The mysterious death of an SS officer: a Nazi true crime story | DW Documentary

The mysterious death of an SS officer: a Nazi true crime story | DW Documentary

Every death camp has a monster. Sobibor, it was Gustav Wagner. A master of killing. Powerful in stature, ruthless, and very intelligent. someone who’s a nationalist, for his own people, is that a Nazi? Nobody could forget Wagner. He was recognized by one of his victims today in São Paulo.

Do you really not have the guts? Be a human being, tell the truth! Shlomo was special, one-of-a-kind. He left Sobibor, but Sobibor never left him He’s a survivor. I don’t think Stanislaw is only one person. I think he is many persons. He was sort of planting a mystery around him. He loved it.

There was a lot of talk back then, my goodness. Who killed Gustav Wagner? Take the rifle, the cartridges. Go and meet the Jews, they’re coming. Stanislaw had more than enough reason to settle the score with Wagner. Let me repeat. Stanislaw wouldn’t be able to kill a fly.

Do I think he killed Wagner? Absolutely! Two men who meet again, decades later. A meeting that I’ve returned to and watched, again and again. I’m Antonius Kempmann. For years, the story of these two men has preoccupied me. One a Nazi – Gustav Wagner, the man called the “Beast of Sobibor.”

The other a Jew and survivor of the Holocaust. Stanislaw Szmajzner, or “Shlomo.” I’ve often wondered what I would do if I were to encounter a man who murdered my family. And thought about what happens when those whose duty it is to ensure that justice is done, fail to do so. Brazil, 1978.

At a police station in São Paulo, Stanislaw Szmajzner and Gustav Wagner met again, after more than 30 years. Journalists from around the world reported on the encounter. Gustav Franz Wagner was a former SS officer and deputy commander of Sobibor, a Nazi extermination camp in the Second World War.

He had turned himself in to the Brazilian police. It’s Gustav Franz Wagner. He was recognized by one of his victims today in São Paulo. He admits that he was in Sobibor but denies having killed anyone. Stanislaw “Shlomo” Szmajzner survived Sobibor. Up to 250,000 people were murdered there.

They met each other again, 36 years later. It was a dramatic encounter. Mr. Stanislaw, that man walking in over there do you recognize him as the commander of the concentration camp? It’s Gustav Wagner, the staff sergeant, the boss. Are you sure? Absolutely. Do you know what this means to me?

Have you even considered it? Do you really not have the guts to admit what you did? Be a human being, and tell the truth. After 36 years, be a man and confess. Shame on you! Tell the truth! It was an encounter that had its roots in another time and place

Decades earlier, on a different continent. Sobibor was kept extremely quiet. It was totally isolated. It was way in the woods somewhere. Sobibor wasn’t a town. It was a village with maybe 20 houses. Richard Rashke is an American journalist and author. In the 1970s, he came upon reports of survivors of Sobibor.

One of those survivors was Stanislaw Szmajzner, known as “Shlomo.” Raschke paid him a visit in Brazil. I asked Shlomo a question: How did Sobibor change you? And he said: I have not laughed since Sobibor. I have not cried since Sobibor. I have not prayed since Sobibor.

He said: I feel only hatred, anger and I still thirst for revenge. This is where the Sobibor extermination camp once stood. Up to 250,000 Jews were murdered here. Fewer than 300 prisoners survived the camp. To this day, only a few photographs of the camp have been found and no film recordings.

Here, on this ramp, is where Shlomo and Wagner met for the first time. Shlomo arrived here in May 1942 with his family, his relatives, and disembarked here. Wagner was in charge of selecting which Jews would work, from all the people who arrived here. Shlomo went over to Wagner and said: I’m a goldsmith.

Wagner immediately realized how useful that could be and selected him from the crowd. Shlomo’s entire family were led to the area behind the forest and gassed. But Shlomo didn’t know that yet. A field filled with stones. This was once a mound of ashes the cremated ashes of murdered Jews.

The Nazis wanted to remove all traces of their factory of death: Nothing of the victims was to remain. Gustav Franz Wagner was one of the central figures at Sobibor. Nobody could forget Wagner. I mean, I interviewed all these people 30, 40 years later,

And all I had to do was say, “Wagner,” and they would start to talk. They all had stories about Wagner. Everybody feared him. Wagner was God. Wagner had the right to decide if you should live or you should die and how long you should live and how soon you should die.

That was Wagner. Wagner was evil, very intelligent, cunning, and violent. It would take a long time to characterize him. And even still, there are no words that truly describe him. A master of killing. Powerful in stature, ruthless, and very intelligent. He knew everything, and sowed fear and panic.

He oversaw everything – many prisoners remember that. He was notorious for giving out 25 lashes. Almost every prisoner who worked in Sobibor endured those floggings. And God forbid you miscounted. Then you’d have to count to 25 again. Marek Bem is the director of the memorial at Sobibor.

