Tag Archives: Crime

Allied Gangster-American WWII deserters

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The Army is a reflection of society, it has different layers and characters.It has clergy men, Physicians, Nurses, Police and even teachers. But like the wider society it also has members whose intentions are less honorable. Even those who are considered the good guys and the liberators.

Paris 1944, and French citizens are cowering in their homes and businesses, fearful of the soldiers who will show no mercy, who will steal, assault, rape and murder without compunction.

But it’s not Nazis that they are afraid of, it’s former American GIs… deserters, who roamed the streets in highly organised gangs.

It’s a fascinating and little known fact that in the weeks and months following the liberation of Paris, the city was hit by a wave of crime and violence like something out of Prohibition era America.

While the Allies fought against Hitler’s forces in Europe, law enforcers fought against the criminals who threatened that victory. Men who had abandoned the ‘greater good’ in favour of self-interest, black-market profits and the lure of the cafes and brothels of Paris: deserters.

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Highly organised, armed to the teeth and merciless, these deserters used their US uniforms as another tool of their trade along with the vast arrays of stolen weapons, forged passes and hijacked vehicles they had at their disposal.Between June 1944 and April 1945 the US army’s Criminal Investigation Department handled a total of 7,912 cases. Forty per cent involved misappropriation of US supplies.

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Greater yet was the proportion of crimes of violence – rape, murder, manslaughter and assault which accounted for 44 per cent of the force’s workload. The remaining 12 per cent were crimes such as robbery, housebreaking and riot.

Up to 50,000 American and 100,000 British soldiers deserted during World War II, and in a new book, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II, Charles Glass lifts the lid on one of the most violent and shameless episodes in American military history.

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Charles Glass had long harboured an interest in the subject. But it was only truly ignited by a chance meeting with Steve Weiss – decorated combat veteran of the US 36th Infantry Division and former deserter.

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They met for coffee and Weiss asked Glass what he was working on. Glass recalls: ‘I told him it was a book on American and British deserters in the Second World War and asked if he knew anything about it.

‘He answered, “I was a deserter.”‘

This once idealistic boy from Brooklyn who enlisted at 17, had fought on the beachhead at Anzio and through the perilous Ardennes forest, he was one of the very few regular American soldiers to fight with the Resistance in 1944. And he had deserted.

His story was,  both secret and emblematic of a group of men, wreathed together under a banner of shame that branded them cowards. Yet the truth was far more complex.

Many were afraid. They had reached a point beyond which they could not endure and chosen disgrace over the grave. Some recounted waking, as if from a dream, to find their bodies had led them away from the battelfield.

Others, like Weiss, fought until their faith in their immediate commanders disappeared. Was it a form of madness or a dawning lucidity that led them to desert?

50,000 American and 100,000 British soldiers deserted during World War II.Yet only one was executed for it, Eddie Slovik. He was, until that point, by his own assessment the unluckiest man alive.

 

Of the 49 Americans sentenced to death for desertion during the Second World War he was the only one whose appeal for commutation was rejected. His greatest sin, as Glass tells it, was his timing.

His appeal came in January 1945 just as the German counter-offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, was at its peak. Allied forces were near breaking point. It was not, Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower decided, time to risk seeming to condone desertion.

Slovik was shot for his crime on the morning of 31 January 1945.

He was dispatched in the remote French village of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and the truth concealed even from his wife, Antoinette.

She was informed that her husband had died in the European Theatre of Operations.

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Private Alfred T Whitehead’s was a very different story.

Private Alfred T Whitehead, a farm boy from Tennessee, His story reveals an interesting insight into the actions of one particular type of deserter.

Whitehead fought at Normandy and claims to have stormed the beaches on the D-Day landings and been in continuous combat up to December 30. In the process he earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, Combat Infantry Badge and Distinguished Unit Citation.

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After suffering an illness, he was invalided out to Paris. Upon his recovery, Whithead was sent to the 94th Reinforcement Battalion, a replacement depot in Fontainebleau.

Bored by is new posting, he deserted and quickly moved into life as a criminal in the Paris underworld – and into one of the many gangs of ex-soldiers terrorizing Paris.

Led by an ex-paratrooper sergeant, raids were planned like military operations. Whitehead later admitted, ‘we stole trucks, sold whatever they carried, and used the trucks to rob warehouses of the goods in them.’

The gang used combat tactics, hijacked goods, attacking civilians and military targets indiscriminately. They robbed crates of alcohol, hijacked jeeps and raided private houses. They stole petrol, cigarettes, liquor and weapons.  And there seemed to be nobody able to stop them as their crime wave even spread into neighbouring Belgium

Such was their ‘success’ that Whithead estimated that after just six months his own share of the plunder ran to an astonishing $100,000.Whitehead’s luck eventually ran out and he was captured, court martialled and
dishonourably discharged, serving time at the Delta Disciplinary Training Barracks in the south of France and, when repatriated to the States, in federal penitentiaries in New Jersey before his release.

Many years later he had that ‘dishonourable discharge,’ turned into a General one on rather disingenuous legal grounds.

In peacetime appearances mattered more to Whitehead than they ever had in war.

Back then, he admitted: ‘I never knew what tomorrow would hold, so I took every day as it came. War does strange things to people, especially their morality.’

Those ‘strange things’ rather than the false extremes of courage and cowardice are the truths set out in this account of the War and its deserters.

 

The murder of Captain Brownscombe

Captain Brian Brownscombe was murdered by a Nazi officer after being taken prisoner.Brian “Basher” Brownscombe was a son of Herbert Henry and Edith May Brownscombe of Watchet, Somerset.He served with 181 Airlanding Field Ambulance.

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The medical officer had been awarded the George Cross after keeping a wounded soldier afloat for five hours, following the disastrous Sicily Landings, after his glider crashed into the sea and sank.He landed in Arnhem on September 17, 1944, as medical officer with the 2nd South Staffords. He set up a hospital in a museum, but after the Germans overran the position, he and all the wounded soldiers were taken prisoner.

During Market Garden he was again attached to South Staffordshires were he served as the Regimental Medical Officer. He left England by glider on 17 september 1944 and landed near Wolfheze. Soon after landing he and other medical personnel set up a Regimental Aid Post (RAP) into a farmhouse (Reijerscamp) to treat any landing casualties. Casualties were light and they soon moved to their pre-planned positions. (Red Berets and Red Crosses page 90)

They were then captured by the Germans. Like most medical personnel Brownscombe continued to treat wounded in the Arnhem area. He first worked in St Elizabeth’s Hospital and after a few days he went to the Municipal Hospital at Arnhem. There he was killed by the German Karl Lerche.

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Private George Phillips was working in the Municipal Hospital and remembers that one evening just after he had finished a stint of duty that Captain Brownscombe was killed. He was shot by a drunk SS NCO. George still can see him lying on the stretcher with a hole in the back of his head. He said they were completely knocked out by this and he was the only British medical officer in the hospital. The SS NCO responsible for the killing was tracked down after the war and stood trial as a war criminal.”

His murderer, Karl-Gustav Lerche, twice changed his name after the war in an attempt to avoid retribution, but he was finally caught and stood trial as a war criminal at Munich in 1955, where he was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour.

