Walter Rauff

Walther Rauff (* born 1916, died May 14, 1984) was a Lieutenant Colonel (Obersturmbannführer) in the Nazi SS in Germany. As a member of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), which was a subsidiary of the SS created by Heinrich Himmler in 1939, Rauff was key in developing an alternative method of "eliminating" the "enemies of the state," other than mass shootings. One of his key developments was in the use of "Gassing Vans" or gas chambers originally using the motor exhaust, and late using Zyklon-B to kill captives. After the war, Rauff was detained in Italy but was aided by ODESSA, and perhaps the Croatian Nazi priests in the Vatican, in escaping to Latin America. He resided in Santiago in Chile from 1958. He was arrested in December 1962 after Germany requested his extradition, but was freed by Chile's Supreme Court five months later and no subsequent Chilean government challenged this. Even Salvador Allende, to the shock of his supporters, refused a personal request from Simon Wiesenthal to defy the Supreme Court ruling and extradite Rauff to Germany in 1972. After the Chilean coup of 1973, Rauff served in the DINA, a secret police force during the early years of Augusto Pinochet's dicatatorship. Rauff died in 1984.