Over the years, he stayed in touch with the camp’s few survivors. He still recalls the story of how Shlomo managed to survive. Shlomo was just 15 when he encountered Wagner for the first time. Shlomo was special, one-of-a-kind. You have to remember, he was a very young man, hardly more than a boy.

He had tremendous energy. He had that chutzpah, that courage, that intelligence. He went over to the man doing the selection and said: Do you need a goldsmith? I can make myself useful. It was a matter of seconds, the difference between life and death

Wagner spared Shlomo because Shlomo knew how to work with gold. He was forced to make jewellery from the gold items and gold teeth belonging to the Jews who had been killed. Wagner and his SS comrades decorated their whips with gold, or gave the jewelry to their wives.

Wagner was said to have been especially greedy. From May 1942, when they met here, until 1978, in Brazil, when they met face-to-face at the police station, Wagner was the man that Shlomo thought about most often. In May 1978, Gustav Franz Wagner resurfaced after more than 30 years. He’d gone underground, lived in obscurity.

But now he found himself in front of the eyes of the world. someone who’s a nationalist, for his own people, is that a Nazi? What does that even mean? Is it a dirty word? Is it a badge of honor? I certainly don’t know. When you worked in the concentration camp,

Did you see many Jews, many dead people there? Did I see what? Many Jews and dead people? Not at all. Do you know how many Jews died there? No idea. You have no idea? I have no idea. You know, when you find yourself in a situation like that,

You don’t look at the things that are being done that you don’t approve of. The man whom the prisoners called the “Beast of Sobibor” claimed to know nothing of the mass killings of people at the camp. An implausible claim, given that Wagner was a fervent National Socialist.

Gustav Wagner joined the Nazi Party early on, in 1931. In 1933, he joined the SS. In 1942, Wagner helped build the Sobibor death camp, becoming a key figure there. Wagner symbolized everything at Sobibor, all of the hatred to Jews, all of the cruelty, all of the sick pleasure he got from killing people.

He was the symbol. Gustav Wagner never expected to encounter Shlomo Szmajzner again more than three decades later, on the other side of the world. What should happen to him? He should go to prison and think about all the crimes he committed. He’s spent 36 years in freedom,

While many others have been in prison for a long time. No death penalty? Absolutely not. I oppose the death penalty. Shlomo Szmajzner hoped for justice in vain. Wagner wasn’t put on trial or extradited to Germany. In Brazil, his crimes had passed the statute of limitations. Two years later, he was dead.

He was found with a large knife in his lap, in his own bathroom killed by a stab wound to the chest. The official cause of death was suicide. Not long afterward, a postcard arrived in the mail in the United States. It was a photograph of the body of Gustav Wagner

And a mysterious message. The comment was that he killed himself, committed suicide, by stabbing himself in the back. I remember that. That stuck with me. I’m on the way to meet Abraham Raab, who lives in the United States, on the East Coast.

Esther Raab, one of the few survivors of Sobibor had ended up here. The card was addressed to her. Abraham is her son. Who sent the card? And what was its message? Abraham Raab thought the postcard might be up in the attic, along with other records from that time.

For some reason there was an article in the newspaper that Wagner had died, and then shortly thereafter, we received a postcard from Brazil with a picture of Wagner kind of slumped over. I believe he was on a commode at the time. And the note was that he said that he had stabbed…

Had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the back. Well, I believe we did joke about it a little, that it’s very difficult for one to stab themselves in the back… that somebody had to help him commit suicide. Abraham’s mother, Esther Raab, was an important voice for the survivors of Sobibor.

Her memories of the death camp and Gustav Wagner haunted her for the rest of her life. One year before Wagner’s death, Esther Raab gave an interview to the BBC. She talked about her encounters with Wagner in Sobibor. He doesn’t leave me. I always dream that he chases me.

I have those dreams very, very often. I guess it leaves you with the feeling like I can never be happy. I really cannot be happy. You just can’t be happy. And who do you blame for that most of all? Wagner. We couldn’t find the postcard Abraham had described to us.

We asked him to sketch the photograph that was on the postcard, as best he could remember. It wasn’t a very detailed picture. A man in a small room sitting on a toilet. I think he was shirtless with cuts on his back. Abraham’s sketch looked like where Wagner had been found dead.

So who sent the postcard and the mysterious message? We believe it was from Shlomo. Was Shlomo involved in the demise of Wagner? Yes, I believe so. And was that the way that your entire family understood the postcard? Yes, I think so. They felt that it was Shlomo not saying that he killed him

But letting us know that he killed him. For Esther Raab and her son, the postcard was proof that someone had avenged the victims of Sobibor. Was it Shlomo who had done just that? And who was Stanislaw Szmajzner, the man known as “Shlomo”? In the mid-1980s, he was profiled by a film crew.

