64 Friday, July 22, 1983 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS South America's Connections With the Nazis By MORTON ROSENTHAL and ELLIOT WELLES ment has been.charged with helping Barbie get out of postwar Europe, the way he lived in Bolivia indicates he enjoyed more than protec- tion from that country: The government of Bolivia was Barbie's partner in the Transmaritima Boliviana Steamship Co. According to press accounts, he also supplied weapons to the previous military govern- ment, was alleged to be in- volved in drug dealing and led a paramilitary squad called "The Bridegrooms of Death" that was used by the authorities to silence the political opposition. (Editor's note: Rabbi Rosenthal is director of the Latin American Af- fairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League. Welles directs ADL's task force on Nazi war crimi- nals. This article first ap- peared in the ADL Bulle- tin.) The arrest of. Klaus Bar- bie, "the Butcher of Lyon," in February became the most celebrated case of a Nazi war criminal located in Latin America since Adolf Eichmann was seized there in 1960. As a result, there is again At a 1980 press confer- growing attention drawn to ence in New York City, the tranquil life which many of Hitler's henchmen Hernan Siles Zuazo, now have found in Latin president of Bolivia but America. According to some then in exile, denounced recently published esti- the fact that Barbie had mates, as many as 40,000 access to the highest Nazis found refuge in Latin levels of the Bolivian America after the war. They government. Undoub- found asylum in Argentina, tedly, President Zuazo, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay who took office in Oc- and other South American tober 1982, played a cru- cial role in the series of countries. The most notorious events that brought Bar- among them is Dr. Josef bie to justice in France. The Barbie case in Mengele who, as medical di- rector at Auschwitz, carried Bolivia has sparked re- out diabolical medical ex- periments on concentration camp inmates. Many of these now aged Nazis have been living in this safe haven for nearly four de- cades; it is a world far re- moved from the sordid past they had left in Europe. In many instances, there had been active cooperation from host governments which wooed German military and civilian technocrats without regard to their role in atrocities. Eichmann had gone un- detected for years, living under the assumed name of Rikardo Klement, when Is- raeli agents captured him. SIMON WIESENTHAL In contrast, it was widely known for at least 10 years newed interest in other ac- that Barbie had assumed cused Nazi war criminals in the name Klaus Altmann South America. One of and it took that long — in- these, Walter Kutschmann, cluding a change in the has lived in relative comfort Bolivian government — to in Argentina since 1948. bring him to justice. This Newsmen have been was the first instance of camping outside cooperation by a Latin Kutschmann's apartment American government in in the resort town of such an arrest. Miramar, seeking inter- Barbie/Altmann was views with the onetime Ges- pursued doggedly by Nazi tapo official. Incredulous hunters Beate and Serge neighbors said they were Klarsfeld. Still, he lived ap- shocked by reports that the parently without fear; keep- retiree they know as Pedro ing to a regular schedule Ricardo Olmo is in fact the each day. One member of beastly Kutschmann. the Bolivian Jewish com- Kutschmann's dossier munity confessed several indicates that he was born years ago how he had the in Dresden on May 25, 1914, almost irresistible urge to but lived most of his early run Barbie down with his life in Berlin. He was car when Barbie crossed the trained by the Luftwaffe street in front of him. prior to joining the Nazi While the U.S. govern- Party in February 1940, and the SS in December of the same year. As a 27-year-old SS lieutenant, number 404,651, Kutschmann was involved in his first atroc- ity in Poland — the ex- termination of 20 Jewish Polish university profes- sors and 18 members of their families, including wives and children. It is alleged that at his direc- tion, they were taken to a. hillside where they were shot and buried in a mass grave dug by Ukrainians. :16 The Ukrainians were BEATE and SERGE KLARSFELD then shot to preclude_their bearing witness to the at- his employer that he was One cannot predict with rocity. really Kutschmann and certainty that the Germans The Argentine weekly that he had told that to the will seek Kutschmann's ex- magazine Gente reported on authorities "many years tradition. But neither is it March 10, 1983, that these ago." certain that the Argentine executions were part of the This admission, said the military government will Nazi plan to kill some 5,000 paper, implies that gov- comply with such a request. Jewish academicians in ernment authorities have Its track record in such mat- order "to diminish the intel- "a tolerant attitude" toward ters is a poor one. This is lectual potential of the Nazis like Kutschmann most evident in the case of country." whose "change of name the now deceased Eduardo Kutschmann was sub- coincided with (his) acquisi- Roschmann, who used the sequently promoted to an tion of Argentine citizen- alias Fritz Wegner when he SS post in the Galician town ship." came to Argentina in 1948. of Tarnopol, later becoming At the time of his deten- Roschmann, as a captain chief of the Gestapo in tion, sources close to the of the SS, was the comman- Brzeziny, Poland, where he Argentine police said dant of the Riga Ghetto. The alledgedly was responsible that "the matter is being West German prosecutor for the murder of more than handled at a very high who issued an arrest war- 1,500 Jews. level." The high level de- rant against him July 1977 cision was to let According to SS docu- Kutschmann go, and he alleged not only that he or- dered many executions, but ments, Kutschmann was then disappeared. personally