Love, lies and the crimes of a Nazi refugee
While searching for the fate of his own ancestors who fell victim to the Holocaust in Lviv, Ukraine, Philippe Sands, the son of Jewish parents, met Horst Wächter, the son of the prominent Nazi Otto von Wächter, who served as occupation governor of Lviv from 1942 to 1944. It was certain that Horst's father had a share in the fate of Sands' relatives who, with one exception, lost their lives during his reign. But he still holds a special place in his son's heart, together with his mother. Horst is convinced that his father was a decent man, an optimist who tried to do good but was consumed by the horrors caused by others.
In an effort to clear the memory of his parents, Sands was given access to the extensive family archive, which enabled the writer to reconstruct in detail the everyday and adventurous life of the high-ranking SS officer, governor of occupied Kraków and then Lvov, accused of the mass murder of more than 100,000 Jews and Poles. Together with Sands, we follow Wächter's idyllic marriage and family life, his Nazi career, and his escape from justice via the so-called "rat trail" that Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and thousands of other Nazis took to Perón's Argentina to gain a new identity.
Wächter spent three years in hiding in the Austrian Alps before reaching Rome, where he was helped by a Vatican bishop. He stayed there for three months. But his escape from Europe was cut short by a mysterious death, sparking speculation of murder.
