Suspected Nazi War Criminal Arrested in Argentina

When four police officers approached the old man on a rainy street this week, it was as though he had been expecting them. A flight that lasted nearly four decades had ended.

“Well, the hunt is over. I will not try to run,” the old man said, according to Pedro Aybar, the arresting officer.

Argentine police announced Friday that they have arrested Nazi war crimes suspect Walter Kutschmann, 72, on an extradition warrant from West Germany. The old man covered his face with both hands to avoid photographers as he was brought to federal court here for a preliminary hearing.

Police say Kutschmann, an SS officer who is accused of murdering Jews during World War II, had lived peacefully in Argentina since 1947 as Pedro Ricardo Olmo, an office worker.

“The police have informed us of the arrest of the man who we believe is Kutschmann,” said Irwin Starnitzky, a counselor at the West German Embassy here.

1,500 Murders

As a Gestapo junior lieutenant, Kutschmann was accused of murdering 1,500 Jews in Poland in 1942. He is also wanted for the July 4, 1941 murder of 20 Jewish university professors and 18 of their family members in Lemberg, Poland, now the town of Lvov in the Soviet Ukraine.

Aybar, chief of the Interpol section of the Argentine Federal Police, said detectives staked out the house of a Kutschmann relative in a suburb of Buenos Aires for two days. They had been alerted that Kutschmann drove a green sedan.

When a man answering Kutschmann’s description left the house Thursday morning and headed for the car, the police moved in, Aybar said. He surrendered quietly. Later, his wife delivered the old man’s eyeglasses and some medicine to his cell.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal proved to be Kutschmann’s most dogged pursuer. In 1975, Wiesenthal said Kutschmann was living in Argentina as Olmo. A photograph led Argentine reporters to Olmo, who was then the purchasing manager for a lighting manufacturer. The company announced his retirement.

Held Briefly

Asserting his innocence, Olmo was held briefly and released because there were no charges against him and no extradition request pending. He said documents were en route from Germany that would prove his identity. They never came.

In 1983, Wiesenthal said Kutschmann was living as Olmo in the South Atlantic summer resort of Miramar. Reporters for the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin found him living there in a house on 29th Street. They photographed Olmo, who denied he was Kutschmann. “I have nothing to say,” he told them.

Then Olmo disappeared, settling eventually in the fashionable Buenos Aires neighborhood of Belgrano.

The West German extradition request was formally presented to the Argentine government two months ago, in the wake of the discovery of the remains of concentration camp killer Josef Mengele in Brazil.

No Extradition Treaty

There is no formal treaty of extradition between West Germany and Argentina, but the government of President Raul Alfonsin agreed to allow judicial consideration of the German request.

Following the government’s consent, Federal Judge Fernando Archibald ordered Kutschmann’s arrest earlier this month. If Archibald determines that Kutschmann and Olmo are the same man, he will then consider the extradition demand on its merits.