THE NAZI HUNTERS



The Nazi Hunters

8 x 60

• drama docs where Munich meets The Boys From Brazil

• action-packed manhunts, assassinations and kidnaps

• the greatest detective stories ever told

• edgy, contemporary drama recon, all shot on HD

• secret agents, avenging heroes, boys own adventure stories

• a classic battle between good and evil

• a new take on the Nazis for a new generation of viewers

The Nazi Hunters

The wind whistles down a quiet residential street in a modest, working class suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It’s getting dark. A fork of lightning illuminates a car parked at the end of the street, its bonnet raised. Two men are hunched over the engine, tinkering, while a third sits behind the steering wheel.

A bus draws up and a man in a heavy coat descends. The first drops of rain patter on the pavement as he walks past the broken down car.

Suddenly one of the men standing by the bonnet jumps out and knocks the man in the coat to the ground before bundling him into the back of the car.

With a screech of tires the kidnappers are gone. But these are no ordinary criminals. They are highly trained Mossad agents and this is the culmination of a three-year secret operation. They have just captured Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of Hitler’s Final Solution.

Welcome to the world of the Nazi Hunters…

Action Packed Thrillers

“Despite four of us holding him down, Cukurs almost managed to pull the gun out of his pocket. But we beat him to it…One of us put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger twice.” - ‘Anton Kuenzle’, Mossad agent

Forget the crackly black and white archive. This is kick-ass, in-your-face drama doc with all the action and intensity of a Bourne movie and the sensibility and story-telling prowess of Munich. It’s a complete reinvention of a classic history TV genre – the Nazis.

Featuring eight spellbinding missions, The Nazi Hunters tells the story of how a select band of secret agents, avengers and streetwise detectives hunted down some of the most evil men in history.

Narrated in the first person by real-life Nazi hunters, each episode tells the action-packed story of one electrifying hunt. From the audacious Mossad operation to kidnap Adolf Eichmann on the streets of Buenos Aires to the dramatic take down of Klaus Barbie in Bolivia, every story has a plot that’s worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

These are some of the greatest detective stories you’ll ever hear. But in addition to classic cat and mouse intrigue and edge-of-your-seat story telling, there’s also plenty of action. We’re talking secret agents who strip down to their underwear to prevent their clothes getting splattered with blood just before they smack a Nazi war criminal over the head with a hammer and finish him off with a double tap to the head from a 9mm pistol.

With unique access to real life Nazi hunters, some of whom have never appeared on film before and are still on Interpol’s wanted list, we’re able to reveal fresh information, like the fact that Mossad had Mengele in their sights but held off seizing him in case it jeopardized the Eichmann operation.

Often violent and visceral, and always full of action and drama, The Nazi Hunters vividly brings to life the story of how the Nazis finally met their nemesis.

How It Works

[pic]“I grabbed him by the neck with such force I could see his eyes bulge. A little tighter and I would have choked him to death.” [pic]- Rafi Eitan, Mossad agent, talking about the Eichmann kidnap

The Nazi Hunters is a unique, highly stylized format that tells the story of some of the greatest manhunts in history.

Every episode tells the incident packed story of the hunt for one Nazi war criminal. Told through the “I was there” personal testimony of real surviving Nazi hunters, these hunt narratives play out chronologically from the beginning of the operation to the final dramatic moment of closure.

By telling these stories through the eyes of the hunters, we put the audience right at the heart of the action, bringing to life some of the most dramatic detective stories of the 20th Century.

Whilst compelling testimony moves the story forward, the chase is visually realized through high-end drama re-enactment shot in a contemporary, edgy style with little or no dialogue. From secret agents learning how to kill with one karate blow and detectives trailing suspects in the shadows to armed kidnap attempts and full blown murder, these scenes will feel like they’re happening right here, right now – not in the dusty eons of history.

The story of the hunt is always the main thread in these films. But as the hunter discovers new information about his prey, so viewers also learn the back-story of the Nazi – what he did in the war, why he managed to escape in the post-war chaos and how he managed to stay hidden for so long. Along the way we reveal the existence of a shady organized escape system involving elements of the Catholic Church and Nazi sympathizers in Europe and beyond.

