Die Verbrechen eines NS-Massenmörders nach dem Krieg

0:00 [Music] Suddenly, the unexpected happened. Approaching from the north end of Los Pozos was a man himself. SS Augustin Banfuhrer Walter Rao, the alleged murderer of a quarter of a million human beings. There at the gate, he came face-to-face with an unwelcome visitor carrying a hidden radio microphone.

0:24 You live in Santiago, don't you? Eh? You live here in Santiago? Yes. Well, you are writing your case? No. My case is finished. Completely finished. I am not guilty. I want to say only the verity. Only the ultra. Okay, not now. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] had prepared this document. And at a certain point I said to him, "Are you willing to tell

11:35 me who G is?" He said, "No, that's the straight secret." And I said, "I think I know who G is." And he sort of chuckled. I recorded the conversation. And I said, "Really? Who do you think it is?" And I said, "He was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries. And the guy at the end of the phone just laughed. He was on the telephone interview." And I said, "It was Gerd Heidemann, wasn't it?" And he said, "Ha-ha-ha.

12:00 What a pig that man was." And it turns out that Gerd Heidemann, a Stern journalist, notorious for many things, including the production of the hit the diaries, which was a big scandal in Britain. He went to prison for it. Was a, I don't know whether you would call it an informant or an agent, but he was in the service of Mossad.

12:36 Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries. Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries. Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries. Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries.

14:17 Gerd We lawyers are not good for much, but we are terrified in court of being asked, "What's your evidence for that, Mr. Sands?" And we can't rely on rumours. We're dead if we rely on rumours. We need either documents or testamentary evidence. We have to have one or the other. But this relationship between fact and fiction reminds me of another remarkable moment. Many people will have seen the film or the play by Ariel Dorfman called Death and the Maiden, where there's a very famous scene in which the main protagonist, a woman who has been viciously tortured and raped and mistreated, is unable to recognise the identity visually of her torturer. But by a series of curious coincidences in this fictionalised account, the torturer turns up in her home and engages

15:07 with her husband and she's in the room next door and she recognises the voice. So I came to know and be introduced to the director of a part of the Pesquera Arauca, which had the fleet of refrigerated vans, which had operated the fish meal plant, and he was arrested on the day of the coup, September the 11th, 1973, and the army takes over the fish plant.

15:29 I mean, lots of people told me that. Like, why would the army take over a fishery? It's really strange. And everyone else had no answer to that. But Anatoly Zarate is then carted off to San Antonio, which is just a few kilometres away, and tortured over six months in a facility called Tejas Verdes. And he doesn't recognise any of his torturers because he says, "Whenever I was tortured, I had a black hood, or I had a hood over my head. But I heard voices and I said, "Were there any foreign voices?" And he said, "Yes, there were Portuguese."

16:01 I had Portuguese and I had one German voice. I said, "One German voice." He said, "Yes, very distinctive." And I said, "Do you think you'd recognise that voice again?" He said, "Absolutely. It was a very guttural smoker's voice." And I said, "I've got a recording of a voice. May I play that to you? Perhaps you don't want to listen to it." And he thought about it and said, "Yeah, yeah, no, I'm willing to listen to it." And so I got the recording and it's actually a video, which is incredible. It's the only known video. None of you have probably seen it of Walter Ralph, where he's accosted in 1979, 1980, by an Australian journalist.

16:38 We can play it actually if you want. And we put the video on it on my laptop. I was with my assistant, Montserrat. It's very important. I found that when you do these interviews, you're not alone. You need a reality check from someone else. She's doing her PhD at UCL. She's incredibly reliable. And because she has complete mastery of the Spanish language, which I don't have, she picks up tiny nuances. So we put on this video and he watches it and then Ralph comes on. He's not talking at this point. And then he speaks and at the moment he spoke, the man's body froze. It was incredible. He grasped his hands like this and did not let go for many minutes. He went silent. He started sweating profusely

17:23 and he said, "Yes." And he said, "That's the voice. That's the voice." And it was Walter Ralph. And so these moments, you know, as a litigator, you're testing constantly. Is this credible? Is this true? What are the weaknesses? If there was a cross-examination by the other side, what would they say? That's the mindset, not just of a historian, but a lawyer who has to prove their case in court. And I have no doubt.

18:02 Seid das Buch im Fröhe in Chile erschienen ist, wurden etliche Fälle von bisher nicht verurteilten Tätern neu aufgerollt. In der Folge der Präsentation des Buchs, in dem Sands freilich nicht alle Gerüchte umrauf bestetigen konnte, tauchten aber auch neue Fakten auf. So konnte er keine harte Evidenz für das Gerücht finden, dass rauf für Pinochet den Bau eines Konzentrationslagers in Patagonien koordiniert habe, das verdächtig nach einem Nazikazett aussah. Nach seiner Präsentation der spanischen Übersetzung des Buchs vor ein paar Wochen in Chile in unmittelbarer Nähe des Konzentrationslagers hat sich freilich auch dafür ein sehr konkreter Hinweis gefunden.

19:26 So many of the people who were detained there said to me, no, no, we all heard it was Walter Ralph who designed it, who built it, who was involved. Did you see him? Are there any documents? I found nothing. It was just rumours, rumours, rumours. Three weeks ago, I'm in Porvenier, the small town where Ralph lived. And we did an event at the museum. And so population is only 2000 and like 100 people came to the event. So it was a significant group came.

19:52 The director of the museum, wonderful lady, after the event said, I had an interesting dinner with my grandmother last night. Of course, like everyone else, she remembered Ralph, everyone remembered Ralph. And she said, my grandmother said to me, but I didn't only remember him from the street or from the supermarket or from the pescata, I worked for him. On five occasions, I cooked him a special meal. He had important visitors.

20:17 I didn't know who they were. And he needed someone to prepare a good meal in the evenings. And this happened five times in the 1970s, in the mid 1970s. And after the meal was over, all the gentlemen would leave with Ralph and they all went to Darsen Island. And so we're now reinterviewing that lady. And I think that what you learn is that in any community, you have it in Austria, you have it in Britain, you have it in any community where bad things have happened, there's silence. And there's a lot more to come out. But that is the kind of thing that happens when you write these books. More stories, more evidence emerges.

20:57 I mean, I've got zero doubt that Ralph is involved. Just now that I've begun to put all the things together, it's to me absolutely crystal clear. An extension of this really exciting conversation with Philipp Seins, you will find at Transit, the podcast about migration history, produced by students of the contemporary history of the University of Vienna. If you're still more interested in the topic, we recommend not only the book "The Disappearances of Lawrence 38", but also the first two bands of the trilogy by Philipp Seins about Nazi criminals, justice and justice, namely "Rückkehr nach Lemberg" and "Die Rattenlinie". For today, we say thank you for listening. We say goodbye with this really

21:44 breathtaking story about Walter Rauf in the summer break, maybe a little bit of a difficult topic to say goodbye to us in the summer, but it's still a memorial year. We're back in the beginning of October with "Rätsel der Wissenschaft" and of course we're looking forward to it when you're back. I'm Tanya Traxler and I'm Klaus Taschwer.

22:07 This episode was produced by Christoph Neuwirt. Have a nice summer and see you next time. Despite what I was able to establish was that Rauf resumed his career. In 1941 and '42, it was disappearing people through the use of gas fans. In 1974 and 1975, it was disappearing people through the use of refrigerated vans and this is particularly shocking because I think it underscores why, however we go about doing justice, the do nothing option is not an option.

22:41 People have a propensity to resume their previous task.