Planet News

Planet News

Nazi Colonel Leads Chilean Terror

Legal observers, diplomats and church representatives recently returned from Chile, continue to document the escalating terror which the junta is using to maintain its control in the face of an increasingly difficult economic situation.

Reports also have revealed that nearly 85% of the prisoners currently being held by the junta in various concentration camps. have no charges filed against them.

Alongside the spectacle of the junta's "trials," terror continues in the form of assassinations, disappearances, arrests and politically motivated firings. It was revealed recently that the head of the Board of National Anti-Communist investigations (DINA), created by the junta last December, is none other than Walter Rauff, an ex-Nazi colonel in Hitler's SS who organized the operations at the Ravensbruck and Ravenstein concentration camps during World War II.

Rauff, who had a West German arrest warrant out for him, has been in Chile since the war. In 1963, under the Alessandri regime, the Chilean Supreme Court turned down a request for extradition filed by the Federation of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, a West German organization.

Rauff was known for devising and perfecting a method of slaying large numbers of people by enclosing them - 50 at a time - in trucks marked with "Red Crosses." Then, exhaust fumes would be pumped into the sealed interior, death taking place in 15 minutes. This method was used mostly during 1941 and 1942. According to People's World, a secret report by Rauff, dated July 5, 1942, stated that "97,000 have been processed without a technical hitch."

Rauff is currently organizing Chile's repression, with the help of U.S. and Brazilian personnel and equipment. In particular, computers have been supplied to organize the information extracted by "interrogators."

The Board of National Anti-Communist Investigations has established a special "interrogation center" in Tejas Verdad, about 60 miles from Santiago where its main quarters are housed.  --LNS