Nazi Millionaires

by Kenneth A. Alford

  “When was the last time you saw him?” inquired Gutierrez.

  Meier looked nervously at his wife and then back at his interrogator. “This morning. He took a train from Kirchberg to Innsbruck a few hours ago.” The Americans had missed nabbing the SS man by a handful of hours!

  “When is he coming back?” asked Gutierrez.

  “Tonight. He is coming back tonight,” replied Meier.

  The agents thanked the family for their cooperation and left. Rudolf Meier walked to the woodshed and removed the money his uncle has been bringing to them on each of his visits. The fortune was carefully divided into several large tin sugar cans and buried in the garden behind the house, safely away from prying Allied eyes.6

  The Americans, meanwhile, made plans to recapture Konrad. Long anticipated, the event proved anticlimactic. Gutierrez waited until dark at the station. The Innsbruck train arrived at 9:00 p.m. and Konrad stepped onto the dimly lit platform. He was wearing German army trousers and a civilian shirt and jacket. The arrest was accomplished without fanfare. In his possession were numerous forged papers in the name of Franz Meier. Konrad was immediately transported to the Marcus Orr Internment Camp in Salzburg, Austria. An intense but largely unproductive interrogation followed late that night. Konrad cooperated on minor issues of fact only, such as his name and date of birth. He worked hard at steadfastly refusing to divulge useful information. What little he did provide was contradictory, evasive, incomplete, and misleading. One bit of information slipped out: he confirmed his nephew’s statement that he had taken a few minor items “to my relatives in Schladming.”7

  After the frustrating interrogation Konrad was housed in solitary confinement and placed on a diet of bread and water. Three more intense interrogation sessions followed. The isolation and starvation fare did little to loosen his tongue. Konrad continued offering conflicting and evasive stories concerning his involvement with missing valuables that had been stored at Fischhorn castle and elsewhere. Armed with information supplied by Josef Spacil, the agents managed to pry out of Konrad that he had acquired a large sum of money from Josef Spacil, the former chief of RSHA Bureau II. Working with fragments of truth wrapped inside giant lies and misinformation, the veteran investigators pieced together the Konrad puzzle. The interrogations, coupled with other intelligence gleaned from Walter Hirschfeld’s efforts, convinced Gutierrez that Konrad had disposed of a fortune in gold, currency, jewelry, important letters, diaries, and other valuables after his escape from Zell am See. The clues as to where some of this loot was hidden pointed solidly in the direction of Schladming. It was time to pay Konrad’s relatives another visit.8

  On August 24, Gutierrez and another CIC agent surprised the Schladming branch of the Konrad family. This time their trip paid off handsomely. Although no memorandums of either this visit or interrogations of the parties have been found, a listing of items recovered has been located. Inside Fritz Konrad’s home Gutierrez and company found the following items:

  —The suit of clothes worn by Adolf Hitler during the assassination attempt on his life on July 20, 1944;

  —One chest of photo albums belonging to Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Gretl Braun Fegelein, and their friends depicting their private lives, including notes from Eva Braun’s letters to Hitler, and artistic photos of both Hitler and Braun;

  —A chest of silverware with the emblem of the Polish crown. The silver was stolen in Poland during the occupation;

  —Silverware monogrammed with the initials “E.B.” [Eva Braun];

  —Part of a valuable stamp collection consisting of fifty-one albums “obtained illegally by Konrad while with the SS at the Warsaw Ghetto (Jewish quarter). Konrad estimates that the collection in peace time is worth 80,000 RM [Reichsmarks].”

  All of these items were turned over to the CIC Seventh Army on August 29, 1945.9

  Gutierrez and other CIC agents spent the next several weeks investigating Franz Konrad’s and Erwin Haufler’s interrogation statements, talking with witnesses, and searching for additional clues. Trying to discern the extent of the stolen loot and what they had done with it was a laborious task. “Throughout the four interrogations,” wrote one agent, “Konrad has deliberately falsified the majority of his statements. He has only admitted that which he has been forced to admit because of being confronted with the facts. At present this unit is in possession of some of the items which he still insists he burned.” On the basis of this intelligence, CIC agent William Conner decided to drive to Ammerland am Starnbergersee on September 20 to interview Haufler’s wife. She confessed almost immediately to possessing ill-gotten booty. Within a few minutes a fortune was removed from its hiding place and deposited in front of Conner. It included 91,000 Reichsmarks, a sum of English pounds and Swedish kronen, 5,000 Swiss francs, three gold rings encrusted with large diamonds, and four expensive gold watches. According to Conner, “The money and jewelry [were] part of the RSHA funds given by [Josef] Spacil to [Franz] Konrad” during the fading hours of the war. Frau Haufler acknowledged that Konrad had given the merchandise to her husband, who in turn had given it to his wife “for safe keeping.” The entire cache was turned over to the CIC Seventh Army.10

  A few weeks after Conner’s discovery at the Haufler home Gutierrez and Conner dropped by Fritz Konrad’s house in Schladming for another visit. The unannounced October 11 call caught the relatives unaware and struck pay dirt a second time. The Konrads sung the same tune initially, claiming they had nothing else of interest hidden away. After the agents summarized what else they had learned, however, the Austrians realized the Americans knew almost everything. They had little choice but to cooperate. Several containers from the Konrad cellar and a small chest from Konrad’s mother’s wardrobe were brought forward. Other valuables were also discovered and removed from the house. The agents thoroughly scoured the place. Virtually everything moveable was carried outside and carefully examined. The cellar containers held twenty-eight reels of color film depicting the life of Hitler and Eva Braun. The small chest contained four gold men’s watches, a woman’s gold watch set with 50 diamonds, and two pairs of expensive gold cuff links. Other parcels were found stuffed with 1,000 U.S. dollars and English pounds. Even more stamps were found. The items we recovered, reported Gutierrez, “had been left by Franz Konrad with his mother in Schladming.” Konrad’s relatives had been laboring under the impression the Americans would not return because they had already thoroughly searched the house back in August. After they convinced themselves it was a safe haven, Gutierrez explained, “the items were brought to the home” from another location. These things, too, were turned over to the CIC Seventh Army. When pressed on the whereabouts of Hitler’s diaries, however, Fritz and Minna Konrad strenuously denied having any knowledge of their existence.11

  The agents were not through searching for Konrad’s stolen fortune. On October 22 Gutierrez and Conner returned to Kirchberg to question Rudolf Meier and his wife. “We know Konrad visited you and believe he left a large sum of valuables here with you,” Gutierrez accused them. “What did he leave with you? Did he ask you to hide anything for him?”

  “No, Konrad brought nothing here!” Rudolf Meier adamantly replied.

  “We know you are lying. If you don’t tell us everything, you will be in as much trouble as he is in.” Gutierrez paused. “We found out all about what he left with his brother in Schladming. Now they are in trouble for lying to us. What did he leave with you and where is it?”

  Konrad’s nephew was well aware that Austrians and Germans had been detained or arrested for offenses far less important than sheltering an SS agent wanted for war crimes and hiding stolen loot. He decided to come clean and started talking.

  “Very well, I will tell you,” he responded. “Konrad brought here 400,000 Reichsmarks, some foreign money, and some jewelry.” He asked if we might bury it here.”

  “When was this?”

  “That was when he first appeared here with his rucksack. He did not bury this himself; I did
that for him later. I put the money and the jewelry in tin cans—sugar cans—and buried them in my garden.”

  “Tell me about the currency. What was it and how was it packed?” inquired Gutierrez.

  “The 400,000 Reichsmarks were in 100 notes, packaged in bundles,” Meier answered, now almost relieved that the secret was out in the open. “The foreign currency consisted of Swiss francs, dollars, and Swedish crowns.” He hesitated a moment, and then continued. “I’m not sure of the individual amounts. He did not give me the foreign money to bury. It was in a little packet which he had tossed into the coal bucket. Later, I took them out and buried them, too. As far as I remember, there are two rings and some gold dollars buried, too. But I don’t know just how many dollars.” Meier was not only cooperative, but full of information. But was he telling the officers the full truth?

