On January 25, 1983, the Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, also known by the nickname "the butcher from Lyon", was arrested. For almost 40 years, he managed to hide from justice in Latin America and even make an outstanding career there, becoming an adviser to the Bolivian president.
In a modest old man who appeared before the court, hardly anyone could recognize the chief of the Gestapo of Lyon, famous for his cruelty. Barbie was sentenced to life in prison and died in prison 4 years later.
Ultimately, although he had been in hiding for almost half a century, the "butcher of Lyons" was still held responsible for the sins of the past. But some Nazi criminals managed to hide so securely that the European Themis never reached them.
Who fled and how
In the years following the end of the war, several hundred former Nazi leaders moved to Latin America, many of whom were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Not a single high-ranking state or party leader of the Third Reich was able to hide.
Firstly, their faces were known to everyone and they would be looked for in the first place. Few states would agree to host such odious individuals. Although, until the very end of the 20th century, rumors circulated in the media about the miraculous rescue of Bormann, Müller and even Hitler himself.
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Contrary to rumors, they did not escape: Bormann's body was found in one of the graves (he died in the bombardment), as for Muller, according to the most common version, he committed suicide and was buried in one of the mass graves.
The rest of the high-ranking leaders of the Reich either committed suicide or fell into the hands of the Allies. But for smaller criminals, the window of opportunity was still open in the first few years after the end of the war, and many of them took advantage of it.
The hostilities and the post-war occupation of Germany led to the displacement of huge masses: captured soldiers, refugees from different countries, displaced persons - it was easy to get lost in this crowd of people, especially for those people whose face was not known to Soviet or American soldiers.
As a rule, future fugitives got a job as farm laborers for West German landowners or engaged in similar low-skilled work, and when identifying their identity, they pretended to be fugitives from the Soviet zone of occupation and were called by an assumed name.
If they served in the SS, they posed as mobilized Wehrmacht soldiers. Having received documents in a new name, they left the country, fearing that their stay in Germany would lead to the fact that sooner or later they would be identified by someone, after which they often changed their name again in order to get lost.
Contrary to popular post-war myths, there was no single organization that helped criminals escape from justice. The Nazis could only rely on themselves. And on the "rat paths".
It was this name that was assigned to those routes by which the Nazis were transported to distant Latin American countries by secretly sympathizing with them Catholic priests. For the same reason, "rat paths" are sometimes called monastic ones.
Patron saint of fugitive Nazis President of Argentina Juan Peron
Under the cover of the Vatican Refugee Organization, individual priests provided aid to the Nazis. They were transported from monastery to monastery, made fictitious documents for them - a passport of a displaced person, which was issued by the Red Cross - and then brought to the port, and from there the Nazis completely legally departed with documents in a new name for Latin America.
In the post-war world, there were two countries that actively hosted Nazi fugitives: Spain and Argentina. The Spanish leader Franco remembered that during the civil war, the Nazis and fascists supported him against the communists.
And although Spain did not participate in the Second World War, he did not deny refuge to the fugitives. As for Argentina, President Peron hoped to use the experience of Nazi leaders to strengthen his state apparatus.
Two of the most active priests are known who ferried the Nazis "rat paths". These are Alois Hudal, an ethnic Austrian, who mainly ferried Nazis and fascists regardless of their nationality, and Krunoslav Draganovic, an ethnic Croat, who established the ferrying of fugitive Ustasha (a Croatian fascist organization that was in religious and ethnic enmity with the Serbs).
Nevertheless, just hiding in another country was only half the battle, because those Nazis who were listed as a long train of crimes were hunted, not only Mossad and other intelligence agencies were looking for them, but also the so-called Nazi hunters - mostly representatives of public organizations professionally engaged in the search for Nazi criminals using their channels. The most significant of these organizations was the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But even the joint efforts of special services and public figures were sometimes not enough.
Josef Mengele
The Angel of Death from Auschwitz was the second most wanted criminals in the world. After Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Mossad agents in the early 1960s, Mengele became the number one target.
Mengele served on the Eastern Front as a full-time doctor in one of the battalions of the famous Viking SS Panzer Division and even earned the Iron Cross for saving the wounded. The service was short-lived: in 1942, Mengele was wounded and discharged due to unsuitability for further service. Since he had a medical degree, he received a doctorate at Auschwitz.
Although his service in the death camp lasted only a little over a year and a half, he earned such fame that he is still considered the embodiment of evil. Mengele arranged inhuman and cruel experiments on the prisoners of the camp, the doctor's experimental subjects were not only adult prisoners, but also children.
More than the rest, Mengele was interested in twins and dwarfs, on which he set up all sorts of experiments on infection with diseases, blood transfusions, amputations, etc. In most cases, the doctor's experiments ended either with the death of the prisoners as a result of the experiment, or with death in the gas chamber, where the doctor sent those who were no longer suitable for his experiments.
The experimental doctors received significantly better food and lived in the best barracks. Mengele even ordered to organize a kindergarten for the youngest test subjects, where he often visited himself, posing as Mengele's uncle and treating the youngest test subjects with chocolate.
