Beloved In Argentina, He's A War Criminal In Rome -- Town Rallies Behind Ex-Nazi Erich Priebke

SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE, Argentina - The tidy house facing Belgrano Park looks like most of the houses tucked here in the southern ridge of the Andes - except for the police in winter coats posted outside.

For the past year, Erich Priebke, the 82-year-old owner of the house, hasn't been allowed to step outside. But soon he might be forced to go on a long trip - to Rome, where he faces charges of participating in the massacre of hundreds of people while serving as a Nazi captain.

Many towns in Argentina are still coming to terms with the legacy of the Third Reich. Men reputed to be former SS commanders still amble through town plazas, run businesses and even reminisce about their days as killers.

No one illustrates the controversy in Argentina better than the elderly Priebke, now under house arrest in this picturesque town with gingerbread houses and town squares that look like they were shipped over from the German Alps.

By most measures, Priebke was a model immigrant. He bought property in Bariloche, a ski resort favored by Argentina's jet-setters. He owned a downtown delicatessen, called Vienna. He headed the local German-Argentine Cultural Association.

For decades, apparently, no one asked about what he did before moving to Argentina in 1948.

Then, in 1989, Esteban Buch, a young writer, went to talk with Priebke. Buch's main interest was the late Toon Maes, an artist celebrated as "the best painter of the Patagonia" - the vast region surrounding Bariloche. Maes had another identity: In his native Belgium, he had overseen the Nazi propaganda arm and had been sentenced to death in absentia.

In the interview with the writer, Priebke confirmed all that. As the interview wound down, he made small talk.

"I asked Priebke what he did before coming to Argentina and he gave me what amounted to a confession, although a watered-down one," Buch recalled. Priebke also defended Nazism as "a good ideal, perhaps."

Buch got in touch with Nazi-hunting organizations, who revealed that Priebke was wanted for taking part in the fatal shooting of 335 Italian prisoners - many of them Jews - in a cave outside Rome in 1944.

Buch then wrote a book about the Nazi presence in Bariloche.

Last year, reporter Sam Donaldson visited the town to research a segment for ABC TV's "Prime Time Live." Donaldson had gotten wind that a former Nazi officer, Reinhard Kops, lived in Bariloche under an assumed name. Kops has written several autobiographies in which he told of his work for German military intelligence and defended the Nazis.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which tracks Nazis, also had identified Kops as a coordinator for neo-Nazi groups in Latin America.

When Donaldson showed up at his doorstep in Bariloche, Kops didn't deny his Nazi ties but he said Priebke had been a far more important figure in the Third Reich.

Confronted by the television crew, Priebke admitted to taking part in the massacre at the Ardeatine caves. He said he personally shot two of the victims. Later, he told Argentine journalists that Hitler ordered the massacre as retribution for the killing of 32 German soldiers in occupied Rome.

Italy demanded Priebke's extradition, and Argentina placed him under house arrest.

This time, under international scrutiny, Bariloche was forced to own up to its past. Several dozen residents signed a petition supporting Priebke. A few wrote letters and went on talk shows to denounce him.

Bariloche, home to 100,000, prides itself on its German roots. Germans are the largest immigrant group, followed by Spaniards and French. Although historians debate who founded San Carlos de Bariloche, the official record says the founder was Carlos Wiederhold, the son of German immigrants, exactly 100 years ago.

Daniel Ricefeld, a third-generation Argentine who is vice president of the tiny Jewish community in Bariloche, says Argentina has only one choice: Stop dragging its feet and extradite Priebke to Rome, where he will be tried.

Priebke's lawyer, Pedro Bianchi, said Argentina has a 10-year statute of limitations on homicides, so it couldn't let Italy try Priebke on 50-year-old charges.

An Argentine judge, Leonidas Moldes, who started reviewing the extradition request last year, ruled on May 4 that Priebke should be sent to Rome for trial.

"In Argentina, we do have a 10-year limit on trying murders," the judge said the other day in his office in Bariloche. "But Priebke is wanted for war crimes, what are called `crimes against humanity,' which have no statute of limitations under the 1948 Geneva convention."

Priebke is appealing the ruling.

But where Ricefeld and some others in Bariloche see an unrepentant war criminal, others see a good citizen.

The other day, the newspaper Bariloche Hoy published a front-page story denouncing the judge for going against "this person who has won the love of those he dealt with."

"Look, Priebke has an impeccable record here, he's been a good neighbor and a good ambassador of Germany and he brought a high level of education to Bariloche," the paper's editor, Facundo Grane, said in an interview.

Priebke's appeal could take months. In the meantime, three police officers - one in uniform and two in plain clothes - are stationed outside Priebke's house - more to protect him than to prevent him from escaping, the judge said.