Karl Hass

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Karl Hass , also Karl Haß , (born October 5, 1912 in Elmschenhagen , today a district of Kiel ; † April 21, 2004 in Castel Gandolfo ) was a convicted German war criminal . He was an officer in the SS (SS-No. 117.557) and from 1941 had the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer .

Life

From 1934 Hass was employed as an assistant in the press department (II D 3 South) of the SD main office in Berlin and in 1940 moved to the Italian department VI D. During his service in the SD main office, Hass had started studying at the Faculty of Foreign Studies there in 1943 PhD .

On March 24, 1944, Hass was involved in the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome with the former SS officer Erich Priebke .

During his SS activity in Italy he lured the Princess Mafalda of Savoy into an ambush. Mafalda later died in Buchenwald concentration camp as a result of an Allied bomb attack.

After 1945

After the Second World War , Hass was first interned as a prisoner of war in Rimini. From there he fled several times and went into hiding in Rome and Bolzano. Hass lived alternately in Italy and Austria , where he is said to have worked for a number of years for counterintelligence in the US Army .

Hass also worked as an escape helper for war criminals across Italy to overseas, working with the Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal . He turned down an offer to flee overseas and stayed in Italy.

Hass was declared dead in 1953 and from then on lived under a false name or the family name of his Italian wife Giustini in Italy. After the death declaration was overturned in 1962, he worked for the German War Graves Commission. In 1964, Hass became the head of a German military cemetery near Catania .

Although he was wanted , Hass was able to play the extra role of a Nazi officer in the 1969 film Die Verdammten by Italian director Luchino Visconti .

In 1996 he came to Italy to testify in the trial against Priebke, but injured himself seriously when jumping from the balcony of his hotel to prevent his questioning as a witness . He was taken into custody and later charged.

On March 7, 1998, a military tribunal in Rome sentenced Hass to life imprisonment. Due to his poor health and the fact that he had originally come to Italy for trial, his prison sentence was commuted to house arrest .

He died of heart failure in a Roman retirement home in 2004 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 230.
  2. ↑ "I was valuable to them". Der Spiegel , 4/1997, pp. 70-73.
  3. ↑ profile , issue 33/2008.
personal data
SURNAME Hatred, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hatred, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Elmschenhagen , today part of Kiel
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 2004
Place of death Castel Gandolfo