The Odessa File

How former members of the Germa

n Army, Navy and Air Force can conceivably regard ex-SS men as meriting from them the title of Kamerad, let alone their protection and solidarity from prosecution, is a mystery. Yet herein lies the real success of the Odessa.

By and large Odessa has succeeded in its tasks of impeding West German efforts to hunt down and bring to trial the SS murderers. It has succeeded by virtue of its own ruthlessness, occasionally against its own kind if they look like making a full confession to the authorities, Allied mistakes between 1945 and 1949, the Cold War, and the usual German cowardice when faced with a moral problem, in stark contrast to their courage when faced with a military task or a technical issue like the reconstruction of post-war Germany.

*

When Simon Wiesenthal had finished, Miller laid down the pencil with which he had made copious notes and sat back.

‘I hadn’t the faintest idea,’ he said.

‘Very few Germans have,’ conceded Wiesenthal. ‘In fact very few people know much about the Odessa at all. The word is hardly ever mentioned in Germany and just as certain members of the American underworld will stoutly deny the existence of the Mafia, so many former members of the SS will deny the existence of the Odessa. To be perfectly frank, the term is not used as much nowadays as formerly. The new word is “The Comradeship” just as the Mafia in America is called the Cosa Nostra. But what’s in a name? The Odessa is still there, and will be while there is an SS criminal to protect.’

‘And you think these are the men I’m up against?’ asked Miller.

‘I’m sure of it. The warning you were given in Bad Godesberg could not have come from anyone else. Do be careful, these men can be dangerous.’

Miller’s mind was on something else.

‘When Roschmann disappeared in 1955, you said he would need a new passport?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Why the passport particularly?’

Simon Wiesenthal leaned back in his chair and nodded.

‘I can understand why you are puzzled. Let me explain. After the war in Germany, and here in Austria, there were tens of thousands wandering about with no identification papers. Some had genuinely lost them, others had thrown them away for good reason.

‘To obtain new ones, it would normally be necessary to produce a birth certificate. But millions had fled from the former German territories overrun by the Russians. Who was to say if a man was, or was not, born in a small village in East Prussia, now miles behind the Iron Curtain? In other cases the buildings in which the certificates were stored had been destroyed by bombing.

‘So the process was very simple. All one needed were two witnesses to swear that one was who one said, and a fresh personal ID card was issued. In the case of prisoners-of-war, they often had no papers either. On their release from camp, the British and American camp authorities would sign a release paper to the effect that Corporal Johann Schumann was certified as released from prisoner-of-war camp. These chits were then taken by the soldier to the civilian authorities who issued an ID card in the same name. But often the man had only told the Allies his name was Johann Schumann. It could have been something else. No one checked. And so he got a new identity.

‘That was all right in the immediate aftermath of the war, which was when most of the SS criminals were getting their new identities. But what happens to a man who is blown wide open in 1955, as was Roschmann? He can’t go to the authorities and say he lost his papers during the war. They would be bound to ask how he had got by during the ten-year interim period. So he needs a passport.’

‘I understand so far,’ said Miller. ‘But why a passport? Why not a driving licence, or an ID card?’

‘Because shortly after the founding of the republic the German authorities realised there must be hundreds or thousands wandering about under false names. There was a need for one document that was so well researched that it could act as the yardstick for all the others. They hit on the passport. Before you get a passport in Germany, you have to produce the birth certificate, several references and a host of other documentation. These are thoroughly checked before the passport is issued.

‘By contrast, once you have a passport, you can get anything else on the strength of it. Such is bureaucracy. The production of the passport convinces the civil servant that, since previous bureaucrats must have checked out the passport holder thoroughly, no further checking is necessary. With a new passport, Roschmann could quickly build up the rest of the identity – driving licence, bank accounts, credit cards. The passport is the open sesame to every other piece of necessary documentation in present-day Germany.’

‘Where would the passport come from?’

‘From the Odessa. They must have a forger somewhere who can turn them out,’ surmised Herr Wiesenthal.

Miller thought for a while.

‘If one could find the passport forger, one might find the man who could identify Roschmann today?’ he suggested.

Wiesenthal shrugged.

‘One might. But it would be a long shot. And to do that one would have to penetrate the Odessa. Only an ex-SS man could do that.’

‘Then where do I go from here?’ said Miller.

‘I should think your best bet would be to try and contact some of the survivors of Riga. I don’t know whether they would be able to help you further, but they’d certainly be willing. We are all trying to find Roschmann. Look …’

He flicked open the diary on his desk.