Nine Nazi war criminals currently live or have lived with impunity in Italy since World War II, according to a report published Sunday by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The war criminals are “nine mysteries to which Italy also has to respond,” wrote the author of the article, Riccardo Orizio.
He quoted former SS officer Erich Priebke, discovered in Argentina earlier this month and wanted in Italy on war crimes charges, as telling an Italian interviewer:
“Why come all the way to Argentina just to find me? Many of my comrades are still in Italy; we have written to each other for years. If I am guilty, so are they. And they live there at your place.”
Orizio’s article, which provided details about the nine war criminals without giving the sources of his information, was published two days after Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal reiterated his charge that Italy had for decades ignored Nazi criminals living on its soil.
Wiesenthal told Italy’s ANSA news agency that in 1967 he had provided Italian authorities with a list of 66 residents of the Tirolean Alps suspected of war crimes, adding that he had asked the Italians for witnesses and documentation. The Tirolean region includes parts of Italy and Austria.
“Our letter never had an answer, and in the 1970s research (on these people) was suspended,” he told ANSA.
Federico Steinhaus, president of the Jewish Community in Merano, in the South Tirol, and an expert on Nazi activities in that part of northern Italy, was quoted as saying that as far as he knew, these 66 people were all Austrian citizens.
SENIOR NAZIS LIVING IN NORTHERN ITALY
He said, however, that a number of senior Nazis were known to live in northern Italy, although none had been convicted of any war crime.
The list published by Corriere della Sera included:
* Erich Raja (or Rajakowitsch), an Austrian who was involved with the deportation of Jews from Holland and Czechoslovakia. He was also involved with ghettos and concentration camps in Poland and Italy.
The newspaper said he lived until 1963 in Milan, where he carried on an import-export business. He died in Austria in 1964.
* Anton Malloth, former SS officer condemned to death in Czechoslovakia for war crimes in the concentration camp at Litomerice. Corriere della Sera said he lived for years in Merano.
* Conrad Geng, an SS officer who operated in Italy in 1943-1944 and specialized in killing handicapped people and invalids. Corriere della Sera said that after the war he settled in Milan, where he worked for the German consulate until the mid-1970s. He was transferred to France, but on his retirement, the newspaper said, he returned to Italy, where he died in 1980.
* Anton Burger, a deputy of Adolf Hitler’s chief aide, Adolf Eichmann. Corriere della Sera said he was believed to have bought a vacation house in northern Italy. This was never investigated, the newspaper reported. Burger died a few months ago.
* Josip Susanski, Jan Griska, Alexander Mihalic and Misha Komalsky were Ukrainians who were guards at the Treblinka concentration camp. They were transferred in 1944 to the Risiera concentration camp near Trieste to help kill about 4,000 Jews, partisans and handicapped people.
Corriere della Sera quoted an unidentified Trieste magistrate as saying the four lived “tranquilly” in Trieste after the war. Mihalic died in 1985 and the others left the city. But, the newspaper said, it was believed that other Ukrainian guards from Risiera still lived in Trieste.
* Heinrich Kac, whom the newspaper described as a Yugoslav Nazi who fled to Argentina on a Red Cross passport — as Priebke had done. But the newspaper report stated that Kac returned to Italy in 1960 and asked for Italian citizenship.
“It is not clear if he obtained it,” the report said, “but he has remained in our country and managed to have all traces of himself lost.”
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.
