Willem Sassen

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Willem Sassen (born April 16, 1918 in Geertruidenberg ; † 2001 in Chile ) was a German-Dutch National Socialist , Nazi propagandist and SS man. He became known in the late 1950s as an interviewer for Adolf Eichmann , one of the main people responsible for the organization of the National Socialist genocide of European Jews .

Life

Willem Sassen volunteered for the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" after the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II . He became an SS war correspondent in an armored force ; After being wounded, in 1943 he worked for the Voice of the SS station in Belgium and the Netherlands . In October 1944 Sassen became editor-in-chief of the newspaper De Telegraaf (De Courant Nieuws van de Dag). He rose to become SS-Untersturmführer . At the end of 1944 Willem Sassen worked for Het Laatste Nieuws in the east of the Netherlands. Together with his brother Alfons Sassen, he was an active Nazi propagandist in the occupied Netherlands.

At the end of the war, the Sassen brothers belonged to a unit of the Werwolf organization (R-Netz). Willem Sassen was head of the Neurop (New Europe) group in Utrecht . After the surrender, the brothers Willem and Alfons Sassen fled to Alkmaar , where they were arrested.

He was able to flee from the internment camp to Antwerp (Belgium) and get documents in the name of "Albert Desmedt", who had become victims of the Holocaust with his family . When his disguise as a “surviving Jew” was noticed, he was deported to the Netherlands, but was able to flee again. An old friend, Anthony Mertens (editor of the weekly newspaper De Linie ), put him in contact with the "Catholic group" of fanatical clerical National Socialists . Former SS man Karl Breyer, who was now a journalist, had stolen an ID from an employee of the magazine De Linie . With the new papers Willem Sassen fled as "Jack Jansen" in May 1947 with the KLM to Dublin . In September 1948, he fled with his girlfriend Miep, his daughter, the former U-boat commander Schneider and several SS men and Nazi - collaborators on the ocean ship The Eagle by Argentina .

Willem Sassen had married Paula Fisette in 1940, with whom he had a son, was divorced and then married Miep van der Voort, with whom he had two children. The daughter Saskia Sassen (* 1947 in The Hague) is a well-known American sociologist and economist. In the 1970s, Sassen married for the third time in Argentina, Els Delbaere, with whom he had another child.

After his escape, Willem Sassen worked as a journalist for El Lazo (De Schakel), for Dürer Verlag (Eberhardt Fritsch), Die Freie Presse (Wilfried von Oven) and for the Stern ( Henri Nannen ). He also became a ghostwriter for Hans Ulrich Rudel (a prominent attack pilot ) and for Adolf Eichmann .

In the 1960s, Rudel Willem Sassen brokered contacts with MEREX AG, an arms export company founded by the former SS man Gerhard Mertins . As their representative he became an arms dealer in Argentina. His brother was the representative in Ecuador . He fled to Ecuador via La Coruña (Spain) in 1951 . The older sister Maria Burk Sassen, formerly an agent of the Reich Security Main Office , had fled via Rome (so-called Rattenlinie ) in 1950 .

In the 1970s, Willem Sassen worked as PR consultants for the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and the dictator of Paraguay , Alfredo Stroessner .

Eichmann interviews

In Argentina - the vanishing point of many former National Socialists - Sassen quickly made friends and met Adolf Eichmann , with whom he discussed a book project about his work in the Reich Security Main Office . In this context, over a period of four years (1956–1960), the two of them met regularly with other Nazis who had fled, such as Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben . Over 73 tapes were recorded in 1957. Sassen kept some tapes of these conversations as well as copies of the transcripts corrected by Eichmann. After Eichmann's kidnapping to Israel, Sassen sold a large part of the copies to Time / Life (United States) and Stern (Germany) magazines . Other parts got to Germany by other means and also to Fritz Bauer . In 1979 Sassen handed over the tapes and copies that he still had to Eichmann's widow Vera. In 1980 Rudolf Aschenauer gave a selection under the title “Ich, Adolf Eichmann. A historical witness report ” , but without mentioning Sassen in the foreword.

In 1996, Guido Knopp was the first to use the recovered tapes in his Eichmann documentary Der Vollstrecker from the series Hitler's Helpers and played excerpts. Excerpts from the Sassen tapes relating to the Wannsee Conference and played at Eichmann's Jerusalem Trial can also be heard in the documentary Ein Spezialist (1999) by Eyal Sivan , which consists of the original video recordings of the trial.

Some of Sassen's interviews with Eichmann are reproduced in the German feature film Eichmanns Ende - Liebe, Verrat, Tod , a docu-drama by Raymond Ley from 2010 - using original texts from the selected interviews. Willem Sassen is portrayed in this film by Ulrich Tukur .

Works

  • The disciples and the prostitutes (under the pseudonym Willem Sluyse). Editorial Dürer, Buenos Aires 1954

literature

  • Bettina Stangneth : Eichmann before Jerusalem - The undisturbed life of a mass murderer . Arche, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7160-2669-4 .
  • Irmtrud Wojak: Eichmanns Memoirs. A critical essay. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004 (first edition 2001), ISBN 3-596-15726-9 .
  • Gerard Groeneveld: War correspondent. Nederlandse SS-oorlogsverslaggevers 1941–1945. Vantilt, Nijmegen 2004, pp. 356-368, ISBN 90-77503-09-9 (in Dutch).
  • Kai Hermann: A killer career, Klaus Barbie: torturer for Hitler and military dictators , part 1–5. In: Der Stern , May – June 1984.
  • Jame Botman: De intriges van de gebroeders Sassen. De collaboratie, het verzet, de ontsnapping en de reünie met oude SS comrades in Latijns America. Aspect, Soesterberg 2013, ISBN 978-946-153357-9 .
  • Jame Botman: Nazis to the Core, The Sassen brothers and their anti Bolshevik crusade in Latin America. Aspect, Soesterberg 2015, ISBN 978-94-6153-823-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann before Jerusalem - The unmolested life of a mass murderer . Arche: Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7160-2669-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Sassen, Willem
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch National Socialist and SS man, interviewer for Adolf Eichmann
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Geertruidenberg , Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH 2001
Place of death Chile