Walter Rauff, former Nazi SS colonel arrested here last week at the request of the West German Government, on charges of annihilating 90,000 Jews during World War II,. said here this weekend that he will fight Bonn’s extradition application on the grounds that he was not an executioner but only “a desk colonel.”
He told Chief Justice Rafael Fontecillas, of the Chilean Supreme Court, before whom he was brought on the extradition application: “I signed papers brought to me, but I never ordered or witnessed any killings of Jews.” He is being held under heavy guard pending Justice Fontecilla’s determination of the case.
Meanwhile, high police authorities here said they were expecting the possible arrest of “a very high Nazi.” There were indications that the ex-Nazi police hope to arrest may be Martin Bormann, Hitler’s first deputy, who has been missing since he reportedly escaped from Buenos Aires following the apprehension there of the late Adolf Eichmann.
(In Germany, the Hanover public prosecutor’s office disclosed today that a trial of Nazi war criminals now being prepared in Hanover might possibly include Walter Rauff. An office spokesman said that two of Rauff’s former subordinates had been under arrest in West Germany for more than a year and that others, not under arrest, were also suspected of complicity in murders by poison gas vans.)
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