Walter Rauff , also written Walther , ( Köthen , Germany , 19 of June of 1906 - Santiago de Chile , 14 of maypole of 1984 ), was Standartenführer that was equivalent to the rank of colonel in the SS Nazi, head of the technical department of the SS in 1942. As a Nazi officer he was blamed for the death of half a million people in Auschwitz .
Wanted by the Allies for war crimes , was captured on April 30, 1945. Two years later, he escapes from prison and is recruited by the services of intelligence of Syria . He then moved to Italy to escape South America, living in Quito (Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Porvenir (Chile). He arrived in Chile with his family in 1958, whose Supreme Court of Justice denied his extradition in the early 1960s because in the Chilean legislation of the time there was no jurisprudence of the inscriptibility of crimes against humanity, which Allowed to dedicate himself calmly to the fishing activity, being established in the city of Porvenir in Tierra del Fuego , there began to work like administrator of stays, soon to be the administrator of the fishing Rosario, and later the manager of the Pesquera Pirata. In 1981 he left Porvenir and settled in Santiago . Both the German government and the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal attempted his extradition without success, even in 1971 the latter personally interviewed President Salvador Allende , who pointed out that it was impossible to extradite him since the superior courts had already rejected that route.
Under the regime of Augusto Pinochet , some people say that Rauff served the Chilean intelligence, participating in the repression of political opponents and building the Dawson Island concentration camp , which has not been proven. Both the military regime of Pinochet and the Allende government argued that it was impossible to extradite him because the Supreme Court of Justice had already rejected that in 1963 and was a closed case.
Rauff died in his home in Las Condes on May 14, 1984 due to a heart attack. His funeral was attended by Miguel Serrano (1917-2009), a renowned Nazi of the Chilean intelligentsia , and Erwin Robertson , professor of Ancient History at the Metropolitan University of Education Sciences .
References
- Walter Rauff in World War II Forum
- Walter Rauff in Tierra del Fuego in Google Books [1] [2] (in Spanish and English)
- Information in PDF