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00:00:06: Suddenly, the unexpected happened.

00:00:08: Approaching from the north end of Los Pozos was a man himself.

00:00:12: SS Augustin Banfuhrer Walter Rao,

00:00:15: the alleged murderer of a quarter of a million human beings.

00:00:19: There at the gate, he came face-to-face with an unwelcome visitor

00:00:22: carrying a hidden radio microphone.

00:00:24: You live in Santiago, don't you?

00:00:26: Eh?

00:00:27: You live here in Santiago?

00:00:28: Yes.

00:00:29: Well, you are writing your case?

00:00:31: No.

00:00:32: My case is finished.

00:00:34: Completely finished.

00:00:36: I am not guilty.

00:00:38: I want to say only the verity.

00:00:41: Only the ultra.

00:00:42: Okay, not now.

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00:11:28: had prepared this document. And at a certain point I said to him, "Are you willing to tell

00:11:35: me who G is?" He said, "No, that's the straight secret." And I said, "I think I know who

00:11:41: G is." And he sort of chuckled. I recorded the conversation. And I said, "Really? Who

00:11:47: do you think it is?" And I said, "He was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who

00:11:52: did the hit the diaries. And the guy at the end of the phone just laughed. He was on the

00:11:55: telephone interview." And I said, "It was Gerd Heidemann, wasn't it?" And he said, "Ha-ha-ha.

00:12:00: What a pig that man was." And it turns out that Gerd Heidemann, a Stern journalist, notorious

00:12:09: for many things, including the production of the hit the diaries, which was a big scandal

00:12:14: in Britain. He went to prison for it. Was a, I don't know whether you would call it an

00:12:19: informant or an agent, but he was in the service of Mossad.

00:12:36: Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries.

00:12:58: Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries.

00:13:23: Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries.

00:13:49: Gerd Heidemann, he was a journalist for Stern Magazine, the man who did the hit the diaries.

00:14:17: Gerd We lawyers are not good for much, but we are

00:14:21: terrified in court of being asked, "What's your evidence for that, Mr. Sands?" And we

00:14:26: can't rely on rumours. We're dead if we rely on rumours. We need either documents or testamentary

00:14:32: evidence. We have to have one or the other. But this relationship between fact and fiction

00:14:37: reminds me of another remarkable moment. Many people will have seen the film or the play

00:14:44: by Ariel Dorfman called Death and the Maiden, where there's a very famous scene in which

00:14:49: the main protagonist, a woman who has been viciously tortured and raped and mistreated,

00:14:55: is unable to recognise the identity visually of her torturer. But by a series of curious

00:15:02: coincidences in this fictionalised account, the torturer turns up in her home and engages

00:15:07: with her husband and she's in the room next door and she recognises the voice. So I came

00:15:12: to know and be introduced to the director of a part of the Pesquera Arauca, which had

00:15:17: the fleet of refrigerated vans, which had operated the fish meal plant, and he was arrested

00:15:22: on the day of the coup, September the 11th, 1973, and the army takes over the fish plant.

00:15:29: I mean, lots of people told me that. Like, why would the army take over a fishery? It's

00:15:33: really strange. And everyone else had no answer to that. But Anatoly Zarate is then carted off

00:15:40: to San Antonio, which is just a few kilometres away, and tortured over six months in a facility

00:15:45: called Tejas Verdes. And he doesn't recognise any of his torturers because he says, "Whenever

00:15:51: I was tortured, I had a black hood, or I had a hood over my head. But I heard voices and

00:15:56: I said, "Were there any foreign voices?" And he said, "Yes, there were Portuguese."

00:16:01: I had Portuguese and I had one German voice. I said, "One German voice." He said, "Yes,

00:16:06: very distinctive." And I said, "Do you think you'd recognise that voice again?" He said,

00:16:09: "Absolutely. It was a very guttural smoker's voice." And I said, "I've got a recording

00:16:14: of a voice. May I play that to you? Perhaps you don't want to listen to it." And he thought

00:16:20: about it and said, "Yeah, yeah, no, I'm willing to listen to it." And so I got the recording

00:16:25: and it's actually a video, which is incredible. It's the only known video. None of you have

00:16:31: probably seen it of Walter Ralph, where he's accosted in 1979, 1980, by an Australian journalist.

