SS Colonel Walter Herman Rauff, an ex-Nazi accused of slaughtering 97, 000 Jews in Poland during World War II, has been found living on the Antarctic island of Tierra del Fuego, a Chilean possession, the National Broadcasting Company television network reported last night.
Chet Huntley. of NBC-TV’s Huntley-Brinkley program, showed a filmed interview with Rauff in which the German said he would not mind returning to Germany “if there were an entire change in thinking and policy of the German Government.” Mr. Huntley added that the NBC reporter found Rauff “has repeatedly asked for a police guard, and has told acquaintances he fears possible kidnapping or assassination.”
Rauff was arrested in Chile in 1962, on request of the West German Government, which sought to have him extradited for a war crimes trial. However, the highest Chilean court ruled that, since he is a Chilean citizen, and the crimes charged against him were “political, ” he could not be extradited.
Rauff is considered by West Germany as “one of the most wanted” Nazi criminals. The late Adolf Eichmann had named him during the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, as a high officer of the Gestapo whose job had been to murder Polish Jews in gas trucks. At Tierra del Fuego, NBC-TV reported, Rauff runs a canning factory. He told the television reporter: “I am under the protection of the Chilean Government like any other Chilean citizen. “
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