Talk:Walter Rauff

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[edit] "ratline"

After the war, Rauff was detained in Italy but was aided by ODESSA, and perhaps the Croatian Nazi priests in the Vatican, in escaping to Latin America.

Ahm... this is also at Talk:Klaus Barbie. --Joy [shallot] 14:08, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Totally biased article. There is no proof whatsoever that Rauff was a DINA agent.

I agree with the anonymous comment that there is no conclusive proof that Rauff was a DINA agent. However, it appears the source of this allegation was the CIA, as you will read below. I corrected one inaccurancy in the original article concerning his rank. He final rank was SS-Standartenführer. I have always doubted much about the activities of the so-called Odessa. I also added the following, extracted from CIA declassified documents, the efficacy of which I have tested: "as an official of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Reich Security Main Office, Rauff designed gas vans used to poison Jews and persons with disabilities. He later was involved in persecution of Jews in North Africa, and there is a postwar report in the file that he tried to arrange the extermination of Jews in Egypt during late 1942.

"Near the end of the war Rauff, then an 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 Italy, Rauff hid in a number of Italian convents, apparently under the protection of Bishop Alois Hudel. 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. CIA officials could not determine Rauff's exact position. The C.I.A. report adds: "In any case, the government of General Augusto Pinochet resisted all calls for his extradition to stand trial in West Germany".

There is not much else of importance to add from the CIA documents.

Simon Wiesenthal had traced Rauff to Puento Arenas, at the southern most tip of South America because of a 1960s article published in a Buenos Aires news magazine. In 1979, I interviewed Rauff in Santiago. I found him through simple methodology worthy of Sherlock Holmes. It was known that his son had accompanied the family to South America. The maiden name of Walther Rauff's wife was Richter; ergo his son's name would have followed the Hispanic fashion in the Santiago telephone book - (something) Richter Rauff - and there he was: he had been named after both his parents, Walther Richter Rauff. The former SS-Standartenführer Walther Rauff lived about two hundred metres away from the son's house. --Bemister 04:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)