pulled the trig- transferred to France dur- When the Barbie incident ing the closing days of the was in the headlines, Wie- ger in two known cases. As a war but was listed as a des- senthal again alerted the result of these incidents, he erter in January 1945: He press to Olmo's presence in became known as the reportedly fled to Spain and Argentina — this time in "Butcher of Riga." In July 1977, the gov- finally to Argentina where Miramar, a coastal commu- ernment announced it had he took on his new identity. nity where the former SS Like other Nazis, man follows a daily routine "decided to accept the re- quest" for Roschmann's ex- Kutschmann found em- of bicycle riding. tradition to Germany, and a ployment with the Latin Kutschmann's ability to American branch of a remain free these many federal judge ordered his ar- German factory — as a years cannot, however, be rest. But when Roschmann disappeared soon after he purchasing manager for blamed on Argentina alone. Osram Argentina, a sub- Although a warrant for was reported in custody by sidiary of one of the Kutschmann's arrest had the police, the government largest German man- been issued by West Ger- claimed it had not agreed to extradite Roschmann, only ufacturers of light bulbs many in 1967, West Ger- and electrical man authorities did not to "give due process" to the extradition request. Police appliances. press the Argentinians for later denied he had been ar- Neighbors say that he his extradition. Their posi- lives very quietly, having tion was to do nothing un- rested. few visitors. They describe less Argentina moved to Roschmann was found him as aloof and proud and strip him of his citizenship dead the following month in some speak favorably.of the on grounds that he had ob- a hospital in Asuncion, Kutschmanns. "He and his tained it fraudulently. Paraguay. His identity was wife are very good people," confirmed through finger- Two months after one neighbor said. Another prints. Kutschmann was arrested told a reporter that "he Many people wonder loves animals very much. in Argentina, West German why Nazis like Mengele, moreover, his wife is a authorities announced that Kutschmann and others member of the local Animal they had revoked their then eight-year-old warrant be- Protection Society." The Kutschmann/Olmo cause it had become void connection has been pub- under the West German licly known since 1975. In statute of limitations. This, July of that year, he was de- despite the fact that the NEW YORK — An anti-_ tained for six hours after his West German statute of identity was exposed by limitations does not apply to Semitic book has been re- Nazi hunter Simon Wie- crimes against humanity — moved from bookstore senthal. In reporting the in- the charge Kutschmann shelves in Mexico as a result of a protest to the publisher cident, the Buenos Aires would likely face if tried. The Argentine Jewish by the Anti-Defamation daily newspaper, La Opin- ion, said that although community, through League of Bnai Brith. According to Abraham H. Olmo had denied complicity DAIA, its representative in atrocities, he did admit to organization, recently Foxman, ADL's associate asked the government to national director, the book, strip Kutschmann of his "Palestina: Del Judio Er- illegally acquired citi- rante Al Judio Errado" zenship. It has also urged (Palestine: From the Wan- the government of West dering Jew to the Wronging Germany to seek his ex- Jew), a 94-page paperback , tradition. The Anti- in Spanish whose author is Defamation League has listed as "Rius," is a distor- made the same requests. tion of Jewish history. He What are the chances characterized it as "the that these requests will be most virulent, hate-ridden, violence-prone piece of lit- honored? were granted a haven and continue to enjoy the protection of many South American regimes. The major factor was Nazi Germany's effort to es- tablish a German base in the Western hemisphere. Hitler aspired to join Patagonia, a vast and sparsely populated region in southern Argentina, with the southern portion of Chile into a political entity that would accommodate great numbers of col- onists and generate wealth for the German empire. (Ironically, during the 1970s Argentine anti- Semites circulated a spuri- ous document called "The Andinia Plan," a purported plot to establish a second Jewish state in Patagonia — a flip-flop of the original Third Reich strategy.) The Germans also had great ambitions in Uruguay and other parts of the southern cone of Latin America. To achieve their goals they stimulated sig- nificant immigration to the region, invested in real es- tate and businesses and created a vast network of espionage and progaganda. According to U.S. gov- ernment documents, an American diplomat re- ported in 1940 that Nazi Germany almost succeeded in turning Uruguay "into a colony of German agricul- turalists under the protec- tion of the Third Reich." This infrastructure was in place when the Nazis — and the major war criminals among them — arrived after the Third Reich was de- stroyed. Here they found communities which pro- vided them with anonym- ity, protection and em- ployment, and govern- ments that were, in the Nazis' eyes, at worst in- different, or at best hos- pitable to them. Nazi war criminals will continue to remain safe in their South American ha- vens unless other national leaders break from the past and emulate President Siles' courageous action in ousting Klaus Barbie. Biased Volume in Mexico Pulled from Store Shelves erature that has been pro- duced so far in Mexico." In removing the book from sale, the publisher, Grijalbo, an interna- tional firm headquar- tered in Barcelona, Spain, told Foxman that the book had been printed by its Mexican branch "without having informed us." The telex sent by Juan Grijalbo noted that the firm had published "several pro-Jewish books" and went on to say that it ordered its Mexican branch to impound all copies and not fill orders for it.