45 Facts About Walter Rauff

Hermann Julius Walther Rauff, Walther Rauff was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany.

Walter Rauff worked for the Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany between 1958 and 1962, and was employed by the Israeli secret service.

Walter Rauff sailed to South America in December 1949 and landed in Ecuador, initially living in Quito.

Walter Rauff was described in a documentary on the History Channel as one of the seven most dangerous Nazis who fled to South America after World War II.

Walter Rauff escaped an Allied internment camp in Italy and then was able to hide in Italian monasteries.

Walter Rauff was able to live in Quito, for almost ten years after World War II, departing in 1958 and travelling to Chile before returning to Germany in 1960 to collect his German Navy pension.

Walter Rauff played a role in the creation of the Chilean internal security apparatus during the military dictatorship.

Walter Rauff is accused of being responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths during World War II.

Walter Rauff was arrested in 1945, but subsequently escaped and was never brought to trial.

Walter Rauff joined the Kriegsmarine in 1924 as a young cadet.

Walter Rauff was a friend of Reinhard Heydrich, who served in the Navy in the 1920s.

Heydrich was hired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1931 to serve as the head of the SS counter-intelligence system, and when Walter Rauff resigned from the Navy in 1937, Heydrich took him under his wing.

Walter Rauff was given the job of putting the SS and its security service, the Sicherheitsdienst, onto a war footing.

In 1937, Walter Rauff left the Navy following an adultery scandal, but he was discharged "with all honours", as he said in a 1972 deposition before a German prosecutor in Santiago de Chile.

Between 1940 and 1941, Walter Rauff returned to the Navy as a volunteer, commanding a mine sweeper flotilla in the English Channel.

Walter Rauff was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in April 1941, shortly before he was discharged from active service, he then returned to the Reich Security Main Office.

Walter Rauff supervised the modification of scores of trucks, with the assistance of a Berlin chassis builder, to divert their exhaust fumes into airtight chambers in the back of the vehicles.

In 1972, in Santiago de Chile, Walter Rauff made a deposition as a witness before a German prosecutor.

Walter Rauff was later involved in the persecution of Jews in Vichy France-controlled French protectorate of Tunisia during 1942 and 1943, by implementing the antisemitic Statute of the Jews enacted by the metropolitan Vichy state.

The unit, commanded by Walter Rauff, was empowered to carry out "executive measures on the civilian population", the Nazi euphemism for mass murder and enslavement.

The MI5 file records that Walter Rauff was posted to Vichy-Tunisia in 1942 as head of the Security Service, where he led a mobile killing squad which conducted a "well-organised persecution campaign against the Jews and partisans".

Walter Rauff's men stole jewels, silver, gold and religious Jewish artifacts.

In 1943, Walter Rauff was sent to Milan where he took charge of all Gestapo and SD operations throughout northwest Italy.

In both these postings [Tunisia and northern Italy] Walter Rauff rapidly gained a reputation for utter ruthlessness.

Walter Rauff narrowly avoided being lynched by an Italian mob, having barricaded himself and a number of other SS officers into the Hotel Regina in Milan.

Walter Rauff was arrested by Allied troops and sent to a prisoner of war camp.

Walter Rauff has brought his organisation of political gangsterism to stream-lined perfection and is proud of the fact.

Walter Rauff managed to convince his captors that he was only an advisor and had no command powers; he was released but ordered to leave the country.

In December 1949, Walter Rauff made it out of Europe and sailed for Ecuador.

The 2007 book On the Trail of Nazi War Criminals Who Weren't Punished by Mossad operative Yossi Chen, indicates that Walter Rauff provided intelligence from Syria and was handled by Shalhevet Freier, of the Foreign Ministry.

In 1950 Walter Rauff was safe in South America living in Quito.

One report indicated that Walter Rauff did not reach Egypt, but a 1953 memo stated that an operative, most likely Walter Rauff, was in the country at that time.

An earlier CIA report, from February 1950, stated that Cross helped Walter Rauff obtain the necessary papers for settling in South America and added: "It is not improbable that Subject's presence in Syria was in connection with a mission for the Israel[i] service".

Walter Rauff was working in Syria, as an advisor to President Hosni Zaim, but left the country after Zaim was deposed.

Prior from December of 1949 until some time in 1958 Walter Rauff was in Quito Ecuador.

In 1958, Walter Rauff took on two roles: one as the manager of a king crab cannery in Punta Arenas, which is one of the southernmost towns in the world, and another as a merchant in Quito, Ecuador.

Between 1958 and 1963, Walter Rauff was employed by the Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany and received 70,000 DM from the agency.

Walter Rauff was eventually warned and removed from the BND before his arrest in Chile.

In 1960, Walter Rauff made an important trip to Germany, in order to claim his pension for the time which he had served in the Reichsmarine, and he had no trouble with the German authorities.

Walter Rauff worked as direct assistant to Manuel Contreras and gave advice on the creation of the secret police Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional.

Walter Rauff was valued as an expert for the Solucion Final, meaning the killing and disappearance of dissidents.

Walter Rauff planned and supervised the building of concentration camps and was involved in finding means of disposing the dead bodies of tortured and murdered dissidents.

Walter Rauff allegedly used contacts to former German military officers to smuggle sarin to Chile.

Former DINA and Chilean military personnel later detailed that Walter Rauff was strongly involved with Contreras' work and acted as executive command officer in DINA.

Walter Rauff's funeral was the occasion of a Nazi celebration.