Karl Tribus

Karl Tribus (born April 7, 1914 in Lana an der Etsch ; † unknown) was a South Tyrolean SS member and war criminal .

Life

In 1939 Tribus opted for German citizenship , and in September 1943 he was apparently involved in the arrest of the Jews in Merano . From autumn 1943 Tribus tortured partisans and deserters at the SS command in Belluno .

After the end of the war, the former SS-Oberscharführer first hid in the South Tyrolean Ulten Valley , grew a long beard and assumed a new identity. Before 1945, the Ulten Valley offered South Tyrolean deserters protection from the Nazi henchmen; later, not a few wanted Nazi war criminals used it as a hideout. In 1948 Tribus fled, evidently with the help of a Bolzano Franciscan Father, with a new identity via Genoa to Argentina (see Rattenlinien ). There he worked in a paper mill. In his letters to his sister in South Tyrol, he complained of homesickness.

In Buenos Aires he married Anita Wagner from Graz, who shared her life on the run with him. In a telegram dated September 1957 to the home community of Lana, she announced the alleged death of her husband Karl. The attempt succeeded, and the dead tribe could feel quite safe. After the end of the Cold War , the judiciary became active again in his case. In 1996, the Italian Military Prosecutor's Office in Verona initiated preliminary inquiries against Tribus on suspicion of war crimes in the Belluno area. She asked the German judiciary for legal assistance to find out the exact personal details and the current whereabouts of Tribus. The Tribus case was apparently still pending at the Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations for Solving National Socialist Crimes (Ludwigsburg) until 2004 . Tribus is believed to have died of cancer as early as the 1980s.

literature

• Gerald Steinacher: Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy. Vienna; Innsbruck; Munich: Studienverlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1 . Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-596-18497-2 .

Web links

• Ludwig Karl Ratschiller: Il compagno Ludi (Italian) (PDF)