Walter Kutschmann, the Gestapo commissioner who hid in Argentina until his death in 1986
The National Archives (AGN) published on its website files on the activities of former Nazi leaders who sought refuge in Argentina after the fall of the Third Reich. The information was previously available in a room within the agency. Among the documents digitized this Thursday is the file of Walter Kutschmann , a former Gestapo commissioner who arrived in the country under the false identity of Pedro Ricardo Olmos .
Kutschmann arrived in Argentina in 1948 after having obtained, in Spain, under the rule of dictator Francisco Franco , a false birth certificate with the new identity that he would use for almost 40 years until his discovery. He is accused of having ordered two mass shootings of Jews , one in which 65 of them died, in Drohobycz, and another in which 500 were murdered in Tarnopol in 1942. Although he was arrested in 1985, he died in 1986 before being extradited . He lived in Buenos Aires, Florida (Vicente López) and Miramar.
According to digitized archives, in July 1975, the Israeli Association of Survivors of Nazi Persecution informed the government of Isabel Martínez de Perón that Kutschmann was in the country under the false identity of Pedro Olmos. Months later, a journalist from Gente magazine managed to identify him at his apartment in Miramar. The declassified documents do not cover what happened during the 1976 dictatorship . His trail was not discovered again in 1983 , and in 1985, Interpol arrested him in Florida.
During this time, Kutschmann led a relatively normal life in the country. He first worked in a German hardware store ; between 1952 and 1958, as an independent taxi driver ; and, from 1958, as purchasing director for the Argentine branch of Osram , until he was fired in 1975 following newspaper reports that exposed him as who he truly was.
Walter Kutschmann was born in Dresden on 24 May 1914. His father, a dentist, had died in 1928 and his mother Johanna Hoffman in 1941. He had two siblings, Klaus, who had died in the war in 1941, and Hanna Christine Hoffman, who also lived in Argentina . Years after his arrival in Argentina , he married another German woman, Geralda Baeumler , with whom he lived until his death.
Although it had been identified in 1975 in Miramar, who was arrested at his home at 599 29th Street, was arrested in Florida after the return of democracy in 1985. A year later, while the courts were processing his extradition, he died at Fernández Hospital and was buried in Los Polvorines, Malvinas, Argentina.
Before becoming a Gestapo commissioner, Kutschmann was a member of the Hitler Youth and graduated from the Air Force with the rank of sergeant in 1936. Despite being German, he participated in the Spanish Civil War between 1937 and 1939, enlisting in Franco's Moroccan Legion . Upon his return to Spain in 1939, he joined the Gestapo .
In the investigation conducted by German judge Peter Wummel , according to the newspaper La Nación in March 1986, Kutschmann was the perpetrator of the aforementioned shootings in 1941 and 1942. “ The victims had to dig a pit and stand on the edge, surrounding it. They were then shot in the head with handguns from behind. Sometimes, long-barreled weapons were used,” La Nación reported.
In addition to these crimes, the genocidaire committed sexual offenses and a femicide . One of them was against a "forced lover," a teenager between 15 and 17 years old named Feld, who was forced to perform domestic chores in a concentration camp. "There was a Jewish girl," said witness Marian Nadel, "named Feld, and Kutschmann, who was very physically attractive, took her as his lover. One day we learned that he took her to a Gestapo cellar and shot her . They said it was because she had given him a venereal disease," the same outlet details.
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