania where thousends of jewish were deported and killed. He was also reported for alleged activities as an ideologist of neo nazi groups in all over the world.

 

In order to deflect attention away from himself, he told Donaldson that an even worse war criminal, Erich Priebke (under the assumed name Erico Priebke)was also living there.Donaldson and his team waited for Priebke outside the school he was working and interviewed him at his car.

 

After initial hesitation, Priebke admitted who he was and spoke openly about his role in the massacre. He justified his actions by saying that he only followed orders from the Gestapo chief of Rome, Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler and that, in his view, the victim were terrorists.

kappler1_little

Erich Priebke (29 July 1913 – 11 October 2013) was a German mid-level SS commander in the SS police force (SiPo) of Nazi Germany.

bild-1

In 1996 he was convicted of war crimes in Italy, for participating in the Ardeatine massacre in Rome on 24 March 1944. 335 Italian civilians (among them 75 Italians of Jewish ancestry) were killed in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 men of the German SS Police Regiment Bozen.

 

The massacre was perpetrated without prior public notice in a little-frequented rural suburb of the city, inside the tunnels of the disused quarries of pozzolana, near the Via Ardeatina.

roma-fosseardeatine6

By mistake, a total of 335 Italian prisoners were taken, five in excess of the 330 called for. On 24 March, led by SS officers Erich Priebke and Karl Hass.

karl-hass

They were transported to the Ardeatine caves in truckloads and then, in groups of five, put to death inside the caves. Because the killing squad mostly consisted of officers who had never killed before, Kappler had ordered several cases of cognac delivered to the caves to calm the officers’ nerves.

The nerves of Erich Priebke didn’t need to be calmed. To set an example for the other men he personally shot the 2 first victims himself.

The officers were ordered to lead the doomed prisoners into the caves with their hands tied behind their backs and then have them kneel down so that the soldiers could place a bullet directly into the cerebellum, ensuring that no more than one bullet would be needed per prisoner. Many were forced to kneel down over the bodies of those who had been killed before them because the cave had become filled with dead bodies. During the killings, the existence of the five extra prisoners was discovered, and it was decided to kill them anyway, in order to prevent news of the location of the place of execution from becoming known.

 

Priebke was one of the men held responsible for this mass execution. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he received help from a bishop stationed in Rome and fled to Argentina on a Vatican passport, where he lived for over 50 years.

In 1991, Priebke’s participation in the Rome massacre was denounced in Esteban Buch’s book.In 1994, 50 years after the massacre, Priebke felt he could now talk about the incident and was interviewed by American ABC news reporter Sam Donaldson.This caused outrage among people who had not forgotten the incident, and led to his extradition to Italy and a trial which lasted more than four years.

Donaldson’s news report showed how openly Priebke could live in Argentina, and how little remorse he felt for his actions. Argentine authorities arrested Priebke. Because of his old age and poor health, he was at first not imprisoned, but rather held under house arrest at his home in Bariloche, where he had lived since 1949.

The extradition of Priebke had several delays – his lawyers used tactics like demanding all Italian documents be translated into Spanish, a process which could have taken two years. The Argentine court eventually denied the process, but appeals and other delays caused the extradition case to take more than a year. His lawyers argued that the case could no longer be criminally prosecuted because the crime of murder was subject to a statute of limitations of 15 years under Argentine law.

In March 1995, after nine months of delays, the president of the Jewish organization B’nai B’rith was promised by, among others, the Argentine president Carlos Menem, that the case would soon be closed, and that Priebke was to be transferred to Italy by the end of the month. In spite of these promises, the Supreme Court of Argentina decided that the case was to be transferred to the local court in Bariloche where the case was originally brought up. This opened the possibility for years of delays from future appeals, while Priebke could live at his home.

In May 1995, an Argentine federal judge accepted the Italian demand for extradition on the grounds that cases of crimes against humanity could not expire. But there were more appeals and rumors that the court might change the ruling.

In August of the same year, it was judged that Priebke was not to be extradited because the case had expired. To put pressure on the Argentine government, Germany demanded extradition the same day. The Italian military prosecutor, Antonio Intelisano, argued that FN agreements to which Argentina was signatory expressly state that cases of war criminals and crimes against humanity do not expire.

After seventeen months of delays, the Argentine supreme court decided that Priebke was to be extradited to Italy. He was put on a direct flight from Bariloche to Ciampino, a military airport close to the Ardeatine caves, where the executions had been carried out many years earlier.erich-priebke-1995-argentina

In court, Priebke declared himself not guilty. He did not deny what he had done, but he denied any moral responsibility. He blamed the massacre on those whom he branded as “the Italian terrorists” who were behind the attack in which 33 German SS men were killed. The order came directly from Hitler, and he thought it was a legitimate punishment. During the trial it became clear that Priebke had personally shot two Italians. This was also in his testimony from 1946 before he managed to escape.

 

Around noon on 24 March 1944, 335 men went to the Ardeatine Caves, Rome. All were tied with their hands behind their backs and their names were read out loud. In groups of five they went into the caves. Priebke went inside together with the second or third group and shot a man with an Italian machine pistol. Towards the end he shot another man with the same machine pistol. The executions ended when it got dark that night. After the shootings, explosives were used to shut the caves. Priebke was found not guilty, for the reason of acting under orders.

On 1 August 1996, orders were given for the immediate release of Priebke. The Italian minister of justice later said that Priebke might be re-arrested, depending on whether or not he would be extradited to Germany to be charged with murder. The courts were blocked by demonstrators for over seven hours after Priebke’s trial.

The judges voted two against, one for, convicting the 83-year-old Priebke for taking part of the massacres, which he had admitted, but he was acquitted, again, purportedly because he had been following orders. There were strong reactions from family members of the victims, who claimed the judges put no value on human lives. Shimon Samuels, the leader of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that with this ruling, Italy was permitting crimes against humanity.

The case was appealed by the prosecutors. The day after, Germany asked Italy to keep Priebke imprisoned until their demand to have him extradited was processed, as they wanted him put on trial for the murders of two people that he had personally shot. Outside the courthouse there were demonstrations, but when it became known that Priebke had been rearrested, these calmed down. Many people later went to visit the Ardeatine Caves to honour the victims.

The Italian supreme court decided that the court that had freed Priebke was incompetent and the appeal went through. Among other things it was questioned why the Nuremberg trials were not taken up earlier, since it had been concluded that an individual has personal responsibility for his actions. The reason that Priebke had been released was that he followed orders. Priebke claimed that if he had not obeyed, he would have been executed himself, but the appeals would not accept this, as they felt it was a baseless excuse.

The Court of Cassation voided the decision, ordering a new trial for Priebke. He was sentenced to 15 years. These were reduced to 10 years because of his age and alleged ill health. In March 1998, the Court of Appeal condemned him to life imprisonment, together with Karl Hass, another former SS member. The decision was upheld in November of the same year by the Court of Cassation. Because of his age, Priebke was put under house arrest. In March 1997 it was decided that Priebke could not be extradited to Germany. The reason for this was that he was now going through a trial which was for the same things that Germany wanted him tried. He could not be tried for the same crime twice.

Priebke died in Rome on 11 October 2013 at the age of 100, from natural causes. His last request to have his remains returned to Argentina to be buried alongside his wife was denied by the Argentinian government. The Vatican issued an “unprecedented ban” on holding the funeral in any Catholic church in Rome. His hometown in Germany also refused to take the body, over fears that the place of burial could become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

Reinhard Kopps was never prosecuted and died in Bariloche in 2001.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

$2.00