Gerald Steinacher - Nazis on the Run: How Hitlers Henchmen Fled Justice

Nazis on the Run

How Hitlers Henchmen Fled Justice

GERALD STEINACHER

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Gerald Steinacher 2011. Originally published as Nazis auf der Flucht.
Wie Kriegsverbrecher ber Italien nach bersee entkamen
(= Innsbrucker Forschungen zur Zeitgeschichte Band 26),
2008 by Studienverlag Ges.m.b.H

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First published 2011

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ISBN 9780199576869

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This book was made possible in part through a Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellowship
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The statements made and
views expressed, however, are solely the responsibility of the author.

Jacket photo: International Committee of the Red Cross travel document for Adolf Eichmann
alias Riccardo Klement; Fundacin Memoria del Holocausto, Buenos Aires.

This book originated as a professorial thesis (Habilitation) delivered to the Leopold Franzens University in Innsbruck in 2007. It has been shortened and rewritten for publication. Lengthy periods of archive research in Europe and the United States were required for the investigation of this subject over the past five years.

Without the support of various institutions and certain individuals this work would not have been possible. First I should like to thank the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where I was allowed to work on my thesis in the context of a Research Fellowship. I was able to consult the archives of the Holocaust Museum in detail and received invaluable feedback from a number of people including Peter Black, Jrgen Matthus, Lisa Yavnai, Bruce Tapper, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Jan Lambertz, and Richard Breitman.

I also received important suggestions and support from the staff of the archives I consulted in Europe and the United States. In particular, I should like to thank Marija Fueg of the Archive of the International Red Cross in Geneva, John E. Taylor in College Park, Maryland, Harald Toniatti of the State Archive in Bozen, and Elisabeth Klamper of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance in Vienna. Matteo Sanfilippo was a great source of help to me when dealing with the problems involved in the Roman archives. I should like to thank Johann Hrist, the Rector of Santa Maria dellAnima, the German and Austrian national church in Rome, for his help and support in my study of the Animas archive.

Over the years, conversations with colleagues and friends have been motivating and encouraging in various ways. Many ideas, suggestions, questions, and connections arose out of these encounters. At this point I should like to express particular thanks to Hans Heiss, Leopold Steurer, Stas Nikolova, Andrea Di Michele, Horst Schreiber, Renate Telser, and Christof Mauch. They have supported my research even during difficult phases, and without the advice and encouragement of Hans Heiss and Leopold Steurer this book would never have existed. They have also corrected a number of chapters in terms of language, form, and content, and invested a great deal of time in doing so. I should especially thank my mentor Rolf Steininger, Innsbruck, who has always sympathetically accompanied my professional and academic progress. As head of the Institute at Innsbruck University, Rolf Steininger has always closely interwoven regional with international contemporary history: a perspective that continues to inform my work today. During my period of study in the United States, Gnter Bischof in New Orleans opened up a new (and wide) world of contemporary historical research that gave my scholarly work a new direction. I wish to thank Linda and Eric Christenson for their repeated hospitality over the past few years in the United States. Carlo Gentile and Kurt Schrimm have allowed me an insight into the trials of Nazi war criminals in Italy and Germany during the 1990s. Shraga Elam provided a great deal of background information on Operation Bernhard. Uki Goi and Luis Moraes in Buenos Aires made a considerable contribution to my better understanding of Argentinian politics and contemporary history. The historians Wolfgang Benz, Klaus Larres, Reiner Pommerin, and Anton Pelinka contributed valuable suggestions to the reworking of my postdoctoral thesis.

Eva Trafojer, Norbert Sparer, Christian Url, Tanja Schluchter, and Thomas Pardatscher sacrificed many hours to the formal revision of individual chapters of this work, which made the final revision considerably easier for me. Lou Bessette in Montreal, Quebec, helped to translate the introduction to this edition; Harald Dunajtschik drew up the index of proper names and contributed many additional suggestions for improvement. Thanks to Shaun Whiteside for his excellent English translation and Jennifer Shimek for the accurate final copy editing of the book.

I owe a debt of thanks to the de Rachewiltz family for their hospitality at Brunnenburg Castle near Meran: a true refuge for thinkers. It was there and at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University that the final version of the English edition was produced. I would also like to extend my thanks to my friends and like-minded colleagues Georg Mischi, Pietro Fogale, and Philipp Trafoier, who patiently endured lengthy discussions of this books subject matter and individual research problems.

My family and friends have shown a great deal of understanding for my work and have kept me from losing touch with life outside academia. To them, and particularly to my brother Werner, this book is dedicated.

G.S.

Washington D.C., Harvard/Boston, and Brunnenburg near Meran
2010

People can face the truth.

Ingeborg Bachmann

Some people hoped a line would be drawn under the National Socialist past. Some were thinking less of the dead victims than of the living perpetrators.