But for the actions of his former lover, Lerche would never have been brought to justice. He had been doing odd jobs in Munich and had taken up with a woman called Charlotte Bormann. In September 1952 she walked into her local police station to denounce the man she had come to despise. Tired of his lies, Bormann told police that the man she knew as Gunther Breede was both a fraud and killer. In reality he was named Karl-Gustav Lerche who had admitted to killing a British POW in the war. Bormann, too, had form, although not of the criminal kind. The 54-year-old had married and divorced three husbands. Notably one of them was the nephew of Nazi leader Martin Bormann.

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The issue wasn’t just that the dashing Captain Brownscombe, known as ‘Basher’, had been shot off the battlefield; it was that he’d been shot after an evening of merry drinking with his captors. It had been an unusual gathering. Shortly after landing near Arnhem in September 1944, as part of an audacious Allied plan to reach Germany’s Ruhr area through the Netherlands, 28-year-old army doctor Brownscombe had been captured by German forces. He had plenty of company: during the Battle of Arnhem, which raged from 17 to 25 September, 6,000 of the 10,000 allied soldiers deployed in the immense operation were captured, while 1,400 were killed.

The battle also having resulted in vast numbers of British and German wounded soldiers, Brownscombe and the two other captured British doctors were assigned to duty at the German army hospital. In fact, the collaboration was a minor success, with the doctors going about their work in the spirit of Hippocrates. Watching this friendly co-existence, a Waffen-SS officer also stationed in Arnhem decided that it would be good to socialise with the British POWs.

On the afternoon of 24 September, the happy-go-lucky member of the Waffen-SS Kurt Eggers propaganda unit ;Waffen-SS Unterscharführer Knud Fleming Helweg-Larsen, invited Brownscombe, his two fellow British medics, Brian Devlin and James Logan and British army chaplains Daniel McGowan and Alan Buchanan along with Waffen-SS officers Karl-Gustav Lerche and Ernst Beisel for drinks in the officers’ mess. “We sat there and drank some bottles of red wine, apricot brandy and whisky,” Helweg-Larsen later told a British army interrogator. “The conversation was friendly. I interpreted for the two Germans.”

After a while, the two other Waffen-SS officers left, while Helweg-Larsen kept drinking with the Brits. “We were all pretty merry, but Brownscombe was the most sober of the party or carried his drink best,” Helweg-Larsen told the interrogator. The group parted company at dusk, and Helweg-Larsen invited his new friend Brownscombe over to the SS officers’ living quarters for a last drink “to show him that the SS were not so bad as English propaganda made out.”

Some 10 people including Lerche gathered at the SS billet, and “we drank and sang English and German songs.” Afterwards, a driver took Helweg-Larsen and Brownscombe back to the hospital. They stepped out, still chatting away, sharing stories and agreeing to stay in touch after the war. “He said I was too good to be in the SS and I said he was too good to be in the English Army,” Helweg-Larsen recalled. The evening’s goodbye was a lengthy one, as they kept shaking hands and patting each other on the back then continuing their conversation. During one such handshake, the Dane reported, Brownscombe collapsed in front of him, dead.

Suddenly Lerche appeared, holding a pistol. When the Dane asked what had happened, Lerche said that he’d had to do it, adding that Brownscombe had a happy death. Though Helweg-Larsen had himself killed a Danish newspaper editor several years earlier, he remonstrated with Lerche: “[Brownscombe] had been our guest and you had drunk with him.” Rather bizarrely, the pair left the dead officer on the ground, where his fellow POWs found him. The next day, Father Buchanan buried Brownscombe and placed a wooden cross on his grave.

Lerche who had been a member of the Waffen-SS Kurt Eggers propaganda unit, which was   a German Waffen SS propaganda formation which publicised the actions of all Waffen SS combat formations, seeing action in all major theatres of war with the exception of North Africa,

was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour in 1955 by a court in Munich. But eventually only served 5 years.

It is somehow ironic that someone related to Martin Borman got some justice for Captain Brownscombe.

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Karl Hulten and Elizabeth Jones-The Cleft Chin Murder

 

The cleft chin murder was a killing which occurred as part of a string of crimes during 1944, and was mentioned in George Orwell’s essay “Decline of the English Murder”.

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It became known as the “cleft chin murder” because the murder victim, a taxi driver, had a cleft chin.

The culprits were Karl Hulten, a Swedish-born deserter from the U.S Army, and Elizabeth Jones, an eighteen-year-old waitress.

Jones later said she dreamed of “doing something exciting,” and fantasized about being a stripper. At the time, Hulten described himself as an officer and as a Chicago gangster, both of which were false.

Karl Hulten was born in Sweden in 1922. His family emigrated to the United States and grew up in Massachusetts. After leaving school he worked as a grocery clerk, driver and mechanic.After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hulten joined the United States Army. He was trained as a paratrooper and in 1944 he was sent to England to take part in the D-Day invasion of Europe. Hulten did not like the idea and deserted, taking with him a large military truck.

On 3rd October 1944, Hulten met Elizabeth Jones, a eighteen-year-old Welsh striptease dancer. On their first date they ended up using Hulten’s truck to knock a young girl from her bike and stealing her handbag. The following day they gave a lift to a woman carrying two heavy suitcases. After stopping the car Hulten attacked the woman with an iron bar and then dumped her body in a river.

On 6th October the couple hailed a hire car on Hammersmith Broadway. When they reached a deserted stretch of road they asked the taxi driver ,George Edward Heath,to stop.

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Hulten then shot the driver in the head and stole his money and car. The following day they spent the money at White City dog track.

Jones now told Hulten she would like a fur coat. On 8th October they parked the stolen Taxi car outside Berkeley Hotel while they waited for a woman to emerge wearing a fur coat. Eventually Jones chose a white ermine coat worn by a woman leaving the hotel. Hulten attacked the woman but before he could get the coat a policeman arrived on the scene. Hulten managed to escape and drive off in his car. However, the following morning, Hulten was arrested as he got into the stolen Taxi car.

There was great public interest in the case of the GI gangster and his striptease dancer. The public was deeply shocked by the degree of violence the couple had used during their crime spree and it came as no surprise when both Karl Hulten and Elizabeth Jones were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Hulten was executed at Pentonville Prison. on 8th March 1945 but Jones was reprieved at the last moment and was released in May 1954. Her subsequent fate is unknown.

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Irma Grese- Evil knows no gender.

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Men don’t have the monopoly on doing evil acts, throughout history there have been many women who acted in barbaric ways. Often their acts would be more evil then that of their male counterparts as was the case with  Irma Grese, the proof that evil is not bound to gender but personality.

Irma Ida Ilse Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was a female SS guard at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and served as warden of the women’s section of Bergen-Belsen.

