Nazi death boss kills himself

Press, 6 October 1980, Page 7

Nazi death boss kills himself

NZPA-Reuter Sao Paulo, | Brazil j Gustav. Franz Wagner, accused of complicity in the murder of 250,000 Jews in I World War Two, plunged a' i knife into his chest and killed himself in his Brazilian home at the week-end, his lawyer has said. Tne lawyer, Flavio Marxi, said in an interview that thei 68-year-old Austrian-born i Wagner was found dead in} the bathroom of his ranch' house in the town of! Atibaia. “He killed himself in the' bathroom so as not to make' work for other people,” Mr I Marx said. Wagner voluntarily surrendered to the Sao Paulo police in May, 1978, after being identified by a survivor as the sub-commandant i of the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland during the:’ war. Extradition requests by 11 West Germany, Austria, ’ Poland, and Israel were re- 1 jected by the Brazilian Su-|a

,fpreme Court on the grounds j that the statute of limitations for war crimes had expired. • While in detention in jail ' and a psychiatric ward in Brasilia pending extradition hearings, Wagner attempted suicide five times. He was released in June last year. Mr Marx said' that i Wagner was buried in Sao ’ Paulo yesterday after an aui topsy. ' Wagner had always rejected charges that he was 'an accomplice to the murder ■ of 250,000 Jews in the Sobi- • bor and Treblinka conIcentration camps. He said that he had been only a Gestapo sergeant at Sobibor in charge of constructing barracks and housing and denied that he had ever been to Treblinka. The accusations about, i Wagner’s past were originally made by the Viennabased Nazi-hunter, Simon Weisenthal, who recognised I him in a photograph taken at a Nazi rally in Brazil. I

His identity was further I confirmed in a dramatic! television confrontation by | Stanislaw Szmajner? a na-i turalised Brazilian Jew, who! had survived Sobibor. |

Mr Weisenthal described Wagner as “one of the . most brutal thugs” in the camps. He said he had incited; others to hang, beat, and kill; prisoners. ,