The Nazi Hunters (51 page)

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Former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim campaigning for the Austrian presidency in 1986. Eli Rosenbaum, then the general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, highlighted new evidence that Waldheim had hidden his wartime record in the Balkans, when he served on the staff of a general who was later executed as a war criminal.

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Never one to shy from confrontation, Beate Klarsfeld (above) led protests against Waldheim both before and after his victory. The bitterly divisive campaign also split the Nazi hunters, with Simon Wiesenthal blaming the World Jewish Congress for the ensuing wave of anti-Semitism in Austria.

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Josef Mengele, the infamous SS Auschwitz doctor known as “the Angel of Death,” managed to elude the Israelis and other Nazi hunters after fleeing to South America. He drowned while swimming off a beach in Brazil in 1979, but the search continued until his remains were discovered in 1985.

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Like Mengele, Aribert Heim, “Dr. Death” in the Mauthausen concentration camp, successfully eluded his pursuers. He was still the subject of wild speculation and alleged sightings long after he died in Cairo in 1992.

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Until 1994, Erich Priebke lived comfortably in Argentina, despite his role in the execution of 335 men and boys, including 75 Jews, near Rome in 1944. But after ABC’s Sam Donaldson confronted him with a camera rolling, Argentina extradited him to Italy. Priebke (above) was sentenced to life in prison and then kept under house arrest because of his age.

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Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal center in Jerusalem, mounted the campaign “Operation Last Chance” to track down aging Nazi criminals. Here, in 2013, he displays one of the posters he placed in German cities proclaiming “Late but not too late.”

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No case was as long or took as many convoluted twists and turns than the one of retired Cleveland auto worker John Demjanuk, who did his best to look his worst in court. Initially misidentified as “Ivan the terrible,” a notorious Treblinka guard, he was sent to Germany in 2009. Found guilty of serving as a guard in another death camp, he died in 2012.

I am tremendously grateful to all the people I interviewed in the course of my research, most of whom are listed at the end of the bibliography. But that list only tells part of the story. I am also grateful to all the people who helped me identify and connect with those and other sources once I told them about my project, whether or not they are mentioned here. As I learned while working on my previous books, I found that spreading the word about what I was doing almost guaranteed that new, invaluable leads kept materializing. As a result, I benefited from a rich body of written and oral testimonies that made it possible to construct a narrative that spans the entire postwar era.

As in the past when he worked at the Hoover Institution Archives, Brad Bauer, now the chief archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, provided invaluable advice and contacts. Thanks to him, I connected with Benjamin Ferencz, the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial, and Gerald Schwab, a U.S. civilian interpreter in Nuremberg. Brad also put me in touch with many of the top-notch experts like Peter Black and Henry Mayer who work at the Museum, along with Alina Skibinska, its representative in Warsaw.

In Kraków, Maria Kała, the director of the Institute of Forensic Research, introduced me to the surviving co-workers of Jan Sehn when he led the institute right after the war. Arthur Sehn, his grandnephew, who divides his time between Stockholm and Kraków, helped me trace the family history that sheds special light on Jan’s role as the interrogator of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. I also want to make special mention of Marcin Sehn, a young member of the clan who facilitated my
Skype interview with Jan’s nephew Józef Sehn and his wife, Franciszka. Justyna Majewska provided additional assistance from Warsaw.

I owe special thanks to Gary Smith, then the director of the American Academy in Berlin, along with his colleagues Ulrike Graalfs and Jessica Biehle, for hosting me as a visiting scholar while I was conducting my research in Germany. Linda Eggert, my former student at the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York, helped me wade through the German sources. Filmmaker Ilona Ziok not only sent me her groundbreaking documentary on Fritz Bauer but also provided numerous background materials. Monika Boll, the curator of the Fritz Bauer exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Frankfurt, showed me around when the exhibit opened and patiently fielded numerous follow-up questions. In Ludwigsburg, Thomas Will was similarly forthcoming about the history and current operations of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.

In Israel, my former
Newsweek
colleague Dan Ephron provided me with several contacts who helped me reach key players in the Adolf Eichmann story. In particular, I would like to mention Dror Moreh, the director of the powerful documentary
The Gatekeepers
about Israel’s internal security forces. Eli Rosenbaum, aside from discussing his own work in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, provided me with an introduction to Gabriel Bach, the last surviving member of the prosecution team in the Eichmann trial—along with leads and information on a wide variety of other topics.

At the archives of the Hoover Institution, Carol Leadenham and Irena Czernichowska were, as in the past, immensely helpful. David Marwell, who was the director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and a former OSI historian, generously shared his extensive knowledge of the subjects I was exploring. My former
Newsweek
colleagues Joyce Barnathan and Steve Strasser triggered my quest to reconstruct the hangings at Nuremberg by putting me in touch with Herman Obermayer, who had worked with the hangman who would later dispatch the condemned top Nazis. Michael Hoth, a longtime friend from Berlin, introduced me to Peter Sichel, who had headed the first CIA operation in that city. My
cousin Tom Nagorski, who had worked at ABC, reminded me how his former colleagues there had tracked down Erich Priebke.

Three of the people I interviewed—Avraham Shalom, the number two man in the Eichmann kidnapping team, the Nuremberg interpreter Gerald Schwab, and Józef Sehn—died before the publication of this book. Of course Simon Wiesenthal died more than a decade ago, but I was fortunate enough to have met and interviewed him frequently during my earlier reporting assignments for
Newsweek
. When I visited Israel, Wiesenthal’s daughter, Paulinka, and her husband, Gerard Kreisberg, were particularly hospitable.

During the early research on this book, I was also working at the EastWest Institute. I want to thank my wonderful team—Sarah Stern, Dragan Stojanovski, Alex Schulman, and intern Leslie Dewees—for their friendship and support.

When it comes to Alice Mayhew, my extraordinary editor at Simon & Schuster, anything I can say will sound like an understatement. As usual, she provided skillful guidance from start to finish, with just the right touches of enthusiasm and gentle prodding to keep me on track. I also want to thank Stuart Roberts, Jackie Seow, Joy O’Meara, Maureen Cole, Stephen Bedford, Nicole McArdle, and the rest of the Simon & Schuster team that worked their normal magic, along with copy editor Fred Chase. My agent, Robert Gottlieb, as always, threw his full support behind this project, making it happen. At his Trident Media Group, I also want to thank his colleagues Claire Roberts and Erica Silverman.