Grese was convicted for crimes against humanity committed at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and sentenced to death at the Belsen trial. Executed at 22 years of age, Grese was the youngest woman to die judicially under British law in the 20th century. She was nicknamed by the camps’ inmates “the Hyena of Auschwitz”

During World War II Irma Grese was the most notorious of the female Nazi war criminals. She was born on October 7, 1923, to a agricultural family and left school in 1938 at the age of 15. She worked on a farm for six months, then in a shop and later for two years in a hospital. Then she was sent to work at the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

She became a camp guard at the age of 19, and in March 1943 she was transferred to Auschwitz. She rose to the rank of Senior SS-Supervisor in the autumn of 1943, in charge of around 30,000 women prisoners, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jews. This was the second highest rank that SS female concentration camp personnel could attain.

After the war survivors provided extensive details of murders, tortures, cruelties and sexual excesses engaged in by Irma Grese during her years at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. They testified to her acts of pure sadism, beatings and arbitrary shooting of prisoners, savaging of prisoners by her trained and half starved dogs, to her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers.

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Irma Grese was born to Berta Grese and Alfred Grese, a dairy worker. Irma was the third of five children (three girls and two boys). In 1936, her mother committed suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid after discovering that Alfred had had an affair with a local pub owner’s daughter.

Irma Grese left school in 1938 at age fourteen, probably due to a combination of a poor scholastic aptitude, bullying by classmates, and a fanatical preoccupation with the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), a Nazi female youth organization, of which her father disapproved.

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Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in the sanatorium of the SS for two years and unsuccessfully tried to find an apprenticeship as a nurse.

Irma Grese worked as a dairy helper and was single when she volunteered for service in a concentration camp. From mid-1942 she was an Aufseherin (female guard) at Ravensbrück and in March 1943 transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the second half of 1944, Grese was promoted to Rapportführerin, the second-highest rank open to female KZ-wardens. In this function, she participated in prisoner selections for the gas chambers.

In early 1945, Grese accompanied a prisoner transport from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück. In March 1945, she went to Bergen-Belsen along with a large number of prisoners from Ravensbrück.Grese was captured by the British on 15 April 1945, together with other SS personnel who did not flee.

Grese inspired virulent hatred in prisoner Olga Lengyel, who wrote in her memoir Five Chimneys that selections in the women’s camp were made by SS Aufseherin Elisabeth Hasse and Irma Grese. The latter was visibly pleased by the terror her presence inspired in the women at roll call. Grese had a penchant for selecting not only the sick and the weak but any woman who had retained vestiges of her former beauty. Lengyel said that Grese had several lovers among the SS in the camp, including Josef Mengele. After Grese forced the inmate surgeon at the infirmary into performing her illegal abortion, she disclosed that she planned a career in the movies after the war. Lengyel felt that Grese’s meticulous grooming, custom fitted clothes, and overuse of perfume were part of a deliberate act of sadism among the ragged women prisoners.

It became apparent that she wasn’t just torturing and maiming prisoners because it was her job, an excuse many Nazis have tried to use to explain their actions. She did it because she got off on it, literally. Take this survivor’s story, recounted by Sonja Maria Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saide in their book Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, as an example:

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“[Grese] went around in camp, her bejeweled whip poised, picked out the most beautiful young women and slashed their breasts open with the braided wire end of her whip. Subsequently those breasts got infected by the lice and dirt which invaded every nook and corner of the camp. They had to be cut open, if the patient was to be saved. Irma Griese (sic) invariably arrived to watch the operation, kicking the victim if her screams interfered with her pleasure and giving herself completely to the orgiastic spasms which shook her entire body and made saliva run down from the corner of her mouth”

While at Auschwitz, when she wasn’t  just torturing people for fun, Grese was reportedly responsible for 30 murders every day. Then, in 1945, she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she earned the nickname the “beautiful beast of Belsen” because of her tight-fitting Nazi uniform, blue eyes and blonde hair. She was pretty much everything Hitler stood for.

On April 15, 1945, British Forces finally liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp and took Grese into custody.

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Grese and ten others, eight men and two other women, Johanna Bormann (mistakenly spelled Juana by the British) and Elisabeth Volkenrath, were convicted for crimes committed at Auschwitz and Belsen and sentenced to death. As the verdicts were read, Grese was the only prisoner to remain defiant.Her subsequent appeal was rejected.

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On Thursday, 13 December 1945, in Hamelin Jail, Grese was led to the gallows. The women were executed singly by long-drop hanging and then the men in pairs.Regimental Sergeant-Major O’Neill assisted the noted British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint.

 

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Vere St.Ledger Goold -Irish Wimbledon finalist and murderer.

 

St Leger Goold The Wimbledon runner-up was convicted of murder in 1907 along with his wife after a railway employee in Marseilles noticed a stench coming from GooldÕs luggage and, on opening the suitcase, discovered the chopped-up remains of a woman. He was sent to DevilÕs Island, where he died. Goold, the 1879 finalist, fell apart after his defeat by the Rev J T Hartley, who drove home on the middle Sunday of the tournament to deliver a sermon. Text source The TImes Online. Mens tennis player Portrait picture. 1884 Photographer unknown.

Since the tennis season is at full swing at the moment I thought it only appropriate to have a story about a Wimbledon semi finalist.

Vere Thomas “St. Leger” Goold (2 October 1853– 8 September 1909) was an Irish tennis player. He quickly faded from the game and ended his life in prison convicted of murder and premature death, by suicide.

He  shares two distinctive titles: He was the first Irishman to make it to the semi finals of Wimbledon. He is also the only Wimbledon finalist ever to be convicted of murder.

Goold was the fifth son of a magistrate in Co Waterford, his grandfather was a baronet and his grandmother was a daughter of the Earl of Kenmare. He became interested in lawn tennis and quickly ascended the ranks of the Irish Tennis League, winning the Irish Open in 1879 at the age of 25. The first prize was £20, a hefty sum back then.

Goold then went on to compete in the third ever Wimbledon tournament. He was the favourite to win because of his splendid backhand. Goold dispatched his opponents handily, leading him to his place in the finals that year.

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However he was beaten by the Reverend John Thorneycroft Hartley, who had to rush back from giving a church sermon to reach the grounds on time.

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Historians suggest that part of the reason for Goold’s loss was that he was suffering from a “roaring” hangover.

Goold’s star faded after that. He reached the final of the first open tournament held in Cheltenham and lost in a closely fought match. He then failed to defend his Irish title in 1880, losing out in the challenge round.

Goold continued to play until 1883. His only other noteworthy win was in 1881 in an unofficial Irish–English international doubles game.As Goold’s career went downhill, he became a degenerate, wasting his money on drink and opium.

He moved to London, where a local journalist would later write of him: “Those who knew him described him as a man of perfect breeding and of courtly, charming manner, cultured and generous. He was wont when coming home late from the club or the theatre to collect stray cats and to bring them to share his supper.

He married a French dressmaker, Marie Giraudin, who, according to the London Times, had wed a man against her parents’ wishes but then left him and fled to England. There she met and married a captain in the English army — her first husband having died in the meantime — but was made a widow for a second time when the captain died and, sinking into penury, she was forced to sell her jewels. It was around this time, in London, that she met Goold. After marrying, the couple were reported to have taken a large and furnished house in London’s West End where they held lavish parties and “lived extravagantly”.

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Early in 1902 the pair ran into serious financial problems. They fell into arrears on the rent and when the landlord called to the house he found it had been cleaned out, but not in a good way — the furniture had been sold.

