Three leading Jewish organizations this weekend praised the apprehension in Argentina of 71-year-old Walter Kutschmann, a former Nazi SS officer and gestapo official, arrested near Buenos Aires on a special extradition request from West Germany.
Kutschmann, who has been living in Argentina under the alias of Pedro Ricardo Olme since 1947, is reported to have told arresting officers last Thursday night, “The chase is over. I will not run.” Arrested by four police agents working with Interpol, the international police indentification network, he is one of the highest ranking former Nazi officials alive today.
Among the charges facing Kutschmann in West Germany are that as an SS officer and gestapo official in 1941 and 1942 he ordered the execution of 1,500 Jews in Berezhany and Podgaisty and the killing of 20 university professors and their families in Lvov, an area of then German occupied Poland, and now part of the Soviet Ukraine.
Reports from Argentina said Kutschmann continued after his arrest to maintain that he was not Kutschmann, but that he was Pedro Olmo. Officials in Argentina failed to say how long it would take the judge to hand down a decision on the extradition request from West Germany. There is no formal extradition treaty between West Germany and Argentina.
ADL PROVIDED EXTENSIVE INFORMATION
Officials of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith have provided extensive information on Kutschmann’s presence in Argentina. As recently as last March, Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, director of the ADL’s Latin American Affairs Department, and Elliot Welles, head of the ADL’s Nazi war criminals task force, testified before a Congressional subcommittee on Kutschmann.
Rosenthal and Welles told the subcommittee that Pedro Olmo could be indentified as Kutschmann by scars on his upper thigh received when he was wounded while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. In addition, the ADL officials said Kutschmann had his blood type tatooed under his arm in accordance with SS practices.
The ADL praised the arrest of Kutschmann. ADL director Nathan Perlmutter described the arrest as “an historic accomplishment” that “should serve as a warning to Nazi war criminals … that the international community is still conscious of their heinous crimes and that only the grave will give them immunity from prosecution.”
World Jewish Congress president Edgar Bronfman sent a cable to President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina applauding “this historic action ” and urging speedy extradition of Kutschmann to West Germany. The WJC said it will open its archives to make available all evidence in this case to West Germany and Argentinain authorities.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said the apprehension of Kutschmann “could be a significant development in the arrest of other war criminals still at large in South America.” Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has been in touch in recent months with the West German prosecutors in Berlin to discuss the progress of the Kutschmann case, Wiesenthal Center officials asserted.
CRIMES COMMITTED BY KUTSCHMANN
Born in Dresden on May 25, 1914, Kutschmann lived most of his early life in Berlin. He was trained by the Luftwaffe prior to joining the Nazi party in February 1940, and the SS in December of the same year. As a 27-year-old SS lieutenant, Kutschmann was involved in the extermination of Polish university professors and members of their families.
The Argentine weekly magazine, Gente, reported in 1983 that these executions were part of the Nazi plan to kill some 5,000 Jewish academicians in order to “diminish the intellectual potential of the country,” ADL officials reported.
Kutschmann was subsequently promoted to an SS post in the Galician town of Tarnopol, later becoming chief of gestapo in Berezhany, where he allegedly was responsible for the assassination of more than 1,500 Jews. According to SS documents, Kutschmann was transferred to France during the closing days of the war but was listed as a deserter in 1945. He reportedly fled to Spain and finally to Argentina where he assumed his new identity.
In Argentina, Kutschmann worked for the West German Osram Electric Company, according to ADL officials. A spokesman for the firm in Munich stated in 1975 that Kutschmann revealed his true identity to the firm. In 1975, also, Simon Wiesenthal publicly identified Kutschmann as a Nazi war criminal and photos of him were published in Argentine papers and magazines. In a press conference that same year, Kutschmann asserted that his German accent was due to the fact that he had lived in Germany as a child.
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