Revealing documentary scenes also feature alongside the drama reconstruction and first person interviews. For instance: we’ll film on the crowded streets of Buenos Aires where the spectacular kidnap of Eichmann actually took place; we’ll follow a team of Israeli special forces as they practice covert urban assault techniques; and we’ll see inside the Nazi safe houses where iconic Nazi villains led their secret lives.

Every case is fraught with enormous risk – not just that the Nazi might elude the hunters, but also that the hunters might become the hunted. In South America, surviving Nazis and their sympathizers ran their own counter-intelligence operations. Powerful, dark forces were arrayed to protect these fugitive war criminals and even some governments stood in their way. In these stories, nothing is certain until they finally get their hands on their man.

Every episode comes to a final, dramatic climax as the hunters close in on their prey. The tension ramps up as we nervously watch to see if they can pull off the capture they have been working towards for so long. In most cases, these stories culminate in capture and ultimately justice is done. But one story ends with the discovery that death has cheated the hunters. And another one climaxes with state sponsored murder.

A Unique Style

Shot on HD, photographed by feature film DPs and directed by some of North America and Britain’s top drama-doc directors, The Nazi Hunters will reach new visual heights.

Neil Rawles, (Manson, Banged Up Abroad, Waco) has already agreed to be lead director. He will direct the first episode.

The drama recon style is pacey, restless and edgy with little or no dialogue. Think hunter POVs, sinister establishing tracking shots that generate tension before the action even begins and shadowy, moody lighting. It’s all about building tension that eventually explodes into frenzied action.

Possible Stories

DEADLY ASSASSINS

THE TARGET

Latvian Herbert Cukurs earned the nickname the Hangman of Riga, committing atrocities with the fascist Arajs Commando unit during the war. He smashed babies’ heads, shot old people and tortured women. In 1941, he set fire to 300 Jews locked in a Riga synagogue, ordered the drowning of 1200 Jews in a lake at Kuldiga, and participated in the ‘liquidation’ of 10,600 people in a forest near Riga.

Shortly before the liberation of Riga in 1944, Cukurs escaped to Germany with the fleeing Nazis, before absconding to Brazil in 1946. He set up a small boat business near Rio, but when Holocaust survivors from Riga identified him, a group of Brazilian Jews stormed his dock and destroyed his business. For the next decade, the Jewish community pushed hard for his extradition. But Cukurs was protected, both by the Brazilian government and, after the Eichmann kidnapping, by the Secret Service.

But he had not been forgotten…

THE HUNT (summer 1964 – Feb 1965)

Former director of Mossad, Meir Amit, and two members of the assassination team he assembled are our key storytellers.

Their story begins in Israel in 1964, the year the PLO was founded to destroy Israel. Surrounded by hostile Arab states, the Israelis were so preoccupied with the immediate threats to their existence in the Middle East, that they had few resources for Nazi-hunting in the far reaches of the globe.

Yet there was a growing awareness that the 20-year statute of limitations meant that many Nazis would soon be able to emerge from hiding, immune from prosecution. The Israelis decided to send a message – that no Nazi fugitives would ever be safe, statute of limitation or not. They picked Herbert Cukurs, to be the bearer of this message.

Mossad appointed a top agent to the job. Yitzhak (his surname is still a secret) created a cover for himself and became Austrian businessman Anton Kuenzle. On 11th September 1964, he flew to Rio, where he built up his cover story, visiting the local tourist ministry and investigating possible businesses to invest in.

On 17th September he flew to Sao Paulo, where Cukurs had begun a new business, renting boats and running tourist flights. Kuenzle introduced himself as a businessman and Cukurs invited him onto his boat.

On board the yacht, Kuenzle played the investor and asked about local tourism. When talk veered towards the war, Cukurs revealed that he’d been accused of being a war criminal and demanded to know whether Kuenzle had served. Kuenzle replied that he’d fought on the Eastern Front and the Nazi seemed satisfied.