By then, Brazil was Shlomo’s new home. He had arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 to start a new life. But he was not able to leave his memories behind. Shlomo was exceptionally charming, intelligent, and traumatized Everything in the extreme. In the 1980s, Petra Lataster-Czisch worked on a documentary film

In which Shlomo was a protagonist. She traveled to Brazil for research and stayed with Shlomo. From the very first moment, it was something remarkable. Shlomo had a horrific, unbearable history. But on the other hand, he could be amazingly witty. We joked around together. And at the same time, he was an extremely interesting

In Dutch we’d say, a captivating personality. Someone who is easy to take into your heart. You asked me how open and honest he was. The strange thing is, I found him extremely open and honest. But… there were some things he didn’t talk about. During her visit, Petra Lataster-Czisch and Shlomo

Often spoke about Gustav Wagner. It was very clear that he believed that a monster like Wagner didn’t deserve to live. He showed me a photo and a very yellowed, old newspaper clipping, maybe even several clippings, about Wagner and his death. They were pretty yellowed by then. And he clearly looked at them often,

Because the paper looked quite worn and brittle, somehow. I found the photo repulsive. And yes, he showed it to me, full of triumph, and to this day I don’t know what he meant by it. He was an enigma. An enigma. He had weapons. I think a .22 caliber, and later a .38.

He wasn’t that kind of person that used to say: I’m a victim, oh my God. Sometimes some Jew could help the Mossad in a way or another. Mossad hunted down war criminals. Who was on the list? Gustav Franz Wagner. A lot of times it’s a lack of opportunity.

But when he saw Gustav Wagner on television, there was opportunity. After the war, Shlomo immigrated to Brazil. More than 70 years later, I’m tracing his footsteps. Will I still find people who remember Shlomo? And will they know whether or not he played a role in Wagner’s death?

When Shlomo arrived in 1947, he was determined to leave Europe behind him. He wanted a new life, a fresh start. Eventually he married and had two sons. He would visit a man who’d play a major part in his life and in the lives of the few who had survived Sobibor.

I’m traveling with my colleague Martin Kaul. Martin speaks Portuguese and knows Brazil well. The man we’re going to visit lives in Flamengo, one of the most affluent parts of Rio de Janeiro. This is Zevi Ghivelder, an esteemed journalist and publisher. And here is my interview with former president Ronald Reagan.

It was very pleasant to talk to him. My name is Zevi Ghivelder. My whole life has been reading and writing, that’s all. This was 1968. I was in the newsroom. I got a phone call from downstairs in the building, and the reception told me, There’s someone here that wants to speak to you.

What’s the name of the man? Stanislaw Szmajzner, they told me downstairs. And I thought, this is a Jewish name, and there’s a Jew. I said, OK, send him up. Shlomo told Zevi Ghivelder his story. He talked about the death camp and Wagner. And the uprising in Sobibor, where some 300 prisoners escaped.

Shlomo was one of the few remaining survivors and he wanted to write a book. Zevi Ghivelder published the book, “Hell in Sobibor”. Everybody says until today how quietly and peacefully like sheep – Jews went to the gas chambers and didn’t react.

And then, all of a sudden, there was a story about a concentration camp. Not only a concentration camp, but a Jewish revolt in a concentration camp. And then Jews could realize that the Jewish people was not so short of heroes. And this was important, very important about Stanislaw’s book.

Stanislaw Szmajzner wanted to tell the world about what happened in Sobibor. He was a very simple man. He loved to be spoken about. When his photograph was printed in the magazine, for him it was heaven, you know? So in a way, he made his own ladder to fame. Let’s call it fame.

And he had his 15 minutes of fame, as people say. To bear witness is one thing but did Shlomo want more than that? In one interview, Shlomo was asked if any Jews were involved in Wagner’s death. Shlomo’s reply was evasive. Why did Shlomo refuse to answer?

It suits so well to Stanislaw to say… I can see him in front of my eyes telling this. And full of joy because he was sort of planting a mystery around him. He loved it. He loved it. Excuse me for laughing, but I can see Stanislaw doing it the way you described.

Stanislaw “Shlomo” Szmajzner traveled 11,000 kilometers from Europe to get to Rio. What was he like when he arrived? And what became of him in Brazil? Was he trying to forget the Nazis or bring them to justice? Either way, Shlomo was determined he would never have to hide again.

But others who emigrated did so precisely because they wanted to hide to disappear. The Second World War ended in 1945. Germany had been defeated. Gradually, more details of the Nazi atrocities came to light. Gustav Wagner’s name was placed on a list of war criminals. He was wanted for murder, massacres, and other crimes.

Wagner fled. As did thousands of Nazis, via the infamous escape routes called “ratlines.” Many traveled to South America by ship, and many ended up in Brazil. Many of them lived in German-speaking communities and maintained German traditions. Gustav Wagner arrived in Brazil in 1950. He entered the country under his real name.

He was not asked about his role in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Our president Getúlio Vargas was practically a dictator. He was a sympathizer of Nazi Germany. For him, all gringos were welcome, whatever their background. The Brazilians didn’t care what Franz or Fritz might have done during the war.

