Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

“Then he was promoted again, this time to head of personnel for the entire six branches of the RSHA, and remained deputy chief of the RSHA under first Heydrich, who was killed by Czech partisans in Prague in 1942-that was the killing that led to the reprisal at Lidice-and then under Ernst Kaltenbrunner. As such he had all-embracing responsibility for the choice of personnel of the roving extermination squads and the fixed SD units throughout the Nazi-occupied eastern territories until the end of the war.”

Miller looked stunned. “They haven’t arrested him?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The police of Hamburg, of course.”

For answer Simon Wiesenthal rummaged in a drawer and produced another sheet of paper. He folded it neatly down the center from top to bottom and laid it in front of Miller so that only the left side of the sheet was facing upward.

“Do you recognize those names?” he asked.

Miller scanned the list of ten names with a frown. “Of course. I’ve been a police reporter in Hamburg for years. These are all senior police officers of the Hamburg force. Why?”

“Spread the paper out,” said Wiesenthal.

Miller did so. Fully expanded, the sheet read:

Miller looked up. “Christ,” he said.

“Now do you begin to understand why a lieutenant general of the SS is walking around Hamburg today? They can’t arrest him. He was their commanding officer once.” Miller looked at the list in disbelief. “That must have been what Brandt meant about inquiries into the former SS not being very popular in the Hamburg police.”

“Probably,” said Wiesenthal. “Nor is the Attorney General’s office the most energetic in Germany. There’s one lawyer on the staff at least who is trying, but certain interested parties have tried to have him dismissed several times.”

The pretty secretary poked her head around the door. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.

After a lunchtime break, Miller returned to the office. Simon Wiesenthal had in front of him a number of sheets spread out, extracts from his own Roschmann file. Miller settled himself in front of the desk, got out his notebook, and waited.

Simon Wiesenthal began to relate the Roschmann story from January 8, 1948.

It had been agreed between the British and American authorities that after Roschmann had testified at Dachau he would be moved on to the British Zone of Germany, probably Hanover, to await his own trial and almost certain hanging. Even while in prison in Graz he bad begun to plan his escape.

He had made contact with a Nazi escape organization working in Austria called the Six-Point Star, nothing to do with the Jewish symbol of the six-pointed star, but so called because the Nazi organization had its tentacles in six major Austrian cities, mainly in the British Zone.

At 6:00 a.m. on the eighth, Roschmann was awakened and taken to the train waiting at Graz station.

Once he was in the compartment, an argument started between the Military Police sergeant, who wanted to keep the handcuffs on Roschmann throughout the journey, and the Field Security sergeant, who suggested taking them Off.

Roschmann influenced the argument by claiming that he had diarrhea from the prison diet and wished to go to the lavatory. He was taken, the handcuffs were removed, and one of the sergeants waited outside the door until he had finished. As the train chugged through the snowbound landscape Roschmann made three requests to go to the lavatory. Apparently during this time he prized the window in the lavatory open, so that it slid easily on its runners.

Roschmann knew he had to get out before the Americans took him over at Salzburg for the last run by car to their own prison at Munich, but station after station went by, and still the train was going too fast.

It stopped at Hallein, and one of the sergeants went to buy some food on the platform. Roschmann again said he wanted to go to the lavatory. It was the more easygoing FSS sergeant who accompanied him, warning him not to use the toilet while the train was stationary. As the train moved slowly out of Hallein, Roschmann jumped from the window into the snowdrifts. It was ten minutes before the sergeants beat down the door, and by then the train was running fast down the mountains toward Salzburg.

He staggered through the snow as far as a peasant’s cottage and took refuge there. The following day he crossed the border from Upper Austria into Salzburg province and contacted the Six-Point Star organization. It brought him to a brick factory, where he passed as a laborer, while contact was made with the Odessa for a passage to the south and Italy.

At that time the Odessa was in close contact with the recruitment section of the French Foreign Legion, into which scores of former SS soldiers had fled. Four days after contact was made, a car with French number plates was waiting outside the town of Ostermieting and took on board Roschmann and five other Nazi escapers. The Foreign Legion driver, equipped with papers that enabled the car to cross borders without being searched, brought the six SS men over the Italian border to Merano and was paid in cash by the Odessa representative there, a hefty sum per head of his passengers.

From Merano, Roschmann was taken down to an Italian displaced-persons camp at Rimini. Here, in the camp hospital, he bad the five toes of his right foot amputated, for they were rotten with frostbite he had picked up while wandering through the snow after escaping from the train. Since then he had wom an orthopedic shoe.

His wife in Graz got a letter from him in October 1948 from the camp at Rimini. For the first time he used the new name he had been given, Fritz Bernd Wegener.

Shortly afterward he was transferred to the Franciscan Monastery in Rome, and when his papers were finalized he set sail from the harbor at Naples for Buenos Aires. Throughout his stay at the monastery in the Via Sicilia he had been among scores of comrades of the SS and the Nazi Party and under the personal supervision of Bishop Alois Hudal, who ensured that they lacked nothing.

In the Argentinian capital he was received by the Odessa and lodged with a German family called Vidmar in the Calle Hipolito Irigoyen. Here he lived for months in a furnished room. Early in 1949 he was advanced the sum of 50,000 American dollars out of the Bormann funds in Switzerland and went into business as an exporter of South American hardwood timber to Western Europe. The firm was called Stemmler and Wegener, for his false papers from Rome firmly established him as Fritz Bernd Wegener, born in the South Tirol province of Italy.

He also engaged a German girl as his secretary, Irmtraud Sigrid Muller, and in early 1955 he married her, despite his wife Hella, still living in Graz.

But Roschmann was becoming nervous. In July 1952 Eva Peron, the wife of the dictator of Argentina and the power behind the throne, had died of cancer.