Over the next few weeks, Kuenzle visited Cukurs’ home several times and they talked about the possibility of investing together as partners. One prospect was a large inland farm, which they traveled to together. Here, Cukurs challenged Kuenzle to a shooting match – as if he were testing him to see whether he really had been a soldier. Kuenzle passed the test and began to win Cukurs’ trust.

It was time for the next stage of the operation. Kuenzle’s Mossad superiors decided that the assassination should take place outside Brazil to prevent a backlash against Brazilian Jews. On October 16th, Kuenzle invited Cukurs to accompany him on a business trip to Uruguay and the pair agreed to return a month later.

Kuenzle began to plan the hit in detail. He decided that on their next business trip, he would lure Cukurs to a house in a quiet area of Montevideo where an ‘elimination unit’ would be waiting. He assembled a team of five agents who took special karate training to enable them to overpower Cukurs with a single blow.

February 23rd 1965. Kuenzle and Cukurs flew into Montevideo. After driving around a number of rental properties in the city, Kuenzle casually mentioned a small house he’d rented as a temporary office that he wanted to show to Cukurs.

Meanwhile, the hit team arrived at the house where the assassination was to take place. Unfortunately, builders had begun work on the house next door. But it was too late to call it off. They sneaked inside, stripped down to their underwear to avoid getting blood on their clothes and hid.

Kuenzle pulled up in his car. He saw the lookout across the road waiting in a red VW Beetle and steeled himself. Did Cukurs really trust him? After all he still carried a gun with him wherever he went.

Kuenzle turned the key in the lock. Cukurs was right behind him and followed him into the house. As soon as they were inside, the door slammed shut. Cukurs reached for his gun and made a rush for the door but he was outnumbered. One of the waiting Mossad agents smashed his skull with a hammer, before another put two bullets in his head. They dragged the body into a trunk in the empty room, cleared up all traces of their presence, dressed and calmly left the house. The builders next door worked on, entirely unaware of what had just happened.

Ten days later, Uruguayan police knocked down the door and discovered Cukurs’ body with a note from “Those Who Will Never Forget.” Interpol launched a worldwide manhunt for Anton Kuenzle. But he was never found…

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Mossad Hit Team - We are in discussions with two surviving members of the hit team that killed Cukurs, both of whom would be willing to talk in principle but possibly only to appear in silhouette. We have a contact who is also trying to establish whether Yitzhak the man who was Kuenzle is still alive and able to be interviewed. We know he had terminal cancer, which is why he decided to tell his story (his book has just been published).

Meir Amit - Born in Palestine, Amit fought for the Haganah during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After studying in the US, he returned to Israel where he joined the intelligence service, eventually becoming director of Mossad between 1963 and 1968. He has agreed in principle to talk about the operation he oversaw.

OPERATION EICHMANN

THE TARGET

Adolf Eichmann was the Chief Architect of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’. As head of the Gestapo’s Department of Jewish Affairs, it was his job to keep the trains running to the death camps in the East. In 1944, Eichmann told a fellow officer, "I'll die happily with the certainty of having killed almost six million Jews".

For 5 years after the end of the war, Eichmann hid out in southern Germany, protected by Nazi sympathizers. He felled trees and raised chickens for a living. Finally, in 1950, the ‘Odessa’ network smuggled Eichmann out of Europe to Argentina, and gave him a new identity - Ricardo Klement. Two years later his wife and children followed him to South American safety.

During all this time, famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal had been looking for Eichmann. He came close in 1949 when he received a tip-off that Eichmann would visit his family in a mountain resort for New Year’s Eve but Eichmann was warned away.

Finally, when he read of an Eichmann spotting in Buenos Aires in a letter from a holocaust survivor, he decided he could take his hunt no further and sent his file to the Israeli Embassy in Vienna. Maybe they could take the hunt to Argentina.

THE HUNT (1957 – 1960)

In 1957 the Israelis also received a tip-off that Eichmann was alive and well in Argentina. Isser Harrel, head of Mossad, decided to send agents to Argentina to investigate.

For months, they trailed suspected Nazi sympathizers, watched key addresses and built up a network of informants and spotters. Gradually, they began to piece together details about Eichmann’s time in South America – how he’d eked out a living in a series of odd jobs, from factory foreman to rabbit farmer. He’d even run a laundry business for a while, but it went bankrupt. But where was he now?

