IN LATE 1983, I decided to go to Chile to try to obtain the extradition or expulsion of Walter Rauff. It was another opportunity to protest against a dictator—General Pinochet—and against the impunity of a vile Nazi war criminal.
Walter Rauff, aged seventy-seven, lived in Las Condes, a residential area of Santiago. His extradition had been demanded by West Germany but refused by Chile’s supreme court in 1963, as war crimes had a fifteen-year statute of limitations in that country. How could we accept such a situation?
Since March 13, 1961, Rauff had been wanted by the Hanover prosecutor’s office for the murder of at least ninety-seven thousand Jews in mobile gas chambers. In 1941 and 1942, Rauff had been head of the group II-D of the RSHA, the Reich Main Security Office. This group was responsible for preparing and equipping the Einsatzgruppen and for developing, running, and repairing the gas trucks, which were mostly used in the Soviet Union.
We had a photograph of Rauff, in uniform and a long leather coat, taken during his arrest by the Americans at his headquarters, the Hotel Regina in Milan, on April 30, 1945, and we made efforts to disseminate this image. Soon after this, Rauff had escaped from an American camp in southern Italy to Rome, where he took refuge for more than a year with various church organizations. He taught math and French in an orphanage. He moved to Damascus in 1949, but a coup d’état ousted the president, Husni al-Za’im, from power and left Rauff unprotected. So he fled to South America and, after traveling through Ecuador and Bolivia, he reached Chile, where he ran a fish cannery in the south of the country. No Chilean government had ever agreed to extradite Rauff.
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I OBTAINED A one-month visa from the Chilean consulate in late November 1983. I arrived in Santiago on January 19, 1984, and issued a press release about the reasons for my visit. After listing Rauff’s crimes, I added, “Tomorrow, in a country that is so desperate to rid itself of General Pinochet’s dictatorial regime, I will try to mobilize public opinion to have Rauff expelled, as Barbie was from Bolivia upon the accession of a democratic government.”
I took a room at the Hotel Cordillera and began by approaching Jewish youth movements with the help of a Bolivian Jewish student named Salomon.
On January 27, I led a protest group consisting of young Chilean Jews brave enough to ignore their parents’ concerns about the dangers of breaking the law in a dictatorship. Our target was Rauff’s home at Calle Los Pozos 7230. We covered his walls with graffiti; I held up a poster; my friends read out the names of extermination camps. The police came and asked me to desist; when I refused, they took me away. On January 31, I did it again. Pinochet’s opponents got in touch with me; we arranged to meet on Constitution Plaza, outside the Moneda Palace, headquarters of the general’s government. This was the first public protest to occur in this symbolic spot, under the dictator’s windows. The police turned up in force, detaining the leaders of the protest and taking us in a bus to a police station. We were released soon afterward. These events made the headlines in the Chilean press the next day.
In Paris, Serge and the FFDJF organized a large protest outside the Chilean embassy on February 3; hundreds of our friends took part, mobilized by the images of my arrest outside Pinochet’s headquarters. The Israeli minister of justice demanded Rauff’s extradition, and the West German and British ambassadors attempted similar initiatives. None of it worked, however. As the Associated Press correspondent wrote, “Augusto Pinochet is not the man to authorize an expulsion.”
I left Chile on February 9, 1984. Rauff was never expelled, but at least he heard those young Jews wearing yellow stars protesting outside his home before his death on May 14, 1984. Images of the funeral were broadcast all over the world, showing old Nazis raising their right arms in a salute over Rauff’s grave.