How long such a life would last, no one could say in advance: the subject could die any day from some experiment or simply bore the doctor. Most of the people who were the objects of the experiments of the "angel of death" did not live to see the liberation of the concentration camps.
A few weeks before the end of the war, Mengele, by that time transferred to another concentration camp, disguised himself as a simple Wehrmacht soldier and fled, destroying most of the documents about the experiments. After the end of the war, he surrendered to the Americans, and gave his real name.
However, little was known about the affairs of the doctors in the concentration camps, and Mengele himself was not identified as an SS man (they were subject to special control, unlike the Wehrmacht soldiers), so he was calmly released home a month later. Mengele managed to take advantage of the bureaucratic confusion and, being in an American prisoner of war camp, straighten out new documents in the name of Fritz Ullmann.
Mengele was able to get a job as a farm laborer for one landowner, but soon the Nuremberg trial of the doctors began, in which Mengele himself was supposed to be one of the main accused (his name was mentioned several times during the trial), if found.
It was not safe to stay in Germany, and Mengele managed to get out on one of the "rat paths". In the summer of 1949, he reached Genoa, which was the end point of the European route, and with a Red Cross passport in the name of Helmut Gregor sailed to Argentina, leaving his family in Germany.
Mengele settled in Argentina, where he worked first as a carpenter and then as a seller of agricultural equipment. All this time they were looking for him and finally came out on his trail. Argentina was demanded to extradite the criminal to the Federal Republic of Germany, but the doctor managed to hide in Paraguay. 15 years after the end of the war, it turned out that the "angel of death" is alive, and not dead, as everyone previously thought.
After the capture of Eichmann, Mengele becomes the number one target for Nazi hunters. However, he was lucky again. In the Middle East, the situation became more complicated, and the Mossad was forced to divert all its forces to this region. And the efforts of public figures were clearly not enough to find the cunning Mengele, who skillfully confused the tracks and lay low, periodically changing his place of residence and names.
From Paraguay, he moved to Brazil, where he lived under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard. His health deteriorated and he suffered a stroke. In 1979, while swimming, he suffered a second stroke and drowned. In Europe and Israel, they continued to look for a criminal, for information about whom a reward of $ 100 thousand was promised. The media regularly reported that Mengele was seen in various parts of the globe.
Ultimately, information about Mengele's whereabouts was found out in the mid-1980s thanks to a search of one of his German friends, with whom he secretly corresponded. The place of his last residence was established, Brazilian acquaintances were interviewed and a grave was found. After the exhumation, it was confirmed that Mengele was buried in this grave under the name of Gerhard.
Aribert Heim
Another "doctor death", who managed to hide from his pursuers so reliably that his unsuccessful search continued until the beginning of the XXI century. Until recently, Haim was one of the ten most wanted Nazi criminals.
In the fall of 1941, 26-year-old Heim began working as a doctor in the Mauthausen concentration camp and very soon earned such a bad reputation that prisoners began to call him the Butcher.
Heim tested the effects of poisons on experimental subjects, as well as the effects of other substances that could be potentially fatal. He did not stay in the camp for long and was soon transferred to serve in the SS "Nord" division, where he served as a doctor.
Due to the fact that he served in the camp for a short time and did not manage to kill as many prisoners as Mengele, Heim escaped prosecution after the war. He was not brought to trial and calmly worked as a gynecologist until 1962, when at last witnesses of his atrocities were found and a trial began to be prepared against Jaime.
Not wanting to stand trial, Heim fled. The search for Khaim lasted more than half a century. The German authorities who missed the Nazi criminal were indignant and announced a reward for information about his whereabouts, which had already increased to 150 thousand euros at the beginning of this century.
Until recently, Heim was among the most wanted Nazi criminals, and it was only in 2012 that the search for him was stopped, when it was finally revealed that he had already been dead for 20 years by that time.
Death certificate of Tariq Hussein
It turned out that the secret services and Nazi hunters who were looking for Haim had taken the wrong trail from the very beginning. They were looking for him in Latin America, suggesting that Heim used the old "rat paths" and moved to some Latin American country, where there are many German communities.
However, in fact, Haim, in transit through France and Spain, moved to Morocco, from where, passing through Libya, he reached Egypt, where he settled. He converted to Islam and received a new name - Tariq Hussein, under which he lived for 30 years. Haim-Hussein died in 1992 of rectal cancer, but his death became known only 20 years later, when he was identified by journalists and Nazi hunters.
Ante Pavelic
Dictator of pro-Nazi Croatia and leader of the fascist Ustasha movement. During the reign of Pavelic in Croatia, ethnic cleansing of the Serb population was practiced. In this regard, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the post-war Yugoslav court.
The Ustasha movement has always been closely associated with Catholicism, so it is not surprising that some priests of Croatian origin provided all possible support in the post-war transfer of the Ustash regime leaders to countries that were safer for them, especially since the communists came to power in Yugoslavia.
