Many years ago, I remember reading a story about a fugitive Nazi
caught in South America in the 1960 (I belive it was in Argentinia).
When the Isreali Secret Service (Shin Bet) broke into his apartment,
he was out. What they found on his coffee table in the living room
blew them away. Well placed was a scrap book of picuture of this man
during the war. Pictures of him standing over the pit that pile of
dead humans now filled. Pictures of him smiling as the machine guns
were being readied to bring hundreds of Jews to their death. But to
the Shin Bet agents this wasn't the most disturbing part - it was the
inscrption on the front of the scrap book. Hand lettered, were the
words, "The Best Years of my Life". I am looking to find this story.
about which Nazi it was told...details... I used to think that it was
Rudolph Hess, however that seems to be wrong as Hess I think Hess was
killed during the war?

Dear barrys,

The details of the story are a bit different. It is correct that a
particular German war criminal was discovered and his photo album with
pictures from his time as an SS officer in Treblinka Concentration
Camp was found. It is also correct that he had given his album the
title "Schöne Zeiten", that means "Wonderful Times", which can in
German indeed have the meaning "The best time of my life". Actually, I
really found this as a translation for the album title in one source.
However, the war criminal was not arrested in Argentina, but in
Germany, where he had managed to live unidentified for many years. And
also, he was not arrested by the Israeli Secret Service, but by German
authorities. The war criminal's name was Kurt Hubert Franz.

Kurt Hubert Franz was born on 17 January 1914 in Düsseldorf. In his
home town, he visited the extended elementary school from 1920-1928
and was then trained as a cook in a Hotel. After military service
(1935-37), he joined the Waffen-SS, served as guard at Buchenwald
concentration camp and was ordered here to the camp's headquarters to
serve as cook. Though he belonged to the armed elite force of the Nazi
Party, he never became a member of the National Socialist Party or any
affiliated organizations.
On 30 January 1940 he was promoted SS-Unterscharführer (Sergeant). In
spring 1942, he was transferred to the Generalgouvernement (occupied
Poland).
From spring 1942 he served in Belzec, and from midsummer 1942 in
Treblinka where he took over Ukrainian guard squads and rose to be
deputy camp commandant. Finally, from 27 August 1943 to November 1943,
he was the commandant of Treblinka Concentration Camp. According to
all sources known, he was the personified terror, a murderer and a
sadist who made the prisoners' lives a nightmare.

After his time in Treblinka, he was transferred to occupied
Yugoslavia. Imprisoned by US Forces after the war, he could escape
from prison and worked again as a cook in Germany, unrecognized.
However, German investigators found and arrested him on 2 December
1959.
When Franz was arrested, a police search of his apartment discovered a
photograph album, showing a number of photographs from his Treblinka
and euthanasia days called "Schöne Zeiten". It included, among others,
pictures of a grab used for loading corpses onto pyres and of mass
graves.

The album was used as evidence against Kurt Franz in the First
Treblinka Trial. The German Landgericht Düsseldorf court sentenced him
to life imprisonment on 3 September 1965.

Kurt Franz was released due to old age and health problems in
mid-1993. He died on 4 July 1998 in an old people's home in Wuppertal,
Germany.


Rudolf Hess, by the way, was neither killed in the war nor was he
arrested in Argentina. Actually, he secretly flew from Germany to
London on 10 May 1941 to arbitrarily start peace negotiations with the
British government, without authorization by Adolf Hitler. The British
were not interested in Hess' proposals and arrested him as a war
criminal. After the war, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the
Nuremburg Trial. He was imprisond at the Allied War Criminal Prison in
Spandau (Berlin), where he finally was the only inmate left. On 17
August 1987, at the age of 93, he committed suicide.


