Wilhelm Sassen, alias Willem S. Sassen, the Dutch Nazi whom Adolf Eichmann entrusted with the tape-recording of his confessions on the mass-murder of Jews in Nazi-held countries–which were published in Life magazine–was identified here today also as a writer for the Argentine German-language publication Der Weg, which was suppressed in 1957 by the Argentine Government for its Nazi policy. He published his articles in that newspaper under the name Willem Sluyse.
In one of his articles–an “open letter” to Sir Anthony Eden, former British Prime Minister–he identified himself as “W. Sluyse, Section Leader of the Foreign Service of the SS Division in The Netherlands.” His true identity was established here today by Mark Turkow, executive director of the Argentine branch of the World Jewish Congress, following the disclosure yesterday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York that Sassen was not a German, but a native of The Netherlands who was an officer of Hitler’s Elite Guard, the SS, and who escaped from Holland to Argentina after being charged with war crimes.
Sassen was identified here today as Sluyse, one of the most active collaborators of Der Weg from 1953 until the time when it was closed down by the Argentine authorities. His articles were strongly pro-Nazi and were dated either from Buenos Aires or from Santa Rosa, in Pampa province. In 1955, when the Argentine Nazi leader Enrique Oses died, he wrote in Der Weg a eulogy signing at that time the name W. Sassen.
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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.