In 1958 a Mossad agent interviewed a blind Jewish refugee who believed his daughter might have dated Eichmann’s son in Buenos Aires. The son’s name had been Eichmann and he’d been dumped after he’d spouted anti-Semitic rhetoric at school. But surprisingly, his father’s name wasn’t Eichmann. It was Klement.

It was a long shot and when agents first checked out the suspect’s address on Garibaldi Street, Buenos Aires, their first reaction was that surely Eichmann couldn’t be living somewhere as middle-brow as this. They still believed that former high-powered Nazis would be living a life of luxury, fuelled by stolen gold and diamonds.

However, they staked out Richard Klement’s home. After several days the watching agents still hadn’t seen him but several times, they’d seen a woman at a window. They were soon able to identify her as Vera Eichmann.

At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon on 19th March 1960, Mossad agent Zvi Aharoni saw a man collecting the washing in front of the house. He was of medium size and build, about fifty years old, with a high forehead and partially bald. Aharoni was convinced this was Eichmann. But he had to be certain.

They continued to watch and follow Klement. But they were only convinced he was Eichmann after two agents spotted him buying a large bouquet of flowers for his wife on 21st March 1960 – Eichmann’s wedding anniversary.

With Eichmann positively identified, the agents devised a plan to kidnap him. On 11th May 1960, a team of Mossad operatives, including Rafi Eitan and Zvi Aharoni, lay in wait outside Eichmann’s house on Garibaldi Street, waiting for him to get off his bus at his usual time.

But this night he was late. For 30 nail-biting minutes, the agents waited in two cars. As another bus arrived, one team pretended that their car had broken down and lifted the bonnet. They saw Eichmann get out of the bus and begin to walk towards them.

As he passed the broken down vehicle, the agents pounced. In a flash, they had overpowered him and bundled him into the car where they tied him up, gagged and blindfolded him and pushed him to the floor under a blanket.

They drove to a safe house, where they shackled their prisoner to a bed frame. Then Zvi Aharoni got to work interrogating him. A physical search had already matched all the distinguishing features they had on record but he soon confirmed his identity under interrogation.

For over a week they had to keep him in the safe house undiscovered, as they planned how to smuggle him out of the country without alerting the Argentine authorities. In a stroke of tremendous irony, they decided to pretend that Eichmann was an elderly Jew with a serious illness who wanted to die in Israel. They even sent one of their own operatives into hospital with fake brain damage to get a proper medical certificate.

On 20th May, the team members were finally ready to leave the country. If they were discovered now they could be imprisoned or even shot. Israeli spies were not welcome in a land run by a right wing Junta.

The kidnap team drugged their prisoner, and set off for the airfield where a specially chartered plane with a secret cell constructed in the back was waiting to take them to Israel.

At the airport checkpoint soldiers stopped the car. The Mossad agents pretended they’d been drinking. The sentry looked inside the car – straight at Adolf Eichmann – and then waved them on.

They arrived in Israeli on 21st May 1960. In the first major Nazi trial since Nuremberg, Adolf Eichmann stood before an Israeli court in 1961, despite official protests from Argentina. He sought mercy from the Jewish people, claiming he was just following orders. But he was found guilty and hanged on 31st May 1962.

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Rafi Eitan - born on a kibbutz in British-controlled Palestine in 1926, Rafi joined the paramilitary Haganah (Jewish Defence Force) at the age of 12. He became famed for his cold-blooded ruthlessness, cunning and ability to improvise under pressure. By 1957, he was a rising star in Mossad and was selected to lead the Eichmann operation in Buenos Aires.

Zvi Aharoni – he was born in Frankfurt in 1921, but escaped the fate of millions of his fellow German Jews as his family moved to a kibbutz. As a young adult, he became an officer in the Israeli army and graduated to Shin Bet where he became the agency’s top interrogation specialist. Part of the advance surveillance team sent to Argentina in 1957, he was the first to make a positive sighting of Eichmann. He was also one of the elite kidnap team and for the 10 days they hid out in the safe house, he served as Eichmann’s chief interrogator.