From London, the Goolds fled to Canada, where Marie resumed her business in Montreal. The shop prospered but the profits were squandered on gambling , a foreshadow of the troubles to come — and on poor investments. They then shuttled between Montreal and Liverpool ,where Goold set up a laundry business. By then, the couple had re-invented themselves as “Sir Vere and Lady Goold”.

Vere, meanwhile, plotted a scheme to break the bank of the casino in Monte Carlo.

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It had been done only a very few times in the past,once by an English actress who was said to have entranced Oscar Wilde,and Goold was determined that he would turn his fortunes around. A friend had advised him of a secret system of winning, which, he said, was “infallible”.

The Irishman and his French wife introduced themselves as ‘Sir’ and ‘Lady’, despite the fact that the baronetcy had not passed to him but to his older brother who was living in Australia.

According to the Irish Times, “They mixed with the best society and were frequently seen at the tables in the casino.” Goold himself was “quiet, unassuming and soft spoken” while his wife was invariably depicted as a domineering battleaxe. They were “on visiting terms with people of note in the resort and were always well dressed and paid their bills regularly”. Their niece, Isabelle, who stayed with them, was “one of the belles of the season” and had English doctors pursuing her across ballrooms.

While they lost all of their money at the roulette tables, the Goolds found their meal ticket, the Danish Emma Levin. She was the widow of a Stockholm broker and already had a hanger-on named Madame Castellazi. The Goolds borrowed £40 from Mrs Levin. They soon lost all of that money too.

After the couple got into a public fight with Madame Castellazi, Madame Levin decided to leave Monte Carlo to avoid the publicity. She came to see the Goolds’ villa to ask them for the money that they owed.

It appears a fight ensued. When the police later came to the villa, after Madame Castellazi reported Mrs Levin missing, there were blood stains all over the walls, the ceiling and the furniture. There was also a dagger and a butcher’s knife with blood on them.

However the Goolds and Mrs Levin were nowhere to be found. The Goolds had caught the train from Monte Carlo to Marseilles. They left a large suitcase and handbag at the station, with instructions that they be forwarded to London.

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A porter noticed the nasty smell and blood seeping from the luggage. When he opened the suitcase was horrified to discover the remains of Mrs Levin. The head was found in Mrs Goold’s hat-box and the legs in the other bag.

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The Goolds were promptly arrested and clapped in separate prison cells. Vere was heard to morosely remark that he regretted that he hadn’t already committed suicide. He would later write incomprehensible notes to Isabelle, who now had to make her way in life alone, her marriageability tainted by association.

News of the crimes spread like cholera across Europe, there were frequent reports in the Irish Times and to the United States.

 

 

The feverish press interest brought a world of pressure on the investigating police force. “The Monte Carlo Trunk Murder”, as it became known, provided fresh morsels of intrigue on an almost daily basis. When interrogated, the Goolds seem to first have claimed that a man named Burker (or possibly Barker) had killed Ms Levin in their suite while they were absent, and they had merely dismembered her body to prevent a scandal taking place in their temporary home.

Their accounts didn’t match, however. The French police decided to let the prisoners stew or “cook” for a few more days. Vere was by then suffering from “profound depression” and had attacked a guard, while his wife had come under intensified suspicion as it was noticed that she had bruises on her arms and legs ,possibly caused in a physical struggle.

Worn down by inquisition, Vere now seemed prepared to take the blame. He confessed that Emma Levin had visited the suite to borrow money from him and, when he refused, they had a bitter argument and, addled by drink and rage, he stabbed her.

Marie, who was thought to keep both her husband and niece on the shortest of leashes, said that she had witnessed part of this altercation but ” … naturally I thought it better to leave them alone while they discussed the transaction. Suddenly I heard piercing cries and the sounds of a struggle”. When she had returned to the room she said she fainted but quickly recovered consciousness and came up with the idea that the body should be cut up. Vere was too drunk to do any such thing so they dumped their dead widow in the bath until the next morning at which point he took a saw to the dowager’s neck and limbs.

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The trial in Monte Carlo lasted three days and there were 30 witnesses. It was dubbed ‘The Trunk Murder’.

Although Vere Goold confessed, the jury thought it more likely that Marie Goold was guilty. It came out in the trial that her two previous husbands had died in suspicious circumstances. They also felt that Marie had Vere so henpecked that he would not have murdered someone without her order. The papers labelled her “Lady MacBeth Reborn”.

A criminal profiler showed Goold’s flawed character. He argued that because his mother died when he was 17 and his father had died the year of the Wimbledon final, he had been without moral guidance. He was also a degenerate and morally incapable of making decisions due to his alcoholism and drug abuse.

The advocate general viewed Mr Goold as a “contemptuous pity, as a drink and drug-debauched creature.

Mrs Goold was sentenced to death but this was eventually reduced to life imprisonment because the Monegasque government didn’t have a guillotine or an executioner. She died of typhoid fever in jail in 1914.

Vere Goold was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guinea. According to reports he had nightmares of his own legs being cut off and suffered severe withdrawal from whisky and opium. He died by suicide in 1909, aged 55.

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IJje Wijkstra and Durk Tabak, 2 shady characters.

The Netherlands is generally known as a peaceful country with relatively little crime and especially the 2 most Northern provinces Friesland and Groningen, which are both rural areas would not be known for brutal crimes and yet 2 of the most notorious crimes in the country took place there. As far as my memory serves me one of the crimes is the 1st recorded mass murders in the country.

 

IIje Wijkstra

Wijkstra-4-2

For all the non Dutch speakers, don’t even attempt to pronounce the name. For all the non Frisians and Groningers, the same applies.

He was born on the 4th of July 1885 in Doezum(Groningen) as the youngest of 7 children, which was actually an average size family in those days.

After primary school IJje started an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, aside from that he would also go poaching with his father. He certainly knew how to handle a gun.

In 1928 he started an affair with Aaltje Wobbes, the wife of his friend Hendrik Wobbes, who was in jail for theft at the time.It is rumored that Aaltje had a great influence on IJje, after they have spent 2 weeks together in Aaltjes house, the pair decided that it was best they move into IJje’s place and leave Aaltje’s 6 children behind.

Because of the abandoning of the children, a judge ordered to apprehend Aaltje en bring her in for questioning.On the 18th of January 1929,two communal policemen (Aldert Meijer and Mient van der Molen) and 2 state policemen (Herman Hoving en Jan Werkman) were sent to arrest her.

IJje was aware of the arrest order and waited for the police to come with his rifle.220px-Saginaw-M1

It was -18 Celcius that day. IJje shot all 4 police officers and got injured himself,albeit just lightly.

After the murders  he burned the house and took Aaltje to his nephew.

iije

IJje tried to escape to the City of Groningen but on his way to the hospital he wass caught.

In April 1929 IJje was convicted to life by a court in Groningen  but after an appeal in Leeuwarden (the capital of Fiesland)  the sentence was reduced to 20 years.

