The Odessa File

The exposure to the authorities of Klaus Winzer’s file upset a lot of Odessa apple-carts. The year which began so well ended for them disastrously. So much so, that years later a lawyer and investigator of the Z-Commission in Ludwigsburg was able to say ‘1964 was a good year for us, yes, a very good year’.

At the end of 1964 Chancellor Erhard, shaken by the exposures, issued a nationwide and international appeal for all those having knowledge of the whereabouts of wanted SS criminals to come forward and tell the authorities. The response was considerable and the work of the men of Ludwigsburg received an enormous fillip which continued for several more years.

Of the politicians behind the arms deal between Germany and Israel, Chancellor Adenauer of Germany lived in his villa at Rhöndorf, above his beloved Rhine and close to Bonn, and died there on April 19th, 1967. The Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion stayed on as a member of the Knesset (Parliament) until 1970, then finally retired to his home on the kibbutz of Sede Boker, in the heart of the brown hills of the Negev, on the road from Beer Sheba to Eilat. He likes to receive visitors and talks with animation about many things, but not about the rockets of Helwan and the reprisal campaign against the German scientists who worked on them.

Of the secret service men in the story, General Amit remained Controller until September 1968, and on his shoulders fell the massive responsibility of ensuring his country was provided with pin-point information in time for the Six-Day War. As history records, he succeeded brilliantly.

On his retirement he became chairman and managing director of the labour-owned Koor Industries of Israel. He still lives very modestly, and his charming wife Yona refuses

as ever to employ a maid, preferring to do all her own house-work.

His successor, who still holds the post, is General Zvi Zamir.

Major Uri Ben Shaul was killed on Wednesday, June 7th, 1967, at the head of a company of paratroops fighting their way into Old Jerusalem. He took a bullet in the head from an Arab Legionary, and went down 400 yards east of the Mandelbaum Gate.

Simon Wiesenthal still lives and works in Vienna, gathering a fact here, a tip there, slowly tracking down the whereabouts of wanted SS murderers, and each month and year brings him a crop of successes.

Leon died in Munich in 1968 and after his death the group of men he had led on his personal crusade of vengeance lost heart and split up.

And last, Top Sergeant Ulrich Frank, the tank commander who crossed Miller’s path on the road to Vienna. He was wrong about the fate of his tank, the Dragon Rock. It did not go to the scrap-heap. It was taken away on a low-loader, and he never saw it again. Forty months later he would not have recognised it anyway.

The steel-grey of its body had been painted out and covered with paint the colour of dust-brown to merge with the landscape of the desert. The black cross of the German army was gone from the turret, and replaced by the pale-blue six-pointed star of David. The name he had given it was gone too, and it had been renamed ‘The Spirit of Masada’.

It was still commanded by a top sergeant, a hawk-nosed black-bearded man called Nathan Levy. On June 5th, 1967, the M-48 began its first and only week of combat since it had rolled from the workshops of Detroit, Michigan, ten years before. It was one of those tanks that General Israel Tal hurled into the battle for the Mitla Pass two days later, and at noon on Saturday, June 10th, caked with dust and oil, scored by bullets, its tracks worn to wafers by the rocks of Sinai, the old Patton rolled to a stop on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.

THE END