00:16:38: We can play it actually if you want. And we put the video on it on my laptop. I was with

00:16:43: my assistant, Montserrat. It's very important. I found that when you do these interviews,

00:16:47: you're not alone. You need a reality check from someone else. She's doing her PhD at

00:16:53: UCL. She's incredibly reliable. And because she has complete mastery of the Spanish language,

00:16:57: which I don't have, she picks up tiny nuances. So we put on this video and he watches it

00:17:03: and then Ralph comes on. He's not talking at this point. And then he speaks and at the

00:17:10: moment he spoke, the man's body froze. It was incredible. He grasped his hands like

00:17:16: this and did not let go for many minutes. He went silent. He started sweating profusely

00:17:23: and he said, "Yes." And he said, "That's the voice. That's the voice." And it was Walter

00:17:32: Ralph. And so these moments, you know, as a litigator, you're testing constantly. Is

00:17:37: this credible? Is this true? What are the weaknesses? If there was a cross-examination

00:17:42: by the other side, what would they say? That's the mindset, not just of a historian, but a

00:17:46: lawyer who has to prove their case in court. And I have no doubt.

00:18:02: Seid das Buch im Fröhe in Chile erschienen ist, wurden etliche Fälle von bisher nicht verurteilten

00:18:21: Tätern neu aufgerollt. In der Folge der Präsentation des Buchs, in dem Sands freilich nicht alle

00:18:27: Gerüchte umrauf bestetigen konnte, tauchten aber auch neue Fakten auf. So konnte er keine

00:18:34: harte Evidenz für das Gerücht finden, dass rauf für Pinochet den Bau eines Konzentrationslagers

00:18:41: in Patagonien koordiniert habe, das verdächtig nach einem Nazikazett aussah. Nach seiner Präsentation

00:18:49: der spanischen Übersetzung des Buchs vor ein paar Wochen in Chile in unmittelbarer Nähe

00:18:55: des Konzentrationslagers hat sich freilich auch dafür ein sehr konkreter Hinweis gefunden.

00:19:26: So many of the people who were detained there said to me, no, no, we all heard it was Walter

00:19:29: Ralph who designed it, who built it, who was involved. Did you see him? Are there any documents?

00:19:35: I found nothing. It was just rumours, rumours, rumours. Three weeks ago, I'm in Porvenier,

00:19:42: the small town where Ralph lived. And we did an event at the museum. And so population

00:19:47: is only 2000 and like 100 people came to the event. So it was a significant group came.

00:19:52: The director of the museum, wonderful lady, after the event said, I had an interesting

00:19:56: dinner with my grandmother last night. Of course, like everyone else, she remembered

00:20:00: Ralph, everyone remembered Ralph. And she said, my grandmother said to me, but I didn't

00:20:05: only remember him from the street or from the supermarket or from the pescata, I worked

00:20:10: for him. On five occasions, I cooked him a special meal. He had important visitors.

00:20:17: I didn't know who they were. And he needed someone to prepare a good meal in the evenings.

00:20:23: And this happened five times in the 1970s, in the mid 1970s. And after the meal was over,

00:20:30: all the gentlemen would leave with Ralph and they all went to Darsen Island. And so we're

00:20:35: now reinterviewing that lady. And I think that what you learn is that in any community,

00:20:42: you have it in Austria, you have it in Britain, you have it in any community where bad things

00:20:46: have happened, there's silence. And there's a lot more to come out. But that is the kind

00:20:52: of thing that happens when you write these books. More stories, more evidence emerges.

00:20:57: I mean, I've got zero doubt that Ralph is involved. Just now that I've begun to put

00:21:02: all the things together, it's to me absolutely crystal clear.

00:21:06: An extension of this really exciting conversation with Philipp Seins, you will find at Transit,

00:21:12: the podcast about migration history, produced by students of the contemporary history of the

00:21:17: University of Vienna. If you're still more interested in the topic, we recommend not only the book

00:21:25: "The Disappearances of Lawrence 38", but also the first two bands of the trilogy by Philipp

00:21:31: Seins about Nazi criminals, justice and justice, namely "Rückkehr nach Lemberg" and "Die

00:21:37: Rattenlinie". For today, we say thank you for listening. We say goodbye with this really

00:21:44: breathtaking story about Walter Rauf in the summer break, maybe a little bit of a

00:21:50: difficult topic to say goodbye to us in the summer, but it's still a memorial year.

00:21:55: We're back in the beginning of October with "Rätsel der Wissenschaft" and of course we're

00:22:01: looking forward to it when you're back. I'm Tanya Traxler and I'm Klaus Taschwer.

00:22:07: This episode was produced by Christoph Neuwirt. Have a nice summer and see you next time.

00:22:13: Despite what I was able to establish was that Rauf resumed his career. In 1941 and '42, it was disappearing people through the use of gas fans.

00:22:25: In 1974 and 1975, it was disappearing people through the use of refrigerated vans and this is particularly shocking because I think it underscores why, however we go about doing justice, the do nothing option is not an option.

00:22:41: People have a propensity to resume their previous task.