(The Scotsman-UK) Allan Hall - Chilling details of a secret army of Nazis emigrating to the Middle East after the Second World War to become the nucleus of an Arab-led force to crush Israel have been revealed in Germany. Intelligence officers, SS generals, propaganda specialists, and even Holocaust functionaries went to Egypt after the collapse of the Third Reich to continue to persecute Jews. Geraldine Schwarz, who has made a film on the subject called "Exile Nazi: The Promise of the Orient," said the covert recruitment drive was the brainchild of Egypt's King Farouk I. She told Die Welt that the king's confidant, Adel Sabit, was entrusted to build the anti-Israel force along with former Afrika Korps Lt.-Gen. Artur Schmitt. Mahmout Sabit, the cousin of Adel Sabit, said Schmitt had been living after the war in a Cairo hotel under the name of Goldstein. His orders were to recruit his countrymen with the aim of building a million-strong army. Syria also hired 50 Nazis between 1948-9, including many former SS soldiers, to help mold its army and intelligence service. One was Walter Rauff, at the war's end the SS security chief for northern Italy, a wanted war criminal who helped develop mobile gas-wagons to kill Jews and other enemies of the regime. Rauff was tasked with rebuilding Syrian intelligence services "along Gestapo lines."
2023-03-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive