Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, was buried Monday in secret at an unknown location. German Radio said the federal government ordered his immediate burial to prevent further neo-Nazi demonstrations and efforts to try to turn the former Spandau prisoner into “some sort of martyr.”
The Mayor of Wunsiedel, Hess’ home town where the burial was scheduled to take place Wednesday afternoon, said that Hess has not been buried anywhere in or near the city.
It is not known whether Hess’ widow, Lisa, 87, attended the ceremony. His son, Wolf-Ruediger, 50, is still in the intensive care unit of a Munich hospital after suffering a stroke Saturday evening at his Munich home.
Hess died last Monday in Berlin’s four-power Spandau Prison for war criminals where he had been serving a life term. A British military coroner had said the 93-year-old Hess died of asphyxiation after choking himself with an electric wire in a suicide attempt.
The four-power allied control over Spandau Prison is scheduled to end Monday when the U.S. guard will march out. The red brick fort will be razed to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.
SECRET BURIAL ORDERED
The federal government ordered Hess buried secretly and without delay as neo-Nazi demonstrations took place throughout West Germany over the weekend. In Wunsiedel alone, 75 neo-Nazis were arrested after a crowd of several hundred massed outside the cemetery gates. Police said sympathizers had come from as far away as north Germany, Bavaria and nearby Nuremberg to attend a banned demonstration. Police found Nazi flags, armbands and Nazi posters in some of the searched cars.
After the news of Hess’ burial broke, local state and city police increased patrols near the city and cordoned it off from the main highways. Entrance into the cemetery itself was banned and local officials confiscated flowers and wreaths placed outside the cemetery wall.
Many West German papers Monday continued printing lengthy reports, often in a sympathetic tone, on Hess’ life and the 40 years he spent in prison.
Hess’ former Nuremberg trial lawyer, Alfred Seidel, Monday accused the four Western Allies of having kept Hess in prison in spite of his age and poor health. Seidel, who gave a press conference in Munich, said that the Allied claim that it was the Soviet Union which had vetoed Hess’ liberation “was only an excuse — taking refuge behind the skirts of the Soviet Communist Party.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