Sources:

Aktion Reinhard Camps: The Treblinka Perpetrators
http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/perpetrators.html

Aktion Reinhard Camps: The Franz Photo Story
http://www.deathcamps.org/t4/franzstory.html

Aktion Reinhard Camps: Treblinka Trials
http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/treblinkatrials.html

The Holocaust History Project: Kurt Franz
http://www.holocaust-history.org/questions/franz-kurt.shtml

Human Rights Project: Atrocities Conference - The Legacy of Nuremberg
http://www.bard.edu/hrp/atrocities/panelone.htm

Las Vegas Sun: Where I Stand - Mike O'Callaghan: Be a voice for the dead
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/2000/apr/20/510156284.html?david+irving

Deutsches Historisches Museum: Rudolf Heß
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/HessRudolf/

Michael Sells, "Treblinka Commandant, Kurt "schoenen zeite" Franz
freed, Why?" Online posting (1993-08-20). <soc.culture.german> via
Google Groups.
http://groups.google.de/groups?q=treblinka+%22sch%C3%B6ne+zeiten%22&hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&selm=2531mp%242bj%40saturn.haverford.edu&rnum=1

Search terms used:
"best years of my life" "war criminal"
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22best+years+of+my+life%22+%22war+criminal%22&btnG=Google+Suche
"kurt franz" treblinka
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22kurt+franz%22+treblinka&btnG=Google+Suche
"Kurt Franz" treblinka album
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22Kurt+Franz%22+treblinka+album&btnG=Google+Suche
"kurt franz" photoalbum
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=%22kurt+franz%22+photoalbum&btnG=Google+Suche
treblinka "schöne zeiten"
http://groups.google.de/groups?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=treblinka+%22sch%C3%B6ne+zeiten%22&sa=N&tab=wg
treblinka "schöne zeiten"
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=treblinka+%22sch%C3%B6ne+zeiten%22&sa=N&tab=gw
"kurt franz" "in the cook"
://www.google.de/search?q=%22kurt+franz%22+%22in+the+cook%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google+Suche
"kurt franz" "schöne zeiten"
://www.google.de/search?q=%22kurt+franz%22+%22sch%C3%B6ne+zeiten%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google+Suche
"rudolf hess"
://www.google.de/search?q=%22rudolf+hess%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google+Suche

Hope this answers your question!
Best regards,
Scriptor

Excellent answer. Thank you!

There is an argument that says that Hitler did know and that he did
approve of Hess's flight to England .....

And there is another one that says that Hess was murdered in Spandau ......

And, there is even another one that says that it wasn't Hess who flew
to England but his doppelganger ..... (Is that the same as the Doppler
effect?) ....

Which reminds me that I must phone Hugh Thomas who was Hess's doctor in Spandau ...

Who to believe?

The Nazi war criminal who was kidnapped by the Mossad was Adolf
Eichmann, who was tried and executed in Israel.

Adolf Eichmann
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/

"He fled to Argentina and lived under the assumed name of Ricardo
Klement for ten years until Israeli Mossad agents abducted him in 1960
to stand trial in Jerusalem."

Eichmann kept a diary that can be read online, as can the transcripts of his trial.

There are a number of unsolved mysteries involving Hess, including the
fact that the plane that crashed in England, from which Hess
parachuted, was not the same one in which he took off.

hlabadie-ga

Hi, hlabadie

David Stafford did another take on Hess's mission, last year:

Flight from Reality: Rudolf Hess and his Mission to Scotland 1941

I haven't been able to find my copy (my cleaner's here today and I
keep well out of her way) but I'm pretty sure that Stafford
convincingly disposed of the claim that it had been a different plane.

All the Best

Bryan

Regarding Hess and his Bf 110, there is a WWW site devoted to him:

http://www.rudolf-hess.org/english/rhg/dok1_vortragkaden_e.php3


hlabadie-ga

Hi, hlabadie

Great link ... Many thanks.

Helmut Kaden evidently had no doubts that it was Hess or that it could
have been a different plane.

I hadn't realised how much training and practice Hess had received, so
he must have been playing around with the idea for a long time.

I guess that, if Roosevelt had been unable to deliver Lend-Lease, then
Hess may have received a very different reception when he arrived in
Scotland.

Warmest regards

Bryan