Rosemarie Austraat – she was Simon Wiesenthal’s devoted secretary. Together they ran the office of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Vienna. She knows better than anybody the details of the cases that he worked on.

THE BUTCHER OF LYONS

THE TARGET

Klaus Barbie was head of the Gestapo in Lyons, where he earned the nickname ‘The Butcher of Lyons’. He took relish in personally torturing his prisoners and oversaw the deaths of some 4,000 people. Victims who survived called him a savage monster, with pale, mobile eyes, ‘like those of an animal in a cage’.

After Germany’s surrender, Klaus Barbie was high on the Allies’ most wanted list. Three times they nearly had him but each time he escaped. The first time, Barbie jumped out of a moving jeep and dodged bullets as he fled down an alleyway. The second time he filed the lock in his prison cell and the third time, he jumped through a bathroom window as arresting soldiers approached his safe house.

Then in a shock twist, the US Counter Intelligence Corps, the forerunner of the CIA, hired Barbie as a secret agent. For the next 3 years, the Americans, who were employing him, and the French, who were trying to capture him, played cat and mouse. In 1950 Barbie decided to flee to South America via the infamous ‘ratlines’. He’d slipped the net again.

For the next two decades, the infamous Nazi carved out a successful career for himself in Bolivia. Living under the alias Klaus Altmann, he worked as a government interrogator and became involved in the cocaine trade. Ingratiating himself into the centre of Bolivia’s corrupt political elite, Barbie seemed untouchable. But he hadn’t reckoned on the tenacity of a young idealistic couple in Paris – lawyer, Serge Klarsfeld, and his German wife Beate.

THE HUNT (1972 – 1983)

In the early ‘70s, the Klarsfelds discovered Barbie’s location and alias, and mounted an aggressive campaign to try and force his extradition. In January 1972 Beate flew to Bolivia with evidence of his crimes and his true identity. But Barbie was tipped off and began a mad dash to safety over the border in Peru. Beate followed in hot pursuit – but she was too late.

Determined to keep the matter in the public eye, Beate returned to La Paz a few weeks later, this time with the mother of two children Barbie had deported to Auschwitz. Chaining themselves to a bench, they held up a poster proclaiming ‘Altmann – Barbie’, but the poster was torn up by security men and the two women were forced to leave the country.

Frustrated, the Klarsfelds decided more drastic action was needed. In 1973, with famous French Marxist guerrilla Regis Debray and Bolivian activist Gustavo Sanchez, they hatched an audacious plot to kidnap Barbie and smuggle him into Chile, and from there back to France. However, just days before the planned ambush, the Chilean president was overthrown and the Klarsfelds abandoned their plan.

For the next decade Barbie was protected by the Bolivian military dictatorship. But his luck couldn’t hold forever and in 1983, the tide began to turn. In Bolivia, a civilian government overthrew the dictators and Gustavo Sanchez, a key figure in the ‘73 kidnap plot, became Minister of the Interior.

Meanwhile in France, his co-conspirator Regis Debray, had become a special advisor to President Mitterrand. A secret deal was agreed that would see France effectively "buy" Barbie from the Bolivians for $1 billion in cash and weapons.

Right until the last moment Barbie believed he was protected and safe in Bolivia. On 25th Jan 1983, he walked to a government office in La Paz to haggle about a debt his company had incurred. Little did he realize that the Bolivians had double crossed him and had agents ready to pounce the moment he walked into the building.

Gustavo Sanchez personally accompanied Barbie from prison to the airport where he was spirited back to France in a cloak and dagger night flight. To keep Barbie calm and cooperative, the Bolivians told him that he was being flown to Germany. In fact, they landed in France and Barbie soon found himself in a prison cell in Lyons, the scene of his monstrous crimes 40 years previously.

In May 1987, ‘the Butcher of Lyons’ was tried before a jury in Lyons. Amongst the prosecuting lawyers was Serge Klarsfeld, the man who had done so much to bring him to justice. In August, Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity.

