Nazi hunter Elliot Welles, 79, dies

[deadparrot]

NEW YORK - Elliot Welles, a Holocaust survivor who found the officer who ordered his mother's death and turned that personal triumph into a relentless crusade to track down fugitive Nazis, has died. He was 79.

Welles died of an apparent heart attack at his Bronx home last Tuesday, his son, Mark Welles, of Roslyn, N.Y. said on Sunday.

Welles retired in 2003 after more than 20 years as head of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League's Nazi-hunting operations. Finding ex-Nazis who had eluded post-World War II justice "was an overriding passion in his life," his son said.

"Basically he was determined to avenge for other people what they could not do for themselves," Mark Welles said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061203/ap_on_re_us/obit_welles

[wicket]

1. Rest in peace

O8)

[JohnLocke]

2. Yitgaddal v'yitqaddash sh'meh rabba...

Rest in peace, Elliot. :)

[Hekate]

6. Amen. He did noble work; he was one of the righteous.

Rest in peace, Mr. Welles. Your name will be remembered for a blessing.

Hekate

[JudyM]

3. Rest in peace to a human angel. nt

[ShockediSay]

4. Glad you think someone determined to avenge is a human angel nt

[MidwestTransplant]

5. Yeah a human angel would have let those that just escaped justice

remain free. :shrug:

BTW, for what it's worth, Israel doesn't execute Nazis (except for one before they abolished the DP).

[OregonDem]

12. The death penalty is legal in Israel for those who commit genocide

Wouldn't that include those involved in the holocaust?

[MidwestTransplant]

15. I guess that's technically correct but Adolf Eichmann was the only

one of the many Nazis brought to Israel. The last time anybody was executed there was 1954.

[everythingsxen]

18. Actually...

Eichmann was hung in 1962.

But I think you were looking at the statistics for the year executions were outlawed for ordinary crimes. I wasn't sure if you were trying to say the last execution happened in '54 or if you were citing the stat.

[Hekate]

7. Biblical angels are not flower-fairies. Remember the flaming sword....

...that barred the return to Eden.

In addition to the angel of the Annunciation and other sweet neews, there are avenging angels and an Angel of Death.

Hekate

[krispos42]

8. He doesn't REALLY hunt Nazis

As appealling that though may be on some level...

"Hey, Jimmy, did ya get your limit today?"
"Yeah, Chris, sure did! Two former prison guards and a skinhead!"

...the guy was not out there with a scope-sighted rifle and an abundance of Mossy Oak camo.

He was a detective.

[JudyM]

10. Great distinction. Thanks! nt

[sofa king]

9. I hope he got every last one of those vermin.

I friggin' hate Nazis.

[JudyM]

11. Nope, there are a lot more out there, from what I've read.

They've become assimilated into US society and many more live in Europe and South America. And many have been unjustly enriched by the spoils they took from Jews and others that they killed.

[rman]

14. Some have become assimilated into the US

Intelligence community.

A Timeline of CIA Atrocities
by Steve Kangas
http://www.atrocities.net/

Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler’s). The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus. Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Gehlen was supposed to protect.

[JudyM]

19. That's enough to make you shudder. nt

[LibertyorDeath]

13. Thank You for your Life's Work

Rest In Peace

Born Kurt Sauerquell in Vienna, Austria, on Sept. 18, 1927, Elliot Welles was among Jews rounded up early in the war and deported to Latvia. His mother, Anna, was one of a group singled out and executed in woods near Riga. He learned her fate when her clothes were returned two days later.

From Riga's ghetto, he was sent to the Stutthor concentration camp in Poland. As the war's end neared, he escaped during a forced march to another camp in Germany and made his way back to Vienna.

There he married Holocaust survivor Ceil Chaiken and they came to the United States in 1949. He based the name Welles on his own, which means "mineral wells" in German, and adopted the spelling as a nod toward actor Orson Welles, his son said.

In a series of jobs, Welles saved enough money to become part owner of the Lorelei, a restaurant in Yorkville, Manhattan's upper east side German enclave, which enabled him to establish German contacts that would help later in pursuing escaped Nazis.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061203/ap_on_re_us/obit_welles

[roguevalley]

16. one of the righteous gets to go home RIP

[David Zephyr]

17. Rest in Peace, Elliot.

Elliot, your mother's love for her child, was manifest through you life. How I admire you. What an example your life sets. Rest in peace, now...you certainly deserve it, brave man.