Walter rauff biography

Hermann Julius Walther Rauff, also Walther Rauff (19 June 1906 – 14 May 1984) was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany.
Hermann Julius Walther Rauff, also Walther Rauff was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany.
Near the end of the war Rauff, then an SS and police official in northern Italy, tried to gain credit for the surrender of German forces in Italy but ended up.

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Philippe Sands Interviewed by Richard Ovenden

Monday, 17 February 2025Contact us

Chatwin, Patagonia, and the Bodleian: Searching for a Nazi SOLD OUT

Saturday, 25 March 2023

12:00pm

1 hour

Weston Lecture Theatre

£7 - £12.50

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Leading international lawyer Philippe Sands discusses his search for Walter Rauff, a Nazi criminal who escaped to Chile, using the Bruce Chatwin archive at the Bodleian.

Rauff was a bit character in Sands’ book, Ratline, an account of the life of SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter, governor of Galicia, who presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles, including Sands’s grandfather. Rauff was another SS officer. He turned up in Rome before escaping along the ratline to Syria and then to South America where he worked for Pinochet as an interrogator. During the event, he will be joined by Chilean poet Mariana Camelio via a video link.

Sands is professor of Law at UCL and a practising barrister. He has been involved in many of the most important international cases of recent years

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Wanted Nazi Walther Rauff 'was West German spy'

But the BND traced him and recruited him as spy, ostensibly to go to Cuba to spy on leader Fidel Castro.

He was denied entry but still earned more than DM70,000 ($18,000, £11,500) during his time with the service.

Publicly he became a wanted man when his wartime role was brought to light but - even after his arrest by Chilean police in 1962 - he was being supported by the BND.

Mr Hechelhammer disclosed that the agency was paying his legal bills as he fought extradition.

Rauff was freed by Chile's Supreme Court five months later in 1963, on the grounds that his crimes had been committed too long ago.

The government of General Augusto Pinochet, who seized power in Chile a military coup in 1973, resisted all calls for Rauff's extradition to stand trial in West Germany or Israel.

The last request to extradite him was turned down in 1983.

He showed no remorse for his Nazi past, and remained in Chile till his death at the age of 77.

He was buried in the capital Santiago to cries of "Heil Hitler, Heil Rau

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Walter Rauff

Walter Rauff was a member of the Reich Security Main Office, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, a department of the SS created by Heinrich Himmler in 1939. Rauff was involved in the development of “Gassing Vans”: mobile gas chambers used to fatally poison Jews, persons with disabilities, and communists, who were considered by the SS as enemies of the German State.

According to declassified C.I.A.documents: “as an official of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Reich Security Main Office, Rauff designed gas vans used to poison Jews and persons with disabilities.” He later was involved in persecution of Jews in North Africa, and there is a postwar report in the file that he tried to arrange the extermination of Jews in Egypt during late 1942.

Near the end of the war Rauff, then an SS and police official in northern Italy, tried to gain credit for the surrender of German forces in Italy but ended up only surrendering himself. After escaping from an American internment camp in Italy, Rauff hid in a number of Italian convents, apparently under the protection of Bisho