What mattered was samba, cachaça, football. That’s it. Wagner settled in Atibaia, a town near São Paulo. He met a woman, made friends, and found a new home. But he was unable to escape his own past. My name is Mario Chimanovitch. I’m 76 years old, and I helped Simon Wiesenthal

Capture a major Nazi criminal, a man who was in hiding in Brazil and that was the case of Gustav Franz Wagner. At first Wagner had little to worry about. He was far from the most prominent Nazi living in South America. Some had gone to Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina.

Adolf Eichmann ended up in Buenos Aires. Eichmann was one of the organizational lynchpins in the mass murder of European Jews. In Argentina, he lived under a false name. Klaus Barbie settled in Bolivia. He was head of the Gestapo in Lyon, in occupied France, and notorious for his cruelty. Josef Mengele, a doctor,

Was infamous for his experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. His journey led him across half of South America. At first no one paid them any attention, and they lived their lives almost entirely undisturbed. There was a safety net for the Germans here. A network that was founded by high-ranking SS officers,

Basically right at the end of the Second World War. It supplied everything: forged documents, transportation, work. How and where did Shlomo Szmajzner live? The next leg of our journey took us inland in Brazil. When Shlomo arrived here, he didn’t know that Wagner was also living in Brazil. Shlomo lived in this building

On the top floor, with a large rooftop terrace. This is where I lived with my family. Apartment 602. And this is where Stanislaw lived. Our darling. This footage was taken in Shlomo’s apartment in the 1980s. My name is Julia Salomão. I was Stanislaw’s neighbor.

What kind of person was he? He was an enigma. He was well-read, very cultured, very intelligent. But at the same time, he had a kind of bitterness. As much as he tried to be happy, he felt that bitterness. I think that was one of his defining traits.

It was the result of his life – it lived in his heart. One day, there was a fire in our building. The fire alarm went off, and everyone rushed down the stairs. But when we got downstairs, everyone started asking: Where is Stanislaw, where is Stanislaw? We were all upset.

My aunt went back upstairs. The firefighters tried to stop her, but she went anyway. She went up, went into his apartment, and there he was sitting, in a corner, in a state of panic. He was panicking. My aunt held him the way you would hold a child. He wept.

It seemed like he was reliving a very difficult time in his past. He left Sobibor, but Sobibor never left him. It was very sad. Shlomo was living alone in Goiânia. He had left his wife and two sons behind in Rio. He’s a survivor. He tried his best to survive everything.

I am Rodrigo Estivallet Teixeira. And Stanislaw Szmajzner was a very good friend of my family. I don’t think Stanislaw is only one person. I think he is many persons. Because he was an adaptive person. Every time he met a new habitat, he adapts to that. He was a kid, he had one life.

He went to the camp, and he went to the Russian army and fight back. And he came to Brazil… He found the life he maybe he seeked, right? But he couldn’t leave his past. How can you leave your past? You can try it, but you can’t do it. Filled with rage.

Burdened with sadness. Other than anger, emotionally dead. That was my first impression of him. So how does a lonely man filled with rage, survive without suicide? And it was music. So he had this den, I’ve never seen anything I would estimate at least a 1,000 long play records,

Vinyl records, everything from Mozart to Mantovani. That was his morphine. That was his sleeping pill. That was his alcohol. Music. Richard Rashke visited Shlomo in Goiânia. Forty years later, he still recalls what Shlomo said. I hate and I want revenge. He told me that.

That’s who he was, there was no ambiguity about it whatsoever. If there’s anyone he wanted to hate, that he hated, and if there’s any one he wanted to kill close up it would be Gustav Wagner. In the early 1960s in South America, the hunt for Nazis who had gone underground began.

Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, tracked Adolf Eichmann down, and shadowed him. In May 1960, Eichmann was captured by a team of Israeli agents and brought to Israel. He was charged with crimes against humanity. The trial made the horrors of the Nazi regime visible to the entire world. Eichmann was sentenced to death.

The trial also sent a message to other Nazis who were in hiding they would be hunted down, just like Eichmann. All the initiative, initiatives regarding Nazi hunting in South America, everything came from the Mossad, not from the local communities. Sometime some Jew could help the Mossad in a way or another.

Simon Wiesenthal is considered one of the most important Nazi hunters of the post-war period. In Vienna, he gathered evidence from around the world, complied dossiers, and established links between various clues. Wiesenthal also wanted to find Gustav Wagner. Of all the thugs that I’ve encountered in my entire career,

Ever since the war, I would rank Gustav Wagner as one of the worst. And what I call the worst, the SS would have called the best. In the 1960s, Wiesenthal gathered evidence on Franz Stangl. Stangl had been Gustav Wagner’s superior, and they met at Sobibor, where Stangl was the camp commander.

Stangl had also gone underground in Brazil. Stangl was arrested in 1967, extradited to Germany, and put on trial. In the courtroom, Stangl encountered one of the death camp’s survivors It was Stanislaw Szmajzner – Shlomo who had traveled from Brazil to testify against Stangl.