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Serge Klarsfeld - Serge Klarsfeld was born into a comfortable Jewish family in Nice. But his life changed forever at age 8 when his father was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. As a young man, he trained as a lawyer before becoming a Nazi hunter with his wife.

Beate Klarsfeld - The daughter of a Wehrmacht soldier who grew up in Berlin, Beate moved to Paris where she met and married Serge in 1963. Sickened by the horrors of the Holocaust which she learned about from her husband, she resolved to dedicate her life to exposing war criminals on behalf of the younger generation of Germans.

Gustavo Sanchez - A left-wing journalist and activist, Sanchez spent much of his early life trying to outrun a series of military dictators in the region. He lived in Chile until Pinochet seized power, in Argentina until the junta took over and finally in Cuba, until the Bolivian dictators were overthrown. Returning to his home country in 1983, Sanchez became a government minister and was the crucial Bolivian player involved in securing Barbie’s capture. He still works in La Paz.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH

THE TARGET

SS Officer Josef Mengele was the notorious camp physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His perverse and brutal experiments gained him the moniker ‘the Angel of Death’. He gouged out living victim’s eyeballs and pinned them to the wall like butterflies. He mutilated, castrated, electrocuted and tortured with a cool precision. It’s estimated he was responsible for the deaths of some 400,000 people at Auschwitz.

Incredibly, Mengele was actually arrested by the Americans soon after the end of the war, but at the time they didn’t realize what he’d done and they let him walk free. He soon escaped to South America via the underground ratlines, where he adopted the first of many false identities.

THE HUNT (1958 – 1985)

In the late 1950’s Mossad sent a team of agents to Argentina to track down Nazi war criminals. The same team, who were hot on the heels of Adolf Eichmann, also discovered where Mengele was hiding. They were ready to swoop when orders from above forced them to stand down. Ultimately, Mossad decided that they couldn’t run two major operations at the same time and they decided to focus on Eichmann first, hoping they’d be able to deal with Mengele later.

After the capture of Eichmann in 1960, Mossad created a special team, led by Zvi Aharoni, to hunt Mengele down. But when they staked out his home in Argentina, they soon realized they were too late. Mengele had already fled to Paraguay.

For the next two decades, Mengele continually changed his residence. His pursuers came close several times. But Mengele was well protected by a powerful network of supporters who were even prepared to kill for him.

In 1960, an Israeli tourist and Auschwitz survivor spotted Mengele at a party in Bariloche, Argentina. For a few seconds she stood eye to eye with him, before rushing to the police. A few days later, her body was found in a cave in the mountains outside Bariloche.

In 1965, a former Paraguayan policeman working for the Israelis believed he‘d tracked Mengele down. He too disappeared, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, Mengele vanished.

A series of sightings kept the hunt alive for years but there were never any serious breakthroughs until 1985 when West German police raided a house and discovered a codebook and letters from Mengele. The investigation threw up two suspect addresses in Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo Police Chief Romeu Tuma put both homes under surveillance before ordering a raid on 5th June. An Austrian couple, Wolfram and Liselotte Bossert, lived in the first house. They held out for a couple of hours under interrogation, maintaining that they had never heard of Josef Mengele, despite having a cupboard full of his personal effects. But they eventually cracked. The next day, police raided a second house, that of Hungarian immigrants Geza and Gitter Stammer. They too feigned ignorance at first, but eventually admitted to harboring Mengele, just as the Bosserts had done.

But where was Mengele now? After further interrogation, Liselotte Bossert claimed that Mengele had drowned in the sea in February 1979 and that she had buried him in a closed coffin, under an alias, in a cemetery in Embu, about 40 minutes from Sao Paulo. Was this another false lead? It wouldn’t be the fist time the Nazis had faked a death to cover a trail.

Police Chief Tuma traveled to Embu, along with representatives from the Wiesenthal Center, Mossad and the American Department of Justice. They exhumed a body on 6th June 1985. After extensive forensic examination, the identity of arguably the most notorious Nazi monster was finally confirmed. Josef Mengele had been found.