  When asked to do so Meier led the agents to the spot where the valuables were hidden. They were quickly and easily retrieved, stored away in four large sugar cans exactly as he had described. The fortune consisted of gold U.S. coins, thousands in Swiss francs, hundreds of thousands in Reichsmarks, Swedish kronen, a fragmentary diary kept by Eva Braun, and more. In one of the cans were two large gold and diamond rings. One was encrusted with twenty-nine diamonds and a sapphire cross; the other held three large diamonds. The German currency was all in 100 denomination notes, just as Rudolf had told them.12

  “Did he offer you anything for your assistance?” asked Gutierrez.

  Meier nodded. “Yes, he said I might keep 100,000 of the 400,000 Reichsmarks.”

  “What else can you tell us?

  “Frau Konrad was here about one week ago,” Meier revealed.“Franz’s wife Agnes?” asked Gutierrez.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “What else?” he responded. “My uncle and what has been going on. She told me she had visited her in-laws at Schladming. She was very upset that he had sent money and food to his mother and brother instead of to his wife and children.”

  This interested Gutierrez, who continued his questioning. “Did she say anything about any valuables or personal papers or letters Konrad might have been carrying or had hidden elsewhere?”

  “Yes. Some time before that—I don’t know exactly when—when she was in Schladming, she told me her sister-in-law [Minna Konrad] told her that the Americans had already been there several times and had picked up some of Konrad’s possessions, including his stamp collection.” Meier stopped talking. He had more to tell Gutierrez.

  “What else did she tell you?” he asked.

  “Her sister-in-law, Minna, told her that the glass jars with the writings and the gold were still buried, and the Americans had not yet found them,” answered Meier. “She told Frau Konrad she would rather be shot than give those items up.” He paused. “She also told me that she had 12,000 Reichsmarks at her disposal, which represented what she earned selling the radio sets Konrad had sent to her on two trucks in Schladming.”

  Fritz and Minna Konrad, apparently, were still concealing stolen items. “Did she mention anything else about the ‘writings’?” asked Gutierrez.

  “She talked about them and some photos and private effects of Eva Braun,” Meier replied. “I don’t know whether these items were the ones the Americans had already picked up, or whether they are still there.”

  “Did you bury or hide anything else?” he inquired further.

  “I did not … other than the four cans.” Meier paused and thought a moment. “One time Konrad came here on one of his visits and picked up a sum of money. I don’t know just how much. I dug one can out, and then re-buried the remainder of the money in the same can.”13

  “Did he tell you why he needed the money? Did he hide anything else around here?” asked the agent.

  “He said he wanted to buy a rug,” answered the nephew. “I don’t know whether he buried or hid anything himself near here. I did not see him bury anything.”

  “Did he ever mention to you how he obtained all of this money or what he needed it for?” queried Gutierrez.

  Meier shook his head and continued. “He told me in the last days before the capitulation he had large sums of money under his control. I think he spoke of several million. He also stated that he had paid all the Fischhorn personnel six months’ salary in advance. He gave 100,000 Reichsmarks to one man—he did not say whom—and he said that man had burned the money.”

  “Did he take anything else to other places to hide them?”

  The nephew shrugged in response. “He did not say whether he had taken anything to other places, or buried or hidden anything else. He only said that he would have liked to have sent to me the items which he had sent to Schladming [to his brother’s house], but that he had not dared, because he did not know me well enough.”

  “Is there anything else you have forgotten to tell us?” asked the American.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Shortly after you were here the first time, two women, foreigners, Slavic types, were here asking for Konrad. I had an impression they had an appointment with him.”

  This was an interesting new development. “What did you tell them?” asked Gutierrez.

  “I told them Konrad had been arrested. They were shocked. I told the French military authorities about this at once,” he added. Meier did not say why he felt the need to do so, and Gutierrez apparently did not ask him.

