Walter Rauff

Walter Rauff (born June 19, 1906, died May 14, 1984), was an SS officer in Nazi Germany, attaining the grade of Colonel (Standartenführer). He was an aide and a friend of Reinhard Heydrich firstly in the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, the SS security service, later in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office, a department created by Himmler in 1939 grouping the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst, and Kripo, the criminal police.

Rauff is thought to be responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths during the Second World War. In the late 70s and early 80s, he was arguably the most wanted Nazi fugitive still alive.

According to the British Security Service (or MI5) file on Walter Rauff released in 2005:

"Rauff joined the Reichsmarine (the German Navy) in 1924 as a young cadet. After a period of training as a midshipman he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1936 and given command of a minesweeper. He was a friend of Reinhard Heydrich, who also served in the Navy in the 1920s. Heydrich was hired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1931 to serve as the head of the SS counter-intelligence system, and when Rauff resigned from the Navy in 1937, Heydrich took him under his wing. Rauff was given the job of putting the SS and its security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), onto a war footing."

Rauff was involved in the development of Gas vans, mobile gas chambers used to fatally poison Jews, persons with disabilities, communists, etc., who were considered by the SS as enemies of the German State. According to declassified C.I.A. documents:

"As an official of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Reich Security Main Office, Rauff designed gas vans used to murder Jews and persons with disabilities."

The MI5 file looks more explicit concerning Rauff's "technical" skills:

"Rauff supervised the modification of scores of trucks, with the assistance of a Berlin chassis builder, to divert their exhaust fumes into airtight chambers in the back of the vehicles. The victims were then poisoned and / or asphyxiated from the carbon monoxide accumulating within the truck compartment as the vehicle travelled to a burial site. The trucks could carry between 25 and 60 people at a time."

Rauff was later involved in the persecution of Jews in North Africa during 1942 and 1943, as part of the Nazis' long-term aim to export the Jewish Holocaust to the Near and Middle East (including the British Mandate of Palestine, British-occupied Iraq, French-occupied Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, and Libya), and capture the region’s oil fields.

A month after German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s defeat of the British at Tobruk in June 1942, the SS set up a special extermination unit to follow in the wake of Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The unit was commanded by Rauff who was empowered to carry out "executive measures on the civilian population", the Nazi euphemism for mass murder and enslavement.

Accordintg to a 2007 German national television series, "Rauff’s mission to exterminate the Middle East's Jewish population was brought to an abrupt halt by the British 8th Army's defeat of Rommel at El Alamein in October 1942. Rommel was forced to withdraw the remnants of his army to Tunisia, where it sustained a bridgehead until May 1943, enabling Rauff 's SS to conduct a well-organised persecution campaign against the country's Jews. The MI5 file records that Rauff was posted to Tunis in 1942 as head of the Sicherheitsdienst, where he led an Einsatzkommando (an SS task force) which conducted a well-organised persecution campaign against the country's Jews and Partisans.

The Jewish community was particularly hard hit by this persecution:

"More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in a network of SS slave labor camps before the Germans withdrew. Rauff's men also stole jewels, silver, gold, and religious artifacts from the Tunisian Jews. Forty-three kilograms of gold were taken from the Jewish community on the island of Djerba alone."

Rauff was then sent to Milan in 1943 where he took charge of all Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst operations throughout northwest Italy. The MI5 file states:

"In both these postings [Tunisia and northern Italy] Rauff rapidly gained reputation for utter ruthlessness. In Tunis he was responsible for the indiscriminate execution of both Jews and local Partisans. His work in Italy involved imposing total German control on Milan, Turin and Genoa. His success in this task earned him the congratulations of his SS superior, who described it as 'a superb achievement'". Rauff remained in Italy until the end of the war.

According to Rauff´s declassified C.I.A. file:

"Near the end of the war Rauff, then the senior SS and police official in northern Italy, tried to gain credit for the surrender of German forces in Italy, but ended up only surrendering himself. After escaping from an American internment camp in Rimini, Rauff hid in a number of Italian convents, apparently under the protection of Bishop Alois Hudal. In 1948 he was recruited by Syrian intelligence and went to Damascus, only to fall out of favor after a coup there a year later. According to one report, he tortured Jews in Syria. He and his family then settled in Ecuador, later shifting to Chile, where he may have served in Chilean intelligence. C.I.A. officials could not determine Rauff's exact position. In any case, the government of General Augusto Pinochet resisted all calls for his extradition to stand trial in West Germany, and he died peacefully in southern Chile in 1984."

Rauff was arrested in December 1962 after Germany requested his extradition, but was freed by Chile's Supreme Court five months later. In 1972, Chilean President Salvador Allende, at the request of the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, asked the Chilean Supreme Court to extradite Rauff to Germany. This application was again denied.

After settling in Chile, Rauff worked as a manager of a king crab cannery in Punta Arenas, one of the southernmost towns in South America. After his release by the Chilean Supreme Court, Rauff disappeared. He was discovered by the documentary filmmaker William Bemister in Los Pozos, Santiago, Chile in 1979, and interviewed on film. This interview was included in the Emmy-winning film "The Hunter and the Hunted" and shown on the PBS Network in the United States on October 21, 1981. Rauff died in 1984 of a heart attack. His funerals were the occasion of a Nazi celebration.

Rauff remained an unrepentant Nazi until his death, aged 77. According to his MI5 file, "he never showed any remorse for his actions, which he described as those of "a mere technical administrator."

See also

• Ex-Nazis

External links

• Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group,"Walter Rauff", in Disclosure, November 2002.
• Shraga Elam and Dennis Whitehead, "In the service of the Jewish state", Ha'aretz, 31 March 2007.
• Shraga Elam and Dennis Whitehead, "Rauff vs. the Yishuv", Ha'aretz, 7 April 2007.
• MI5 United Kingdom Government Security Service, file ref KV /1970a, "Walter Rauff", in "5 September 2005 releases: German intelligence officers".
• Der Spiegel Online, Behind the front line of Rommel's Afrikakorps: SS-Standartenführer Walter Rauff.
• Tony Paterson, "'Chivalrous' Rommel wanted to bring Holocaust to Middle East", The Independent (London), 25 May 2007.