In 1941 he was transferred from the states prison in Leeuwarden to an asylum for the mentally disabled in Eindhoven, why this was, is unclear but the Germans had invaded the Netherlands at that stage and they probably  had a different agenda, IJje died in the asylum in 1941 due to tuberculosis . I suspect the Nazi’s may have conducted some experiments on him.

In 1980 a movie was made of that fateful day in 1929, called “Het teken van het beest” the English title is “the Mark of the beast”

teken

Below a picture of the graves of the 2 states police officers.

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Durk Tabak.

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As a kid I heard this name and his story being mentioned a lot in my family, probably because there is a possibility I am related to him.

Durk was born on Wednesday 10 December 1902 in Harkema, Achtkarspelen, he was a son of Johannes Johannes Tabak and Antje Minnes Folkerstma.

Durk died on Friday 16 September 1949 in Surhuizum, Achtkarspelen, age 46.

He was a good friend of IJje Wijkstra. This is something I couldn’t understand until recently. Durk was living in Friesland and IJje was a resident of the province of Groningen. Even though the Netherlands is a small country at the start of the 20th century, in a rural area with little to no cars and even less public transport, the distance to me seemed substantial.

Apparently Durk taught IJje to play the accordeon.

300px-Tabak-60-1

However when I looked closer at a map recently , I noticed that Harkema was at the very east of Friesland and Doezum was at the very west of Groningen, in fact the 2 places are so close that the distance can be done by foot.

Anyway  Durk Tabak was a double  murderer and a musician. In 1930, Tabak was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he had stabbed the 29 year Jan van der Meulen to death in a café in Drachten.

Durk Tabak was a draughtsman by trade , but was also a gifted accordeon player..A few years after being released, he shot his mistress Grietje Groenland-Hayema in Augustinusga. After this horrific deed, he committed suicide by shooting himself through the head.

Because he had been an exemplary prisoner he could have been released in 1943 but because of the German occupation and of fear he would be drafted into the German army, Durk opted to remain in  prison.

Durk died on Friday 16 September 1949 in Surhuizum, Achtkarspelen, aged 46. He shot himself after killing his mistress Grietje Groenland-Hayema.

Durk is also one of the main characters in the movies “the Mark of the beast”

 

Serial Killers-Not only a US and UK phenomenon

When we say serial killers we tend to think that this is really only a US and UK thing with a few exceptions every once in a while,. Maybe it is because the UK and US serial killers are more well known because of the media and several Hollywood portrayals.

We have all heard of Jeffrey Dahmer,Ted Bundy,John Wayne  Gacy, Peter Sutcliffe and Jack the Ripper, with the exception of Jack the Ripper all of these men were eventually caught.

But it is not restricted to the US and the UK it really is a global phenomenon, for the lack of a better word, in fact the most prolific serial killer is from Colombia.

Luis Garavito Child-murderer, torture-killer, and rapist known as ”La Bestia” (“The Beast”). Confessed to killing 140 children over a 5-year period in Colombia. He is suspected of murdering over 300 victims, mostly street children.

Luis_Garavito

Garavito was arrested on 22 April 1999. He confessed to murdering 140 children, and was charged with killing 172 altogether throughout Colombia. He was found guilty on 139 of the 172 accounts; the others are ongoing. Although the maximum sentence for murder in Colombia multiplied by 139 comes to 1,853 years and 9 days, Colombian law limits imprisonment to 40 years. Because he helped police find some bodies, as well as to his confessions, his sentence was further reduced to 22 years.He may possibly qualify for even earlier release for further cooperation and good behavior.

Although the first officially recorded serial killer was H. H. Holmes

H._H._Holmes

Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the name of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or more commonly just H. H. Holmes, was one of the first documented serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In Chicago, at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, his actual body count could be up to 200.He brought an unknown number of his victims to his World’s Fair Hotel, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the fair, which was held in Jackson Park. Besides being a serial killer, H. H. Holmes was also a successful con artist and a bigamist.

In October 1895, Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, and was found guilty and sentenced to death. By then, it was evident that Holmes had also murdered the Pitezel children. Following his conviction, Holmes confessed to 30 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto (though some he confessed to murdering were, in fact, still living), and six attempted murders. Holmes was paid $7,500 (worth $213,330 today) by the Hearst newspapers in exchange for his confession.

hearst

Holmes gave various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence and later that he was possessed by Satan. His propensity for lying has made it difficult for researchers to ascertain the truth on the basis of his statements.[28] While writing his confessions in prison, Holmes mentioned how drastically his facial appearance had changed since his imprisonment. He described his new, grim appearance as “gruesome and taking a Satanical Cast”, and wrote that he was now convinced that after everything that he had done, he was beginning to resemble the Devil.

On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison, for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel.

However it is believed although it wasn’t officially documented a French Nobleman by the name of Gilles de Rais, killed people centuries before H.H Holmes was even born.

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Gilles de Rais (born 1404) is considered to be the precursor to the modern serial killer. Before he began his killing spree, he rode as a military captain in the army lead by St Joan of Arc – though it is unlikely that she knew him. He was accused and ultimately convicted of torturing, raping and murdering dozens, if not hundreds, of young children, mainly boys.

According to surviving accounts, Rais lured children, mainly young boys who were blond haired and blue eyed (as he had been as a child), to his residences, and raped, tortured and mutilated them, often ejaculating, perhaps via masturbation, over the dying victim. He and his accomplices would then set up the severed heads of the children in order to judge which was the most fair. The precise number of Rais’s victims is not known, as most of the bodies were burned or buried. The number of murders is generally placed between 80 and 200; a few have conjectured numbers upwards of 600. The victims ranged in age from six to eighteen and included both sexes. Although Rais preferred boys, he would make do with young girls if circumstances required.

At the transcript of the trial, one of Gilles servants Henriet (an accomplice to his crimes) described the actions of his master, which were essentially:

Henriet soon began to collect children for his master, and was present whilst he massacred them. They were murdered invariably in one room at Machecoul. The marshal used to bathe in their blood; he was fond of making Gilles do Sillé, Pontou, or Henriet torture them, and he experienced intense pleasure in seeing them in their agonies. But his great passion was to welter in their blood. His servants would stab a child in the jugular vein, and let the blood squirt over him. The room was often steeped in blood. When the horrible deed was done, and the child was dead, the marshal would be filled with grief for what he had done, and would toss weeping and praying on a bed, or recite fervent prayers and litanies on his knees, whilst his servants washed the floor, and burned in the huge fireplace the bodies of the murdered children. With the bodies were burned the clothes and everything that had belonged to the little victims. An insupportable odour filled the room, but the Maréchal do Retz inhaled it with delight

Execution by hanging and burning was set for Wednesday 26 October 1440. At nine o‘clock, Gilles and his two accomplices made their way in procession to the place of execution on the Ile de Biesse. Gilles is said to have addressed the crowd with contrite piety and exhorted Henriet and Poitou to die bravely and think only of salvation. Gilles’ request to be the first to die had been granted the day before. At eleven o’clock, the brush at the platform was set afire and Rais was hanged. His body was cut down before being consumed by the flames and claimed by “four ladies of high rank” for burial. Henriet and Poitou were executed in similar fashion but their bodies were reduced to ashes in the flames and then scattered.