In Sobibor, Shlomo had also been forced to make jewelry for Stangl out of the gold removed from murdered Jews. I think Stanislaw suffered so much in that war that maybe he wanted to fix something. Maybe fix something in the world, maybe fix something inside of him.

Stanislaw was feeling himself a bit of a hero regarding all this Stangl affair. Shlomo’s journey to Germany paid off. Stangl was convicted and given a life sentence. During the trial, Stangl revealed a secret. The first real threat to Wagner’s freedom came in 1967.

Franz Stangl, with whom he had escaped, was arrested in Brazil. He’d been traced by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Extradited to West Germany, Stangl died in prison, but had revealed beforehand that Wagner was alive in Brazil. Shlomo now also knew where Wagner was living.

He was reported to have said that he couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as Wagner. Did Shlomo ever set out to find Wagner? I don’t think that Stanislaw was ever involved in any kind of hunting of Nazis in South America. Not at all. Because Stanislaw used to come to me frequently.

I used to talk to him frequently. If he would be approached by someone, he would have told me. Who else might know if Shlomo went looking for Wagner? Did Shlomo help Wiesenthal? Shlomo’s wife is dead, and only one of his sons is still alive. We tried to reach him for a long him.

We tried everything to get hold of him. Wrote hundreds of WhatsApp messages, tried calling him, tried reaching him through friends and family. He’s Shlomo’s son, after all. He was with him in Hagen, at court. He always translated when his father had correspondence in English. So he knows a lot.

We’re hoping he can help us. We found out where he’s believed to live. We decide to write him a letter asking if he’s willing to meet us and put it in his mailbox. We want to leave no stone unturned, but we also don’t want to overstep. Martin walked over to his house alone.

Nothing’s happened yet. He’s been there with the doorman for quite a while. The doorman said: Yes, he lives here. That’s his picture and what he looks like. But he hasn’t seen him for months or weeks. Normally he goes on walks with his wife or daughter.

His son-in-law visits too, but he says he hasn’t seen them all for a while and has no idea where they are. Hasn’t been home for months Shlomo’s son never responded to our messages or letter. We concluded: He doesn’t want to speak to us. In 1974, Wagner still felt safe in Brazil.

In Germany, meanwhile, he was a wanted man An order for his arrest had been issued, but in Brazil he led an ordinary life. He applied for an extension of his passport, under his real name. Simon Wiesenthal was still hunting for Wagner. In São Paulo we met with the man that Wiesenthal

Turned to when he wanted to find Wagner – Mario Chimanovitch. Chimanovitch used to be a journalist. He researched Nazis in South America. What you should know is that I’m the main character in this story. I convinced Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter, to fabricate a situation.

Wiesenthal suspected that Wagner was living somewhere near São Paulo. I got a phone call at 7 in the morning. The guy said, Hello, I’m calling from Vienna, Simon Wiesenthal. I have to talk to you. Come here and I’ll give you a major tip-off. What kind of tip-off?

I asked. He said: The Beast of Sobibor is in Brazil Gustav Franz Wagner. I took a shower, packed a suit in my suitcase, raced to the airport, and bought a ticket to Vienna. The next flight left in 30 minutes. I got off the plane in Vienna and asked for directions:

How do I get to the Wiesenthal Center? Simon Wiesenthal told Chimanovitch everything he knew about Wagner. Then Simon told me about that guy – his cruelty, how he killed Jews, and how he managed to go to Brazil using his own name. I said: Something crucial is missing in this story. What’s missing?

A photo. We didn’t have any picture of him, not a single one. Not drinking a beer, or taking a walk. So it was a bust. Wiesenthal understood that. I suggested a bluff. Let’s take a picture of someone else and say it’s Wagner. Chimanovitch used a photo from a newspaper article

That depicted a German Hitler supporter in Brazil. Chimanovitch claimed that the man on the photo was Wagner knowing full well it wasn’t. Who was it? Some fool, some schmuck. He celebrated the anniversary of Hitler’s death with a bunch of old men. It all went down something like this:

“Heil Hitler!” Toss down a schnaps. “Heil Hitler!” Another schnaps. The plan worked. Gustav Wagner, the Nazi in hiding, suddenly became a huge topic in Brazil. The lie went public, with Wiesenthal’s backing. Then the story took on a whole new dimension. Brazilian authorities came under pressure.

Suddenly everyone was asking where Gustav Wagner could be hiding. The unthinkable happened. Gustav Franz Wagner suddenly appeared at the police station to turn himself in. That’s not me, he said. That’s someone else’s photo! It’s a Mossad trap. They want to catch me and bring me to Israel, like they did to Adolf Eichmann.

Wagner was presented to the public at the police station in São Paulo. Shlomo went there to identify Wagner. Shlomo was standing face-to-face with the man who had murdered his entire family. Did you kill people in the concentration camp? No, no one. Did you see him kill? Yes, I saw it.

But not a single one of them is willing to admit it. They were all good to us, they always treated us well. All that’s left to say they brought us flowers! Have one of my cigarettes. Take it, I’d be honored. Remember Sobibor, smoke!

