Michael Seifert ( Landau , Ukraine , 16 of March of 1924 - Caserta , Italy , 6 of November of 2010 1 ) was a guard Nazi known as “The Beast of Bolzano “ .
Biography
He grew up in Ukraine, his father was a postal worker who was fired when he was suspected of Nazi.
With the Nazi invasion of 1938 it was united to the SS being destined like guard in a sanatorium of political prisoners. In 1944 he was sent to Verona .
Destined to Bolzano, where the concentration camp of prisoners in transit to Mauthausen , Flossenbürg , Dachau , Ravensbrück and Auschwitz , together with Otto Sein - both known as “The two Ukrainians” - subjected political prisoners, antifascists and Jews to violations, Beatings, death by starvation or freezing, torture and atrocities. Among its victims was Mike Bongiorno 2 who was one of the witnesses of the trial. 3
At the end of the war he fled to Germany and in 1951 settled in Canada when he convinced a Canadian officer who during the war had trained horses for the Cossacks in Italy.
He lived in Vancouver where he worked in mills and hardware stores under another identity.
It was discovered in 1995 and extradited after seven years of legal battle. In 2000 he was tried in absentia in Verona for nine crimes and sentenced to 83 years to life imprisonment in Santa Maria Capua in southern Italy.
It is known that he was married and had a child.
The whereabouts of his accomplice Otto Sein is unknown.
References
- Back to top↑ Former SS SS chief Michael Seifert dies, serving sentence in Italy
- Back to top^ Bolzano’s executioner says Mike Bongiorno: “I still remember the screams and the blows” (in Italian)
- Back to top↑ “Executioner of Bolzano” dies (in English)