2010-03-24

On 18 March, the daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung revealed that 146 former members of the Nazi terror apparatus were working for the West German intelligence service (BND) in the 1960s. The newspaper made references to BND documents which can be found in the archives of the Ludwigsburg Central Office for the InvestigationofNazi Crimes. The names of some members of the Nazi terror apparatus who were working for German intelligence or police were previously known. However, this knowledge has never originated from such a reliable source.

The list of intelligence workers which FAZ has gained access to was made in the early 1960s, when the BND found itself in the centre of public opinion’s attention due to the uncovering of two Soviet spies in its ranks. It was revealed during the trial that the officers were not only KGB agents but also former members of the SS, who had taken part in pacifications of Italian villages. Reinhard Gehlen, the then head of the BND, ordered a list of his subordinates who had served in the SS to be made. 70 of the 146 people on the list (the BND employed 2,450 people at the time) were dismissed. It is not known how many former SS members had succeeded in concealing their past and were not listed.
This and other similar cases (such as the impossibility to try living members of the Dirlewanger Brigade and a former guard in the Belzec extermination camp) prove the imperfection of the system of rules and practices for coming to terms with Nazism created by Germany. The system in many cases not only guaranteed impunity to former members of Nazi organisations but also gave them the opportunity to develop carreers in German secret services because of their skills and knowledge. <ciechan>

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