You never gave me a cigarette, but I’m giving you one. Calm down! Wagner was brought to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, and appeared before court. Four countries – Austria, Poland, Israel, and Germany were all demanding his extradition. But Wagner wasn’t extradited. The Brazilian court decided that his crimes

Had passed the statute of limitations. Wagner was once again a free man. He hasn’t changed much. The only thing that’s changed is that he’s old now. But he’s still the same Gustav Wagner. He’s the same man. Although, he’s not the Gustav Wagner he was in Sobibor. He was God in Sobibor.

Today he’s not a god anymore. Who killed Gustav Wagner? He was found with a butcher’s knife. Who killed him? Who did it, who didn’t? There was a lot of talk and speculation. If I were a survivor of Sobibor, I wouldn’t have been able to bear being in Wagner’s presence, like Shlomo had.

I think I would have killed him with my bare hands. Shlomo knew how to find him. So I asked myself: Would he take that opportunity? And my answer is: Yes, he would! Wagner was there with a knife in his hand.

And he showed me the knife, sort of dancing around with no shirt on. My wife said, He’s going to try to kill himself – or kill someone else. All these decades later, it’s not easy to find out what really happened back then. Did Shlomo have anything to do with Wagner’s death?

Or is that nothing but speculation? What is fact, what is conjecture? The investigation files into the death of Gustav Wagner are still in São Paulo’s judicial archive. The final hours of Wagner’s life are summarized in a few pages and stored in a cardboard box.

All right gentlemen, this is where some of the most relevant and prominent files are stored from cases that have gone to court in São Paulo. Wagner, Gustav Franz. Yes, that’s what’s written here. White, 69 years old, widowed, born in Vienna. Son of Franz and Marie Wagner. The investigation was started to determine

If this was really suicide or if it could have been murder. The police investigation in 1980 concluded that Wagner died by suicide. Pretty thin file. Yes. 25 pages for the investigation of a death. There he is, next to the toilet. Not a pretty place to die.

Here. Did he really kill himself by stabbing himself here? A 15-centimeter-long knife. Here’s the arrow indicating the injury that allegedly led to his death. It was on the side of his heart. But a single stab wound won’t necessarily kill you. It’s all a bit strange.

This footage is of Wagner, after he was released. The man who once had been brutal and all powerful now found fear was his constant companion. Mr. Wagner, what are you going to do with your life now? People who had reason to hate him lived nearby and knew where he lived.

São Paulo’s Jewish community was stunned when Wagner was released. Chaim Korenfeld, who was also a Sobibor survivor and a friend of Shlomo’s, remembers those days well. All the arrangements had been made to get rid of him. Money had even changed hands. Back then, I always carried a weapon. I said, here I am.

Shall I shoot him in the head? I’ll do it, no problem. I’ll do it. Shlomo also was faced with a decision. In an interview from the 1980s, Shlomo was surprisingly candid about his own thoughts on tracking down Wagner and killing him. That was my biggest dream, to come across Wagner one day.

I thought about killing him. But the community, the Jewish community, implored me not to do it. I was prepared. In the year before Wagner’s death, Wagner was the one hunted and fearful. The police report on his death also suggests that Wagner believed he had become a target.

According to witnesses, Wagner was mentally unstable. He said he had heard voices and was being followed by Jews, and he had attempted suicide before. One year and five months have passed since that historic day, when the entire world watched a Jewish man, Stanislaw Szmajzner, identify Wagner.

He’s now in the Hospital das Clinicas, under police protection, on the eighth floor. It’s not known why the Nazi attempted suicide again. What happens now? He’ll have surgery. Emergency surgery? Yes. The “Beast of Sobibor” was unrecognizable. A man who had become a prisoner of his own delusions.

Wagner was at home the day he died, but he was not alone, according to the police investigation. Here it says the third witness saw him go into the house with a knife in his hand, then into the bathroom This is the bathroom; this is the toilet. He’s lying here next to the toilet.

What does “pia” mean? Oh, sink. He’s slumped between the sink and the toilet. And down here, you can’t see it all that well on the picture, is the knife. OK, here are the witnesses: Argemiro Frutuoso Godoi, Brazilian, age 33. So he’s 73 now. He might still be alive.

He could be an independent witness, who could tell us what happened. We want to find Godoi, the most important witness. He was the last person to see Wagner alive. And we also want to know where Shlomo was on October 3, 1980 – the day that Wagner died.

Would Shlomo have been capable of killing Wagner? At the police station, the former deputy commander of Sobibor stood face-to-face with his former victim a man who had learned to fight back. Back then, Shlomo had helped obtain the weapons used in the uprising. About 300 prisoners managed to escape.

The story became the subject of a feature film. After Shlomo got out, escaped, he joined the Russian partisans. They gave him a horse, and they gave him a rifle. His job was to fight the German army until the war was over. He wanted to kill and he did that.