  “Yesterday two other women were here,” he continued. “The younger one was one of those who had come before. They asked what we knew about Konrad. I did not talk to the women but my wife did. This woman said that Konrad had to be helped, and that she would try to get to talk to him.”

  “Why did she want to speak with him?” asked the agent.

  “She said that he was the only man in Warsaw who had tried to help the Jews and the Poles, the only one who had dared enter the Ghetto without a weapon. She also said he was greatly liked.” Meier hesitated. “The older woman asked whether he had buried anything here at my place.”

  Gutierrez might have been more on his guard at this moment. The last bit of information—about Konrad helping Jews and Poles in Warsaw—contradicted everything he had learned about the ex-SS officer. Who was lying, Meier or the mysterious woman? “How did your wife answer her?”

  “She told her no. She also told her about an article we had seen in the Salzburg paper that a Polish countess had received pictures valued at 700,000 Reichsmarks from an SS man from Fischhorn, out of [Reichsmarshall Hermann] Göring’s collection. The woman then asked [my wife] whether the Polish countess had been named Barbara.” Meier hesitated before adding, “My wife told me later that she thinks this woman was the Polish countess.” With that exchange the second meeting with Rudolf Meier came to an end.14

  It did not take agents Robert Gutierrez and William Conner long to locate two Polish women in the small village of Kitzbühl. They were found later the next afternoon. Frau Meier’s intuition was correct. The “older woman” was the tall, raven haired, 29-year-old Polish countess named Barbara Kalewska. The younger girl was her sister, Kristina Kalewska. The countess had been Konrad’s mistress during his tenure in Warsaw. The CIC agents listened carefully and took notes while Kalewska recounted her story. She had met Konrad in the Bristol Café in Warsaw, and in order to save herself and her family, which included her three small children, she manipulated him during the war years to guarantee their safety. As the CIC agents surmised, the “manipulation” meant she had become his mistress. Konrad, she continued, had intervened to save her brother, a Polish freedom fighter, from a German firing squad. He also helped move her two sisters and brother-in-law, Gricor Danturian, from Warsaw to Vienna, to Berlin, and finally to Kitzbühl.

  When asked about his activities in Warsaw, Kalewska pleaded ignorance. “All I know about Konrad’s activities is that he was working in the Ghetto, and that he was requisitioning furniture and other effects from the Jews….I have never been afraid,” she added, “but I was always sur
e that some day I would be questioned about Konrad.” It was an odd statement, and one she would not have made if she believed he was just an administrative officer performing an innocuous job.

  “I love him,” she wistfully added, “and I will never forget that I owe my brother’s life to him. I knew that I could not marry him, and that his place is with his wife and children, so I married Abbas Ali Kahn Rassul-Zade a few months ago.” The marriage proved disastrous. “He was always drunk and very nervous,” she claimed.

  “Why did you marry him in the first place?”

  “I never knew much about my husband,” the Countess answered, looking rather dejected. “He said he was 37, but looked much older. I married him because I am no longer young and wanted someone to look after me. We had an unhappy life together.”

  Gutierrez wasn’t sure she was telling him the whole truth. “Konrad was holding valuables for you, wasn’t he?”

  Kalewska looked puzzled and after a few moments answered. “While still in Warsaw I gave Konrad some things for safekeeping: a suitcase with underclothing, three pictures, and some jewelry—two bracelets and some rings. The pictures were by an Armenian painter. They are not particularly valuable.”

  “Did you give him any gold or currency?”

  “I did not give him any gold coins to hold for me. I got the jewelry back from Konrad already in Vienna.”15

  Satisfied, the agents decided to let the Polish war refugee off the hook and continue their investigation in Schladming. As for the countess, she had nowhere to go and no way of making a living. They felt sorry for her. As it turns out she had no need to make a living. When the small house in which she was living later caught fire, Kalewska—the poor, broke Polish refugee—removed several chests of gold from the charred ruins and returned to Vienna. She was never heard from again.16