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Rafi Eitan & Zvi Aharoni - See details under Operation Eichmann

Rosemarie Austraat – See details under Operation Eichmann

Neal Sher - New York attorney Neal Sher was head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations from 1982 to 1994. He successfully prosecuted dozens of war criminals. He led the American contribution to the international search for Mengele, liaising closely with his counterparts in Israel, Germany and Brazil. He prepared the definitive report that establishing that Mengele had drowned in Brazil in 1976.

Romeo Tuma - Even before he began his pursuit of Josef Mengele, Tuma was the most famous policeman in Brazil. In 1978, he’d arrested Treblinka’s deputy commander Gustav Wagner and the fugitive Mafioso Tommaso Buscetta. He began his career as an intelligence officer in the feared political police force of the repressive military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964, and became Sao Paulo commander in 1977. A dapper, moustachioed professional, Tuma is now a respected Brazilian senator.

THE REAL ODESSA FILES

THE TARGET

As Nazi ambassador to the Vatican, SS Captain Erich Priebke’s most infamous crime was the execution of 335 Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. When the killing was over, he ordered the caves to be blown in to conceal the huge pile of corpses.

Priebke was arrested by the Allies in May 1945 and sent to a British POW camp in Rimini. But during New Year celebrations, Priebke took advantage of the British guards’ drunkenness. He cut through the barbed wire perimeter fence and escaped.

Priebke sought help from his contacts at the Vatican and in 1948, armed with false papers, he sailed for Argentina and a new life in the mountain resort of Bariloche. He lived just up the road from fellow Nazi Reinhard Kops.

The Italian authorities kept a file on Priebke until the early 1960s when they quietly closed the case. It wasn’t until 1993 that a new hunt for Priebke was launched.

THE HUNT (1993 – 1995)

In 1993 the Wiesenthal Center sent an undercover agent called Yaron Svoray to infiltrate a secret neo-Nazi organization in Germany. Posing as a journalist for a far right magazine, Svoray gradually gained the confidence of several right-wing leaders.

Through these connections he learned that a famed Argentinean publisher of anti-Semitic literature was, in fact, former Nazi intelligence agent Reinhard Kops, who had worked closely with Priebke in Italy during the war. Kops had also been involved in setting up the secret Odessa escape routes to South America.

Svoray was finally rumbled. With a pistol to his head he thought he was about to die. But somehow he managed to knock the gun away and break the arm of his would be executioner. He escaped to pass his information back to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

A year later, legendary American reporter Sam Donaldson of ABC News approached the Wiesenthal Center for help with a report on Nazis who’d escaped to Argentina. They passed on Svoray’s information and in May 1994 Donaldson and his crew traveled to Bariloche.

In an extraordinary televised take down, Donaldson tracked down Kops, who quickly cracked and led them to the far bigger prize of Priebke, just a few streets away.

When Donaldson ambushed Priebke as he was getting into his car, he made no attempt to hide his identity or get away. In a shocking exchange, he freely admitted his part in shooting civilians at Ardeatine, though he denied it was a war crime.

When the interview was aired it caused an international uproar. In May 1995, the Italians finally issued a formal extradition request and in November of the same year, Priebke was arrested and put on a plane back to Rome.

A series of trials and appeals followed until March 1998, 54 years after his crimes, when Priebke was finally sentenced to life imprisonment to be served under house arrest.

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Yaron Svoray - The son of Holocaust survivors, Yaron Svoray is an international counter-terrorism expert and daring undercover investigator and journalist. He is probably best known for his high profile attempts to track down Nazi-era diamonds, but also spent many months trying to infiltrate the highly secretive and dangerous snuff movie scene, running afoul of the Russian mob in Israel and various criminal organizations in the US and Southeast Asia in the process. His 6-month investigation into neo-Nazis in Germany was incredibly risky and when he was finally rumbled, he had to fight his way out of certain death.

Sam Donaldson - One of the most famous and respected American newscasters, Sam Donaldson has reported from many of the world’s biggest news stories – Vietnam, Watergate, Lockerbie, the Gulf War. His report on Argentina’s Nazis was critical in bringing Priebke to justice.