Of course sometimes it is the ones you trust the most who turn out to be the real monsters, like in the case of Dr Harold Shipman.

Harold_Shipman_mug_shot

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a British GP and one of the most prolific serial killer in recorded history. On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders, but an inquiry after his conviction confirmed he was responsible for at least 218. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released.

The Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, began on 1 September 2000. Lasting almost two years, it was an investigation into all deaths certified by Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was a 41-year-old man Much of Britain’s legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a result of Shipman’s crimes. He is the only British doctor to have been found guilty of murdering his patients, although various other doctors have been acquitted of similar crimes in the country.

Shipman injected the victim with a lethal dose of the painkiller diamorphine and then signed a death certificate attributing the incident to natural causes. His motives were unclear; some speculated that Shipman may have been seeking to avenge the death of his mother, while others suggested that he thought he was practicing euthanasia, removing from the population older people who might otherwise have become a burden to the health care system. A third possibility raised was that he derived pleasure from the knowledge that, as a doctor, he had the power of life or death over his patients and that killing was the means through which he expressed this power. Despite his forgery of the will of one of his victims, financial gain appears not to have been a serious motive.

Shipman died on 13 January 2004, the day before his 58th birthday, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison.

Several years ago I watched a movie called Citizen X.

X

It was based on the true story of a Russian serial killer who, over many years, claimed over 50 victims, mostly under the age of 17. In what was then a Communist state, the police investigations were hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and those in power. The story is told from the viewpoint of the detective in charge of the case.

The name of this killer was Andrei Chikatilo

This case intrigued because I vividly remembered parts of  court case being televised and I remembered him sitting in  a cage in the courtroom.

Andrei Chikatilo was a Ukrainian serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov and ‘The Red Ripper.’ He was convicted of the murder of 53 women and children between 1978 and 1990. In 1978, Chikatilo moved to Shakhty, a small coal mining town near Rostov, where he committed his first documented murder. On December 22, he lured a nine-year-old girl to an old house which he bought in secret from his family and attempted to rape her.

Yelena_Zakotnova

(Yelena Zakotnova, aged 9. Murdered 22 December 1978.)

When the girl struggled, he stabbed her to death. He ejaculated in the process of knifing the child, and from then on he was only able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm through stabbing and slashing women and children to death. Despite evidence linking Chikatilo to the girl’s death, a young man, Alexsandr Kravchenko, was arrested and later tried and executed for the crime.

He established a pattern of approaching runaways and young vagrants at bus or railway stations and enticing them to leave. A quick trip into a nearby forest was the scene for the victim’s death. In 1983, he did not kill until June, but then he murdered four victims before September. The victims were all women and children. The adult females were often prostitutes or homeless tramps who could be lured with promises of alcohol or money. Chikatilo would usually attempt intercourse with these victims, but would usually be unable to get an erection, which would send him into a murderous fury. The child victims were of both sexes, and Chikatilo would lure them away with his friendly, talkative manner by promising them toys or candy. In the USSR at the time, reports of crimes like child rape and serial murder were often suppressed by the state-controlled media, as such crimes were regarded as being common only in “hedonistic capitalist nations.”

On 13 September 1984, exactly one week after his 15th killing of the year, Chikatilo was observed by an undercover detective attempting to lure young women away from a Rostov bus station. He was arrested and held. A search of his belongings revealed a knife and rope.He was also discovered to be under investigation for minor theft at one of his former employers, which gave the investigators the legal right to hold him for a prolonged period of time. Chikatilo’s dubious background was uncovered, and his physical description matched the description of the man seen with Dmitry Ptashnikov in March prior to the boy’s murder. A sample of Chikatilo’s blood was taken; the results of which revealed his blood group to be type A, whereas semen samples found upon a total of six victims murdered by the unknown killer throughout the spring and summer of 1984 had been classified by medical examiners to be type AB. Chikatilo’s name was added to the card index file used by investigators; however, the results of his blood type analysis largely discounted him as being the unknown killer. (By Chikatilo’s arrest, the index file had expanded to include over 25,000 individuals investigated in connection with the murders.

Chikatilo was found guilty of theft of property from his previous employer and sentenced to one year in prison, but was freed on 12 December 1984 after serving three months.

In 1988 Chikatilo resumed killing, generally keeping his activities far from the Rostov area. He murdered a woman in Krasny-Sulin in April and went on to kill another eight people that year, including two victims in Shakhty. Again there was a long lapse before Chikatilo resumed killing, murdering seven boys and two women between January and November of 1990. He was finally caught when trying to approach young children whilst under police surveillance.

He went to trial on April 14, 1992. Despite his odd and disruptive behavior in court, he was judged fit to stand trial. During the trial he was famously kept in a cage in the center of the courtroom; it was constructed for his own protection from the relatives of the deceased. The trial had a very disturbing atmosphere. The relatives kept shouting threats and insults to Chikatilo, demanding the authorities to release him so that they could execute him on their own. He was found guilty of 52 of the 53 murders and sentenced to death for each offense.

He was executed by firing squad (shot in the back of the head) on February 14, 1994 after Russian president Boris Yeltsin refused a last ditch appeal by Chikatilo for clemency.

The novel Child 44 is loosely based on Chikatilo.

Most of these men looked like ordinary men, not the bogey man we were warned about as kids.

bogeyman (1)

The one thing that they have in common is that were all evil and not all of them had a bad childhood in fact most of them were very privileged. Although I am not a psychiatrist so this is my own opinion, I do believe that some people are just born evil.

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Forgotten History- War Criminal;Klaas Carel Faber.

 

This is mot a scientific fact, it’s just my opinion and observation but it seems to be that those who have committed horrible crimes in WWII(and who weren’t captured) appear to have long and prosperous lives.

What is even more disturbing not all escaped war criminal fled to South America, some of them had comfortable lives in Europe after the war even in Germany.

Klaas Carel Faber (20 January 1922 – 24 May 2012) was a convicted Dutch-German war criminal. He was the son of Pieter and Carolina Josephine Henriëtte (née Bakker) Faber, and the brother of Pieter Johan Faber, who was executed for war crimes in 1948.

pieter faber

Faber was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals. Faber died in Germany in May 2012, having never been extradited.

Faber was born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, to a family with a strong National-Socialist background.Like his father and his brother, Faber was a member of the National Socialist Movement, or NSB, before the war,and joined the Waffen SS a month after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940.

 

After five months, he abandoned military training for less demanding police jobs in Rotterdam and The Hague.