And he received a medal for that work. The only question is – did he lose the urge to kill? Is it reasonable to assume that once he emigrated to Brazil, the vigilantism in his heart disappeared? I say no, it’s impossible. It’s all part of his personality. Getting even. Murder cases leave behind evidence.

And one of the people who examined all that evidence is still alive. How clear are his memories of events that took place 40 years ago? José Alvarenga, a retired police officer, is now 71. He still lives quite near to where it all happened.

Atibaia is a good place, not just for Nazis but for criminals of all kinds. They can hide in the forests. There’s plenty of places. You can hide out here forever without being discovered. The forests he’s speaking of are remote and difficult to reach. The roads aren’t paved.

That’s where Wagner lived before he died. I’m José Aparecido de Alvarenga, a retired police detective. During my career, I investigated at least 80 deaths. There was a lot of blood at the scene, but the house itself was clean and tidy. In 99 percent of cases, you’ll find a trace of another person

At the scene if it was a murder. That could be a chair that’s been moved from its usual spot there’s always some sort of indication. But here there was nothing. Nothing that would suggest a murder. The former investigator is sure of that. From reading the police files, we know roughly where

The estate is located where Wagner died. But we don’t have an exact address. Over and over again, we tried to speak to locals who knew Wagner back then to no avail. Is anyone home? We walked from house to house. This is a large area, but not too many people live here.

Hello? Hi, sorry… I’m looking for a house somewhere around here. I think some Germans live there. I’m sorry, I can’t help you. The house where Wagner lived together with a German woman must be somewhere in this dense and beautiful forest. They enjoyed the idyllic surroundings and their privacy.

What we enjoyed the most was, after we’d finished dinner and done the dishes, we’d go and sit outside and enjoy the evening and nature. That was always what we enjoyed most. Listen to the frogs croak, watch the fireflies glow. And we’d always chat a bit. It was wonderful

Then we found the estate where Wagner died. It’s said that some of his family still live here. Hello, sir. Are you Alexander’s brother? No, I’m not. I’m looking for a relative of Gustav Wagner. I’d like to talk to her. Hello. Don’t you have anything better to do than chase after that guy?

That was all such a long time ago. You should pay more attention to what’s happening now. That’s far more important. And tell people the truth. That’s why we’re here. But there’s nothing here. You don’t need to film me, you a**. Sorry. But you do live here. I guess that’s it.

You won’t get any closer, either. The car drove up with the person who could tell us the most about all of this. Someone who isn’t to blame in all of this, as far as we know. But someone who would know a lot about this. And she immediately started berating us.

What are you doing here, don’t you have anything better to do than chase after that guy? He said something like: We all believe that the past should stay in the past. And the present, we should … Talk about it. We see it differently. Yes we do.

We want to talk about the past, but it seems like that won’t happen here. They made that very clear. No one is eager to talk about Wagner. But many people do enjoy talking about Shlomo even if it’s not always easy to find them.

We’ve heard about the woman that Shlomo spent his final years with. But her name is a very common one, and she’s not easy to track down. But then we find her – Francisca. We call her, and she invites us over. Francisca met Shlomo in Goiânia in 1974.

She describes a man who was afraid of the dark, and who slept with a light on. A man who was still haunted by his memories. He liked classical music – it calmed him down, you know? But he also liked stuff from Rio – samba, things like that.

Only the very best, you know? Only the best. Francisca tells us that Shlomo often traveled to Germany. He went there, to the land of the perpetrators, to testify against Nazi criminals. However often he went, it was a difficult experience. It took a lot out of him. My name is Francisca Alves de Oliveira.

I fell in love with Shlomo, and he fell in love with me. We were together for 15 years. He always said: It’s good you didn’t meet me when I arrived in Brazil. I was like a horse. Always kicking at everything around me.

And he always said to me: I just want to have peace. But I don’t think he found that peace. I think he was consumed by conflicts. There was a tornado inside of him, things that tormented him. I could feel it. He said to me: You don’t want to know my other side.

You don’t want to get to know the other Stanislaw. What was that other Stanislaw like? He had weapons. I think a .22 caliber, and later a .38 but only to defend himself. He didn’t walk around armed. After he identified Wagner in São Paulo, he got very worked up.

And there were also groups of Nazis out there. He received death threats. From them – from groups of Nazi that met in São Paulo. The man who knew so much about the perpetrators was once again being threatened by Nazis. Francisca tells us, Shlomo felt restless and uneasy. And then Wagner died.

There was a lot of talk back then, my goodness. Who killed Gustav Wagner? Who did it, who didn’t. There was a lot of talk and speculation. On the day that Wagner was killed, over there in Atibaia, Stanislaw was here with me in Goiás. He didn’t go anywhere.

There’s no way it could have been him. You see? It wasn’t him. Does that mean Shlomo was not consumed by thoughts of vengeance, as many people believed – or wanted to believe? The death of Gustav Wagner. Wagner was buried at this cemetery in Atibaia.

