EVADING JUSTICE : As WWII ended, top Nazis took flight

Fifty years ago, Nazi officials responsible for crimes ranging from individual slayings to mass murder fled Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe to find refuge in other parts of the world. Below are just a few of the thousands of Nazi war criminals who escaped and were later caught and convicted of their crimes, or were never found. Some are well-known, some are not, but all have been accused of some of the most heinous acts of the Third Reich.

ADOLF EICHMANN

RANK: SS lieutenant colonel, chief of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo during World War II.

WAR CRIMES:

Eichmann implemented the “Final Solution,” which was Hitler’s order of total extermination of European Jewry. In 1941, his department started organizing convoys that would take prisoners to death camps, where they would be gassed to death. By August, 1944, nearly 4 million Jews had died in the camps. One and a quarter million more were killed by special execution squads.

FATE: Although arrested, Eichmann fled from an American internment camp to Argentina in 1946. Israel secret agents tracked him down on May 2, 1960, in Buenos Aires. He was tried in Jersualem on Dec. 2, 1961, and sentenced to death for crimes against the Jewish people and against humanity. He was executed in Ramleh prison on May 31, 1962.

FRANZ STANGL

RANK: SS captain, commandant of Sobibor death camp and later Treblinka, the largest of five Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland.

WAR CRIMES: In 1942 and 1943, Stangl became such an efficeint organizer of mass murder that he received a commendation as “best camp commander in Poland.” During this time he regarded the 100,000 Jews he had killed simply as “cargo” to be dispatched.

FATE: Americans arrested Stangl and transferred him to Austria, where he escaped from prison in 1948. Stangl was assisted by Bishop Alois Hudalin attaining a Red Cross passport in Rome. For a few years he worked as an engineer in Damascus, Syria. In 1951, he registered his own name with the Austrian Consulate in Brazil, where he was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal and arrested and extradited to Germany in 1967. Stangl was sentenced to life in prison on Oct. 22, 1970. He died on June 28, 1971.

JOSEF MENGELE

RANK: Medical officer in Russia and France for Waffen-SS during World War II. Appointed chief doctor in Auschwitz in 1943.

WAR CRIMES: In Auschwitz, Mengele was in charge of implementing the “Final Solution” by ordering the gassing deaths of prisoners. He killed and dissected people with physical deformities, but his main interest was experimentation on twins. His goal was to create Hitler’s vision of the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan race.

FATE: He escaped a British internment hospital and fled to Rome using false papers. Eyewitnesses reported seeing Mengle in Buenos Aires and Brazil. In November, 1959, he fled to Praguay and became a naturalized citizen. In Embu, Brazil, in the summer of 1985, Mengeles’ bones were supposedly found. DNA testing confirmed that the remains were his.

ANDRUA ARTUKOVIC

RANK: Minister of Interior of the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia during WWII.

WAR CRIMES: One of the top three men in Ustasha administration, Artukovic was known as the “Butcher of the Balkans.” His Ustashi death squads murdered more than 500,000 Serbs, 30,000 Jews and 20,000 Gypsies.

FATE: After the war, Artukovic was admitted to the United States under an assumed name. He managed to stave off Yugoslavia’s demands for his return of 35 years, living in the Orange County community of Seal Beach. In March, 1985, a U.S. magistrated ordered him returned to his native land of Yugoslavia, making him the highest-ranking Nanzi extradited from the United States. He was sentenced to death, but during a lengthy appeal process he died from natural causes in a Zagreb prison hospital on Jan. 16, 1988.

ALOIS BRUNNER

RANK: SS captain assigned to Adolf Eichmann’s office in November, 1938.

WAR CRIMES: Brunner is wanted for ordering the deportation of more than 125,000 Jews to die in death camps, including Auschwitz. FATE: Using the alias Georg Fischer, Brunner made his way to the Middle East. Syrian police arrested him in 1960 for drug trafficking, but he was released when they discovered his true identity. Syria’s secret police gave him a position as a training officer. The European nations in which he committed his crimes requested his extradition, but the Syrian government covered up his existence in their country. In an October, 1985, German magazine interview, Brunner stated that his victims were “human garbage who deserved to die.” In 1992, a French newspaper quoted Syrian diplomats as saying that Brunner had died the previous summer, but no physical proof was provided.

WALTER RAUFF

RANK: SS lieutenant colonel and head of Group IID.

WAR CRIMES: Rauff’s Group IID developed a form of mobile execution called “sonder (special) vans.” Exhaust fumes were funneled from the tailpipe, into the back the van, asphyxiating prisoners inside. About 200,000 to 250,000 people died in these vans.

FATE: Before the war ended, Rauff reportedly asked a Genoan cardinal for help in the form of money and documents. Rauff then fled to South America and lived in Port Porvenir, Chile. In 1984, an international campaign to have Rauff expelled was ignored as officials in Chile announced they would not extradite him. Later that year he died of cancer.

PROMINENT NAZIS

* ADOLF HITLER

Rank: Founder of the Nazi Party, Reich chancellor and leader of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.

Fate: Close to the end of the war in Europe, Hitler took refuge in his Berlin bunker. On April 30, 1945, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the mouth with a pistol.

* HEINRICH HIMMLER

Rank: Hitler’s second in command, head of the Gestapo and the elite SS military units, minister of the Interior from 1943 to 1945.

Fate: He was arrested by British troops and brought to Luneburg. He committed suicide, poisoning himself on May 23, 1945, before he could be brought to trial.

* MARTIN BORMANN

Rank: Private secretary of Hitler and head of the party chancellery.

Fate: Disappeared without a trace, though there have been reports that his remains were found in Berlin.

* ALBERT SPEER

Rank: Rich minister for armaments and war production.

Fate: The postwar Nuremberg trials found him guilty of war crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. He died in 1981.