THE COLLABORATOR

THE TARGET

During the German occupation of France, Frenchman Paul Touvier joined the Milice, the Vichy equivalent of the Gestapo, and rose to become Head of Intelligence in Chambery, where he tracked down Resistance fighters and Jews. He wasn’t just a collaborator. He had blood on his hands. In June 1944, Touvier ordered the execution of seven Jews in Rillieux-la-Pape as a reprisal for the assassination of a Vichy official.

On 3rd Sept 1944, the Allies liberated Lyons. Most of the top-ranking Milice were butchered in a wave of revenge executions, but Paul Touvier managed to escape by hiding under the floorboards of local chaplain, Father Vautherin. A week later, Vautherin was arrested – but by then Touvier had fled to a nearby Catholic community, the first in a long line of refuges.

In 1947, police in Paris caught up with him, arresting him for an armed robbery on a bakery, but he escaped from custody that same day.

Over the next two decades, Touvier and his family were secretly sheltered in convents and monasteries across France. Incredibly, not only was no one looking for him during this period, but also a private campaign was actually being waged to pardon him. In 1971, President Georges Pompidou signed a formal decree of pardon, claiming that the moment had come to “throw a veil” over the crimes of the past.

The story might have ended there had it not been for a high-profile article the following year revealing details of Touvier’s crimes, and Pompidou’s pardon. The public outcry was immense and the outrage felt by a Nazi-hunting husband and wife team, led them to begin their own search for Touvier.

THE HUNT (1972 – 1989)

In 1972, Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld led a crowd of demonstrators to Touvier’s family home in Chambery, and broke down the gates. But by then Touvier was safely in hiding with another sympathizer.

A decade of legal wrangling followed until finally, in 1981, Nazi-hunting lawyer Serge Klarsfeld forced the Court of Appeal to approve a new prosecution and an international arrest warrant was issued for Touvier. Now the police were hunting him too.

The net was closing now and so in 1984, Touvier’s supporters published a fake obituary to try to throw detectives off the scent. The police weren’t fooled. But nor were they any closer to finding Touvier. After four fruitless years, the investigating magistrate passed the case to the gendarmerie (military police).

Colonel Jean-Louis Recordon took charge of the manhunt, but he wasn’t optimistic. There were hundreds of religious communities where Touvier could be hiding. He called the task ahead a “mission impossible”.

It was months before Recordon finally got a break. In 1989, he discovered that a former contact of Touvier’s was now the abbot of a monastery in northwest France. Tapping the monastery phone threw up another lead, just outside Paris. When they raided this man’s house, they were astonished to find a virtual SS museum, with Nazi flags, insignia and uniforms. When Recordon told him he could be indicted for harboring a criminal, the man cracked and gave them another name, a woman working for Catholic Aid in Paris. She too, fearful of arrest, gave them a crucial lead – the name of a Carmelite convent some 200 miles away.

May 1989. Recordon’s team had to move fast before Touvier’s network of protectors tipped him off. They jumped on a military plane and confronted the abbot of the convent. He was uncooperative – until the gendarmes found four trunks containing Nazi memorabilia and documents bearing Touvier’s name.

The abbot crumbled. He told them Touvier had been there two weeks ago, but was now in a priory in Nice. The gendarmes drove through the night, arriving at the priory before dawn. At 8am, Recordon knocked with his search warrant. After searching several rooms, he found what he was looking for: a short, elderly man with thinning blonde hair standing in his pajamas. ''I suppose it's me you want,'' he said. ''I am Paul Touvier.''

In 1994, in one of the most controversial court cases in French history, Touvier finally stood trial on charges of crimes against humanity involving the murders of human rights leaders and the Rillieux-la-Pape Jews. Serge Klarsfeld was one of the prosecuting lawyers. Touvier was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1995, the first French citizen ever to be found guilty of war crimes.

KEY INTERVIEWEES

Serge & Beate Klarsfeld - See their details under The Butcher Of Lyons

Jean-Louis Recordon

A dogged, old school investigator, Recordon served as a Colonel in the French Gendarmerie until 1998. As well as the Touvier case, he was involved in other high profile Nazi investigations, including an investigation of neo-Nazis inside L’Oreal in the late ‘80s.

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