In May 1943, he became a German citizen with the passing of the Erlaß über den Erwerb der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit durch Einstellung in die deutsche Wehrmacht, die Waffen-SS, die deutsche Polizei oder die Organisation Todt vom 11. Mai 1943 (RGBl. I. S. 315), which automatically awards citizenship to all foreign members of the Waffen-SS and other organizations. From 1943 to 1944, he was part of a firing squad at the Westerbork concentration camp, the camp Anne Frank passed through on her way to her death at Belsen.His zeal increased after his father, Pieter Faber, a baker at Heemstede, was killed by Hannie Schaft of the Dutch resistance on 8 June 1944.

https://dirkdeklein.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/forgotten-history-hannie-schaft-resistance-fighter/

He participated in the SS’s Silbertanne (“Silver Fir”) death squad which targeted members of the Dutch resistance, and those who hid Jews and opposed Nazism.He was also a member of Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, which carried out arbitrary assassinations (more than 50; his brother and Heinrich Boere were members of the same squad)of prominent Dutch citizens in reprisal for Resistance activities, and served as a bodyguard to Dutch Nazi leader Anton Mussert.(Below 2 pictures of Heinrich Boere and Anton Mussert)

 

 

After the war, Faber was tried by a Dutch court and sentenced to death by firing squad on 9 June 1947, for the murder of 11 persons in Westerbork and 11 others.The Dutch court stated that the Faber brothers were “two of the worst criminals of the SS” Pieter Faber was executed in 1948.On 14 January 1948, Klaas Carel Faber’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. However, on 26 December 1952, he escaped from prison in Breda, with Herbertus Bikker, Sander Borgers  and four other former members of the Dutch SS, and that same evening crossed the border into Germany.

 

The escape may have been masterminded by the Stichting Oud Politieke Delinquenten, an organisation of former Dutch fascists and collaborators.As a former member of the SS, Faber had obtained German citizenship.Following his escape Faber went on to live in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt and until retirement worked for the car manufacturer Audi as an office clerk.

Audi_Ingolstadt

In 1957, a German court in Düsseldorf dismissed charges against him for lack of evidence, claiming the Dutch authorities would not share evidence. Two extradition requests were made by the Dutch in 1954 and 2004 to have Faber returned to complete his sentence. Both requests were denied by the German authorities, the second with reference to the 1957 decision of lack of evidence.[ When new evidence was presented to a Munich court in 2006, the cases were viewed as manslaughter as opposed to murder, and thus outside the statute of limitations. A new arrest warrant from Dutch authorities was required to reopen the case, which was issued in part because of attention brought to the case by Dutch journalist Arnold Karskens , who in 2003 had found Faber’s residence. Calls for his extradition were frequent, including at the 2007 commemoration of the first transport that left Westerbork for the destruction camps.

 

In April 2009 Faber was listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of most important Nazi era war criminals still at large.

 

The center noted that he was a member of the Sonderkommando Feldmeijer execution squad. In July 2009 it was reported that at the time the German government might have wanted to prosecute Faber after all while other reports stated that he enjoyed immunity from prosecution. In August 2010, following the petition of more than 150 lawyers organized by Jerusalem-based lawyer David Schonberg, the Israeli government demanded that Germany enforce Faber’s sentence or extradite him to the Netherlands, and change its policy of allowing Nazi war crimes suspects to escape prosecution. Israel’s justice minister, Ya’akov Ne’eman, wrote to the German justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, asking that justice be carried out.

 

In November 2010, the Netherlands issued a European Arrest Warrant for Faber, the first the country ever issued for a war criminal.The application questioned the legality of Faber’s German citizenship given because of his membership in the SS. A Justice official from Bavarian justice stated that the request would be considered, “but as far as I know, there is nothing new”.

In January 2012 the German Justice department requested the judiciary in Ingolstadt, after pressure from the Dutch government, to execute the life sentence of the war criminal. Faber died before the request was granted. The many extradition requests and other investigations also called into question various administrative decisions regarding the Faber case.

Faber died on 24 May 2012 from kidney failure in Ingolstadt.

It surprises me that the German authorities were so reluctant to extradite Klaas Carel Faber, I believe it is their duty to ensure that all who carried out these atrocities in the name of the German government of the time(1939-1945) should be brought to justice at any cost and bureaucratic red tape should not hinder justice for the victims and their families. If there is one government on the planet who should know this it is the German government.

On the other side although I am not pro death penalty in this case I believe the Dutch government should have executed him together with his brother in 1948.

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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.

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Forgotten History-The Nazis that got away

It is a well known fact that 1000’s of Nazi’s escaped after the war and fled to South America, what is a less know fact that some of them returned to Europe and the US and lived a good life. Here are just a few examples.

Otto Skorzeny

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Otto Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he accompanied the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity. Books and papers written about him prior to the 2013 release of records pursuant to the Nazi War Crimes Declassification Act incorrectly refer to him as “Field Commander” of the operation. Skorzeny was the leader of Operation Greif, in which German soldiers were to infiltrate through enemy lines, using their opponents’ languages, uniforms, and customs. At the end of the war, Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement.

Although he was charged with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention in relation to Operation Greif, the Dachau Military Tribunal acquitted Skorzeny after the war. Skorzeny fled from his holding prison in 1948, first to France, and then to Spain. He later lived in Ireland.He was Hitler’s favourite Nazi commando, famously rescuing Mussolini from an Italian hilltop fortress, and was known as “the most dangerous man in Europe”.After World War Two, he landed in Argentina and became a bodyguard for Eva Perón, with whom he was rumoured to have had an affair.

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So when Otto Skorzeny arrived in Ireland in 1959, having bought a rural farmhouse in County Kildare, it caused much intrigue.At 6ft 4in and 18 stone, known as ‘scarface’ due to a distinctive scar on his left cheek, Skorzeny was an easily recognisable figure as he popped into the local post office.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-30571335

Friedrich Buchard

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Friedrich Buchardt (17 March 1909 in Riga – 21 December 1982 in Nußbach) was a Baltic German SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) who commanded Vorkommando Moskau, one of the divisions of Einsatzgruppe B. He then worked for MI6 until 1947, and then, presumably, for the CIA. Buchardt was never molested by the law, being one of the agents of more sinister reputation who was used by the West, and he died at the age of 73

From January to September 1942, he supervised the deportation of about 80,000 Jews and Romani to Chełmno extermination camp.

In February 1943, Buchardt succeeded Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Wiebens as commander of Einsatzkommando 9 of Einsatzgruppe B. He was in charge of extermination actions nearVitebsk. The death toll perpetrated by Buchardt’s commando is likely to be in the tens of thousands. Buchardt was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords, a Silver Badge of Courage, and an Infantry Assault Badge in Silver. In June 1944, he was promoted to Obersturmbannführer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1202005/The-Nazi-monster-recruited-MI6.html

Klaus Barbie

Klaus_Barbie_September_1930

Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie (25 October 1913 – 23 September 1991) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (rank equivalent to army captain) and Gestapo member. He was known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for having personally tortured French prisoners of the Gestapo while stationed in Lyon, France. After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for their anti-Marxist efforts and also helped him escape to South America. The Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German intelligence agency, recruited him, and he may have helped the CIA capture Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967. Barbie is suspected of having had a hand in the Bolivian coup d’état orchestrated byLuis García  Meza Tejada in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie no longer had the protection of the Bolivian government and in 1983 was extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and died in prison of cancer

Klaus_Barbie_Bolivian_secret_police

Although he was eventually imprisoned he had lived a life of luxury for decades.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/dec/23/world.secondworldwar

Artur Axmann

Artur_Axmann

 

Artur Axmann (18 February 1913 – 24 October 1996) was the German Nazi national leader (Reichsjugendführer) of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) from 1940 to the war’s end in 1945. He was the last living Nazi with a rank equivalent to Reichsführer.

