One group would seek vengeance on a different scale: they believed that since six million Jews had died in the Holocaust, six million Germans should pay with their lives. Death would be in the drinking water. It would be revenge according to the Old Testament. This is the story of the Jewish Avengers. For the rest of the world the war ended in 1945. But for the Avengers it was just beginning. Nazi Hunters e8: The Jewish Avengers
The American press reported 2,300 Nazi victims were in hospital, but again, no deaths. All the Avengers regretted the failure of the Stalag 13 bread poisoning. But what hurt even more was the fact that the first plan – the murder of six million Germans – was never even attempted at the time. ibid.
David Ben-Gurion’s new government was if anything more opposed to revenge than it had ever been. ibid.
Ben-Gurion may have turned his back on Nazi hunting but back in Europe other Jewish avengers decided to keep going. In 1949 Wilhelm Stuckart, a Nazi lawyer who drew up the justification for the Final Solution, died in a mysterious car accident. 1954: Otto Abetz, German ambassador to France during the occupation, was also found dead in a burning vehicle. 1976: SS tank commander Joachim Peiper was tracked to his retirement home in France and killed in a firebomb attack. ibid.
In 1963 David Ben-Gurion stepped down as Israeli prime minister. Now his country’s relaxed policy on revenge was quietly re-written. ibid.
The ‘Rat Line’ became the term used by the Nazis ... The Rat Line ran from Germany into either Austria or Switzerland. From there to Italy where they boarded ships to come to South America. Uki Goni, Nazi hunter and author The Real Odessa
But to get the passport you not only need the entry permit signed with your name you need somebody to certify that that’s exactly who you are, and that’s where the Vatican provides a service. So the Vatican would send one of its priests along. Uki Goni
I think members of the Catholic Church who were pro-Nazi helped people escape after the war. Guy Walters, author Hunting Evil
They call it the Rat Line: it’s an espionage train, a system of evacuation, a whole system of continents and monasteries that were set up linking Germany, then it would cross over the alps into Italy. John Loftus
The British and the French and the Americans and the Canadians and the Australians all recruited these people for their intelligence expertise during the cold war. John Loftus, former US Justice Department prosecutor
These people were bizarrely, sadly, seen as desirable immigrants. Steve Rambam, Nazi hunter
They were Hitler’s henchmen: officers and foot soldiers of the Nazi war regime. Best Evidence: Fugitive Nazis
Was there a vast conspiracy that allowed the guilty to escape justice? ibid.
The Allied victors colluded in some of the escapes. ibid.
What [Uki] Goni claims he found was a meticulously planned escape route. ibid.
In the final months of the Second World War elite groups of allied agents and commandos infiltrated Germany. Their top-secret missions: to hunt down Hitler’s so-called wonder-weapons and the scientists who built them. Secrets of the Dead: The Hunt for Hitler’s Scientists, 2005
An organisation did exist; it had resources and it succeeded. Efraim Zuroff, Nazi hunter
The Third Reich: Could it have had help from an outside extraterrestrial source? Alien Files Unsealed s1e10: Nazis & UFO, Sky 2005
Did he [Hitler] do it alone? Did the Nazis have access to alien technology? Alien Files Unsealed s3e15: Nazi UFOs
They were Hitler’s henchmen, officers and foot-soldiers of the Nazi war machine. Many committed war crimes during the holocaust. A few were tried and punished. Was post-war chaos to blame? Or was there a vast conspiracy that allowed the guilty to escape justice? Perhaps the latest technology can track alleged war criminals. And is there evidence the Catholic Church helped Nazis fade into obscurity? Conspiracy Test: Fugitive Nazis, 2007
The Allied victors colluded in some of the escapes: Operation Paper-Clip is an unclassified example. At the end of the war Americans were desperate to get the blueprints of the German’s lethal V2 rockets. ibid.
Some of the most infamous Nazi war criminals settled in Argentina after the war. ibid.
The OSI was created in 1979 to find Nazi war criminals living in the US. Its investigations found proof that American Intelligence agencies had made deals with a number of wanted war criminals. ibid.
After the war the Church recommended forgiveness and amnesty, even for unrepentant war criminals. ibid.
In 1985 a German reporter tracked down a man he believed to be Alois Brunner who had organised Jewish deportations from France. The encounter took place in Damascus. The man was guarded by Syrian police. He claimed his name was Georg Fischer ... Officially, Brunner disappeared after the war. It was rumoured that Vatican contacts had helped him escape to the Middle East. ibid.
At the end of World War II the Nuremberg trials brought some of the most prominent members of the Third Reich to justice. But thousands of high-ranking Nazis who participated in the systematic murder of millions slipped through the net and escaped around the world. More than 60 years later one man is still trying to hunt them down … Efraim Zuroff is one of the world’s last Nazi hunters. The Last Nazis I: The Hunt for Dr Death, PBS 2009
In October 1941 an Austrian SS doctor called Aribert Heim was assigned to Mauthausen concentration camp … They became victims on whom he performed sadistic and needless operations … He is Zuroff’s ultimate prize. ibid.
This escape route became known as the Rat Line. ibid.
‘A feeling of frustration and a feeling of missed opportunities.’ ibid. Zuroff
In the spring of 2009 American immigration officers entered the home of John Demjanjuk ... He is being forcibly deported to stand trial in Germany. It’s alleged that sixty-five years ago Demjanjuk was complicit in twenty-nine thousand murders as a Nazi concentration camp guard during the Second World War. Until now he has been the world’s most wanted Nazi war criminal. With Demjanjuk in custody, there’s just a handful of others left of them scattered across Europe. The Last Nazis II: Most Wanted
[Milivoj] Aschner was a chief of police in the newly formed state of Croatia when the country gained its independence in 1941 in exchange for supporting the Nazis. ibid.
In 1942 as a twenty-nine-year-old Gendarme [Sandor] Kepiro was in charge of organising the identity check of fourteen hundred undesirables. ibid.
I can’t understand why as the world’s most wanted Nazi he is not on trial. ibid.
At ninety years old [Josef] Scheungraber is one of the oldest men ever to stand trial for Nazi war crimes. ibid.
On the 11th August 2009 Josef Scheungraber was found guilty of multiple counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 90. ibid.
A secret plan was hatched to create a master race of blond-haired blue-eyed children. The Last Nazis III: Children of the Master Race
What has become of the children who were born to be the master race? ibid.
This new world order had no space for flawed imperfection or genetic corruption. ibid.
He [Hitler] also sanctioned a secret euthanasia programme. ibid.
Before the War my grandparents owned a large brickworks in a German city called Konigsberg … My grandparents escaped with their lives but they lost everything they owned to the Nazis. They weren’t alone. It’s estimated that the equivalent of at least $150 billion was robbed from Jews during the Third Reich. Ever since, many survivors and their families have been fighting to get their money back. David Baddiel & The Missing Nazi Millions, BBC 2007
Art represents an enormous and difficult part of the battle for restitution. ibid.
Is the lack of a restitution law in Poland just about money or is it something more sinister? ibid.
Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939 starting World War II. By the winter of 1942 his armies were freezing and starving in the snows of Russia where his best general had died of a heart attack. Conspiracy 2001 starring Kenneth Branagh & Stanley Tucci & Colin Firth & Ian McNeice & Kevin McNally & David Threlfall & Ewan Stewart & Brian Pettifer & Nicholas Woodeson et al, director Frank Pierson, commentary
Fifteen of his officials were ordered from their commands and ministries to meet in a quiet lake-side residence ... In two hours these men changed the world for ever. ibid.