A few days before the end of the war in Europe, Pavelic fled to Austria, where he was in a camp in the American zone of occupation. Through the efforts of the priest Krunoslav Draganovich, Pavelic was transported to Italian monasteries. They made him look like a priest and issued documents in the name of Pedro Gonner. With these documents he was transferred from one monastery to another until he boarded an Italian merchant ship that brought him to Argentina.
In this country, he once again changed his name, turning into Pablo Aranios. He had close contacts with President Perón and lived openly because he was confident that requests for extradition from the communist Tito would be ignored by the Argentine authorities.
In 1957, an attempt was organized on Pavelic's life by two Serbian Chetniks (Serbian nationalist partisans who were at war with both the Croats and Tito's communist partisans), but he survived, although he was wounded.
Pavelic with his wife in Buenos Aires, 1957
Soon a military coup took place in Argentina and Peron was overthrown. The new government agreed to extradite Pavelic to Yugoslavia, but he managed to move to Spain, where he received asylum. True, he did not live there for long, having died in 1959.
Alois Brunner
One of Eichmann's closest associates, responsible for the deportation of European Jews to death camps. Through the efforts of Brunner, about a hundred thousand Jews were deported from France, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovakia to concentration camps. After the war, Brunner disappeared.
He was searched for, and he was one of the few Nazi criminals whose whereabouts were reliably known. Brunner took refuge in Syria, but local authorities did not extradite him due to bad relations with Israel, not even officially recognizing his presence in the country. At the same time, Brunner himself even gave interviews to journalists.
After the war, Brunner, disguised as a Wehrmacht soldier, surrendered to the Americans. He was not seriously checked due to the fact that he did not have a tattoo with a blood group typical for all members of the SS (a similar situation was with Mengele), so he was not immediately identified as an SS man.
Brunner received documents from the Americans under a new name and quietly worked as a truck driver at an American military base. He lived in Germany for several years, but, fearing being recognized, fled with a fake Red Cross passport through Italy to Egypt, and then to Syria, where he became close to the ruling regime.
Syria was in hostile relations both with France, where Brunner was sentenced to death in absentia, and with Israel, therefore it did not allow their investigators to meet with Brunner and did not betray him.
At least twice, attempts were made on Brunner (he was sent explosives in an envelope), as a result of which he lost an eye and several fingers. It is also known that the leader of the GDR, Honnecker, negotiated with the Syrian leader Assad on the extradition of a war criminal, but after the unification of Germany, contacts were interrupted.
The exact date of Brunner's death is unknown: according to some sources, he died in 2001, according to others - in 2010.
Edward Roschman
The commandant of the Riga ghetto, then the commandant of the Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp, located in the territory of modern Latvia, Edward Roshman managed to evacuate from the camp by sea in front of the advancing Soviet army.
When the days of the Reich were already numbered, he threw away the SS uniform and changed into a Wehrmacht soldier, settling with his friends in Graz, Austria. Soon he was captured by the Americans, but released as a simple soldier.
After some time he returned to Austria to visit his wife and was identified by the British. Roschmann was sent to the Dachau camp, converted to contain Nazi criminals. This camp was attended by the Catholic priest Alois Hudal - the organizer of one of the most important "rat trails". With the help of Khudal, Roshman managed to escape from the camp and reach Genoa, where he boarded a ship bound for Argentina.
There he went into business, starting a timber supply company, and changed his name to become Federico Wegener. Roschmann later decided to remarry without divorcing his first wife. In Germany, a criminal case was opened against Wegener on charges of bigamy. At the same time, it turned out that Wegener was actually the commandant of the Riga ghetto, Roshman.
Soon, the FRG sent a request to Argentina for the extradition of Roschmann, whom they wanted to try for involvement in the murder of at least three thousand people.
Argentina and the Federal Republic of Germany did not have an agreement on the extradition of criminals, and while the request was being considered, Roschmann managed to escape to Paraguay, where he soon died at the age of 68.
Gustav Wagner
Assistant commandant of the Sobibor concentration camp, nicknamed the Beast for his cruelty. The surviving prisoners of the camp characterized Wagner as a complete sadist. Several hundred thousand people were killed in the concentration camp. After the war he was taken prisoner by the Americans.
Together with the camp commandant Franz Stangl, Wagner was rescued by the priest Hudal and fled one of the "rat trails" through Italy to Brazil, where he settled under the name of Gunther Mendel. Stangl fled to Syria and then also moved to Brazil.
Its former boss Franz Stangl refused to change his name for reasons of principle and lived without hiding from anyone. In the 60s, he was identified by Nazi hunters and issued to the FRG upon request. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Wagner was in hiding for much longer: it was possible to identify him only in the late 70s. The Nazi criminal was arrested, requests for his extradition were submitted by four states at once: Israel, Germany, Austria and Poland.
Wagner became a real celebrity and even handed out interviews to the press, assuring that he did not regret anything. Extradition requests were denied by Brazilians, but in 1980, the body of 69-year-old Wagner with a knife in his chest was found in Sao Paulo. It was officially announced that he committed suicide.
Evgeniy Antonyuk, historian