In September 1931, Axmann joined the Nazi Party and the next year he was called to the NSDAP Reichsjugendführung[ to carry out a reorganisation of Hitler Youth factory and vocational school cells. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, he rose to a regional leader and became Chief of the Social Office of the Reich Youth Leadership.

Axmann directed the Hitler Youth in state vocational training and succeeded in raising the status of Hitler Youth agricultural work. In November 1934, he was appointed Hitler Youth leader of Berlin and from 1936 presided at the annual Reichsberufswettkampf competitions. On 30 January 1939 he was awarded the Golden Party Badge

During Hitler’s last days in Berlin, Axmann was among those present in the Führerbunker.[1] During that time it was announced in the German Press that Axmann had been awarded the German Order, the highest decoration that the Nazi Party could bestow on an individual for his services to the Reich. He and one other recipient, Konstantin Hierl, were the only holders of the award to survive the war and its consequences. All other recipients were either awarded it posthumously, or were killed during the war or its aftermath.

On 30 April 1945, just a few hours before committing suicide, Hitler signed the order to allow a breakout. According to a report made to his Soviet captors by Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Rattenhuber, the head of Hitler’s bodyguard, Axmann took the Walther PP pistol which had been removed from the room in the Fuehrerbunker by Heinz Linge, Hitler’s valet, which Hitler had used to commit suicide, saying that he would “hide it for better

In May 1949, a Nuremberg de-Nazification court sentenced Axmann to a prison sentence of three years and three months as a ‘major offender’.[10] On 19 August 1958, a West Berlin court fined the former Hitler Youth leader 35,000 marks (approximately 63,000, or $8,300 USD), about half the value of his property in Berlin. The court found him guilty of indoctrinating German youth with National Socialism until the end of the Third Reich, but concluded he was not guilty of war crimes. During his trial, Axmann told the court he heard the shot by which Hitler committed suicide. He also stated he had attempted to escape from central Berlin along with Martin Bormann, who he said had died during the attempt.times”.

After his release from custody, Axmann worked as a businessman with varying success. From 1971 he left Germany for a number of years, living on the island of Gran Canaria.[Axmann returned to Berlin in 1976, where he died on 24 October 1996, aged 83. His cause of death and details of his surviving family members were not disclosed.

 

 

Forgotten History War Criminal Pieter Menten

This is not so much a Forgotten History but more a not often mentioned history, why I don’t know. Maybe because it is a bit awkward to talk about since it is a black page in my country’s history.

I had heard about this man when I was a kid living in the Netherlands. I remember his trials between 1977 and 1980, it did have an extensive media coverage at the time.To be honest at that time I thought there could only be German war criminals, my excuse I was  still in primary school at the time

Pieter Menten’s story spans a few decades and has connections to the Netherlands,Poland and Ireland.

Born into a wealthy Rotterdam family, Menten became interested in Poland through his father’s business connections. He soon developed an extensive export trade in Dutch products to Poland. Menten moved to East Galicia in 1923 (then in Poland and later part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), where he became a wealthy landowner and businessman. Described as mild-mannered and quiet, he developed a deep grudge against a prominent neighboring Jewish family over a business dispute. Menten travelled back to the Netherlands in 1939, when Russia invaded eastern Poland, and returned in 1941 after the Nazi counter-occupation—this time as a member of the SS. Menten was involved in the massacre of Polish professors in Lviv and robbery of their property. According to witnesses, he helped shoot as many members of the offending family in Galicia as he could find, then turned on other Jews in the area.

While travelling in his personal train with his prized art collection, he was recognized by Dutch Resistance fighters. He was brought to trial. His chief defense lawyer was Rad Kortenhorst, President of the Dutch House of Representatives. The controversial trial concluded in 1949, with the prosecution unable to prove most allegations, and Menten was sentenced to an eight-month term for having worked in uniform as a Nazi interpreter. In 1951 the Dutch government refused a Polish request for Menten’s extradition.

Menten would go on to become a successful art collector and businessman. His 20 room mansion was filled with valuable art work (Nicolaes Maes, Francisco Goya, Jan Sluyters, etc.) and he held vast areas of real estate.

Jewish laborers display a confiscated work of art

Menten was quoted as saying that his fortune had first been acquired in pre-war Poland, he had been ruined by the Nazi occupation, but he had restored his finances, and his art collection.

What Menten failed to mention was his service in the Abwehr before the war, and his wartime service as an SS Sonderfuhrer, and that he was personally responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of Jews and communists in the villages of the Stryj valley.

He also failed to mention that his coveted art collection was the proceeds of theft from the residences of the Murdered Professors of Lvov and elsewhere in the Galician District.

In 1976, the case was reopened.On the 14th of November he day before he was going to be arrested he escaped to Switzerland.He eventually was captured on the 6th of December.

It was a Dutch Journalist, Hans Knoop who was tipped of by an Israeli colleague, she had seen an article in De Telegraaf newspaper about the pending art auction of some of Menten’s collection and she made Knoop aware of Menten’s dealings in Poland.Hans Knoop

Knoop interviewed Menten about his collection, at first Menten presumed it was going to be for an article on art, but Knoop advised Menten that he was investigating the accusations made about Menten. Initially Menten dismissed as being rubbish accusations but he stayed amicable , after a short while he became agitated ,Knoop said.

Knoop travelled to the Galicia region to investigate.

Galiz20

He came back with enough evidence to present to the prosecutors to warrant a trial.

On 9 May 1977 the trial began with Menten claiming it was a KGB stunt, a show trial. Chaviv Kanaan and four women who had witnessed the executions in Podhorodze, testified at this trial. Menten was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but this sentence was annulled on a technicality and a further trial was held in The Hague.

At the end of 1978 the Menten trial re-opened in the Hague, Menten was given a last word, a “word” that lasted for two hours, full of allegations against Police Commissioner Peters, against Hans Knoop and against all the others who had contributed to his conviction.

He stated that the late Justice Minister Donker had given him the promise in 1952 that he would not be prosecuted, as he claimed he had a secret dossier containing revelations about high ranking Dutch officials who had collaborated with the Germans during the war.

On 4 December 1978 the court announced its verdict Menten was released, which triggered public demonstrations against the release of a convicted war criminal. The Supreme Court reconvened during May 1979 and the verdict reached was that Menten’s appeal should be rejected and that he should stand trial again before a special court in Rotterdam.

During the trial, Menten’s mansion was set ablaze after a survivor of Dachau concentration camp threw a petrol bomb onto its thatched roof. The building suffered extensive damage and some of the art collection was destroyed

.In 1980 Menten was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was fined 100,000 guilders for war crimes, including being accessory to the murder of 20 Jewish villagers in 1941 Poland. Upon his release he believed he would settle in his County Waterford mansion in Ireland.

In 1985, then Minister for Justice Michael Noonan issued a barring order preventing his return to the State. Following Menten’s death in 1987 at the age of 89, his widow decided to sell the estate in Waterford.

 

Pieter Menten died on 14 November 1987, a demented old man age 88