The funeral was held just a day after his death. We even track down the exact spot. There was a short article in the paper, and it only said that his funeral was very small. The only guests were two “mysterious foreigners”, as they put it, but no introduction or names.

That was these two men, who look a bit German. But we don’t know who they are. There’s no gravestone here. No name or inscription. Only a handful of people attended his funeral. Wagner was only buried here for about three years. No one paid the fees for his grave, so he was exhumed.

His remains were stored in an ossuary, and later interred in an anonymous grave. The last person believed to have seen Wagner also lives somewhere in the area. We read his name in the police file. Argemiro de Godoi is a farm laborer who worked with Wagner.

His statement for the police is only a page long. We searched for him for a long time. We found Argemiro or Miro for short on the Facebook page of a bar where he used to play guitar. It’s somewhere in the hills around Atibaia. And according to the police investigation of Wagner’s death,

He’s the last person who saw Wagner before he died. He would have been the person to let the police in, or to bring them to the house… Do a left, pass over the bridge. Yeah, OK. Left, left again, left. This is where Argemiro de Godoi lives.

At first he was suspicious of us, and our visit. He didn’t want to speak to us. But then he decided to tell us what happened on that day. Come in. This is the final stop on our journey. Did a Jewish man take revenge on Wagner?

Argemiro de Godoi was with Wagner in his final hours. He knows what really happened, and what Wagner’s state of mind was like. He tells us that on that day, Wagner believed he was in danger. My wife called me: Miro, hurry, come here, take care of Gustav.

Be careful that he doesn’t kill you – he has a knife and he’s locking all the doors. Gustav was angry and behaving strangely. He had those blue eyes. And he was holding the knife. But he wasn’t stabbing anything, he was just holding it, in a threatening way. And he showed me the knife.

Kind of dancing, you know, with a knife and no shirt. And do you know what he said to me? “Take the rifle, the cartridges. Go and meet the Jews, they’re coming. Then he said to me, Go and meet the Jew, shoot him. Was anyone there? No, just him.

Are you sure no one was there before you? Someone who was after him? No, no one was up there. No one was inside there. And then I heard a sound, boom, in the bathroom. Gustav was dead. Stabbed. He’d killed himself. You saw him like that?

I saw him lying there, with the stab wound. So allegedly, Wagner’s death was not an act of revenge. But it was the fear of Jews in search of vengeance that may have driven him to his death. In 1989, Shlomo Szmajzner died of a heart attack. The grave bearing his name still exists.

Many people came to his funeral. Now I’m missing him, our Stanislaw. Shlomo did not take revenge, as so many people who knew him believed. I remember him like this: A survivor, a liked person, and a warrior. Shlomo survived Sobibor, and he survived Wagner. I wish something for every survivor that I met,

And it’s something that I cannot give them: peace. Stanislaw Szmajzner “Shlomo” never found peace. But he helped make sure that Wagner didn’t, either. I would have so wished for him – this truly exceptional man I would have wished that he could lead a normal, boring life.

And I’m sure he would have been happy with that.

An October day in 1980, near Sao Paulo. A man lies dead in his bathroom. It is Gustav Wagner, the dreaded “Beast of Sobibor”, as he was known during his tenure at the Nazi concentration camp. The police classify his death as a suicide.

How is it possible to live what seems like a normal life after orchestrating murder in a Nazi concentration camp? Three decades after the end of the Holocaust, Shlomo Szmajzner meets his former tormentor Gustav Wagner in Brazil. A short time later, the former SS man is found dead. Does Shlomo Szmajzner, one of the few survivors of the concentration camp, have anything to do with it? Or is the wish for belated justice just that – a wish?
In the Sobibor concentration camp, Shlomo Szmajzner had the macabre task of forging jewelry for the Nazis using the dental gold of murdered Jews. Gustav Wagner, known as the “Beast of Sobibor”, was an ardent National Socialist. He was feared for his sadism and unpredictability. Some 250,000 people were murdered in Sobibor. Very few managed to escape, but Shlomo was one of them. Then he met his tormentor again 36 years later, on the other side of the world, in Brazil.
The film’s true crime format draws viewers into a world of guilt, revenge and justice. The question that Shlomo Szmajzner must wrestle with is still all-too-relevant today. Namely: Is atonement possible for crimes on this gigantic scale?

#documentary #dwdocumentary
______

DW Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch top documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies. Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW Documentary.

Subscribe to:
⮞ DW Documentary (English): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumentary
⮞ DW Documental (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumental
⮞ DW Documentary وثائقية دي دبليو (Arabic): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocarabia
⮞ DW Doku (German): https://www.youtube.com/dwdoku
⮞ DW Documentary हिन्दी (Hindi): https://www.youtube.com/dwdochindi

For more visit: http://www.dw.com/en/tv/docfilm/s-3610
Follow DW Documentary on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwdocumentary/
Follow DW Documental on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dwdocumental

We kindly ask viewers to read and stick to the DW netiquette policy on our channel: https://p.dw.com/p/MF1G