The Day of Reckoning for Seifert

Former SS, dubbed the Bolzano Executioner, to be extradited from Canada to Italy

He ripped out the eyes of a young prisoner who died two days later; he tortured for hours a mother and her daughter before finally strangling them both; he raped a girl with a broken bottle; he drenched with buckets of ice-cold water a pregnant woman, isolated in a windowless cell in temperatures of 18 °C below zero; he clubbed two prisoners in the lager's yard and then gutted them with the assistance of two guards.
These attacks, rapes, and sadistic episodes took place between 1944 and 1945 in the Bolzano concentration camp where many antifascists, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, partisans, and spouses of such found their deaths. Such hideous crimes were committed by Michael Seifert, a.k.a. Micha, a former SS corporal who hid these truths for half a century, denying his past of ferocious nazi executioner. He escaped to Canada and has he's been living since 1951 at 5471 Commercial Street in Vancouver, now conducting the life of a pensioner fond of gardening. Nobody knew of his murderous past. With his wife Christine and their son John, Micha attended functions and other religious activities at the Holy Family German Parish, where he was arrested last October. Seifert, whom his prisoners had nicknamed "the Bolzano executioner", was stopped by four Mounties while leaving the church: Canada was acting upon a request for extradition issued by the State Prosecutor of Verona, following a final life sentence against him.
The sentence dates back to November 2000, when the Military Court of Verona ordered the former Nazi corporal jailed for life for his rapes, tortures and murders against Jews, partisans, and other prisoners held in the Bolzano concentration camp. He was found guilty of nine of the 15 charges raised against him, including the death of 11 prisoners. The judges also ordered the payment of 100 million lira to the Association of Italian Partisans and to the Association of Deportees, which had constituted themselves as plaintiffs. The sentence remarks that Seifert "tortured, raped and murdered with cruelty and intent".
Last August 27, the Superior Court of British Columbia accepted Italy's request for extradition, thus completing the bureaucratic formalities needed to transfer the former SS corporal to Italian custody. Now, the final green light will come from Immigration Minister Martin Cauchon. In fact, the 30-day deadline for appealing the decision has expired, and Seifert's counsel Dough Christie has not repeated his attempt of last April. Therefore, in a matter of days, barring last-minute coups-de-theatre, the former SS will be extradited and face justice in Italy.
His crimes are well remembered by many Italians who survived that ordeal. Military Prosecutor of Verona Bartolomeo Costantini, whose investigation allowed Seifert to be located in Canada during the '90s, heard of the atrocities from the very survivors of the Bolzano camp, where 11,000 people were interned, including Jews, families of deserters, partisans, and political opponents. Many were later transferred to the extermination camps at Auschwitz and Mauthausen. Many more stayed in Bolzano and were tortured. The haunting, inhuman cries echoing all night long were evoked by a dozen former prisoners also in front of the war crimes prosecutor of Ottawa, Maddalena Schwarz.
Canada pursued the Seifert case with determination: when the Vancouver trial opened, Ottawa stripped the former Nazi of his citizenship, after verifying that when he immigrated from Germany (Lutgenrode) on August 14, 1951, he had given false generalities. At the time, Canadian laws already barred former members of the SS from entering the country, and Micha lied. In order to get his citizenship, he declared being born in Narwa, Estonia, instead of Ukraine. After careful checks on documents found in German archives, investigating the bloody past of the SS, the Canadian Government deleted Seifert from the list of its citizens. Those documents were also exhibited in the Vancouver court.
The lawyer of Ottawa's Ministry of Justice, Roger McMeans, in the very first hearing following Seifert's arrest, asked the Court to hold him without bail until the closing of the case, due to the risk of flight. Seifert's counsel, Doug Christie, well known for defending Nazis and Neo-nazis like Holocaust-deniers Ernst Zundel and Jim Keegstra, did everything possible to allow the former SS corporal to be released. "He's a 78-year-old man in precarious health requiring constant care, so much so that the possibility of heart surgery and application of a pacemaker is being evaluated. His seclusion would be an abuse and a gross miscarriage of justice," he said to the Vancouver court that granted Seifert bail in May 2002, when the extradition process was starting.
In December 2002 Seifert admitted that he had been in the Bolzano concentration camp, but he denied the tortures and murders he had been charged with. After a long string of hearings full of exceptions, tricks and witnesses called in by Christie in his attempt to further stall the procedure, this long judicial story has come to an end.
The Canadian Jewish Congress always supported Ottawa, and applauded the capture of the "Bolzano Executioner". "We congratulate the RCMP, Ottawa's Department of War Crimes, and Italian judicial authorities for persevering with this case," declared Irving Abella of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Their website now includes a link about Seifert and the testimonies of survivors of Bolzano's Konzentrationslager. "Micha", with inseparable sidekick "Otto" (Otto Sein), were the masters of the male section of the camp, while the female block was ruled by Else Lächert and Anne Schmidt, nicknamed "the Tigress" and the "the Little Tigress" for their ferocity. They were free to move all over the camp and do whatever they wanted, thus robbing men, women, and children of their destiny. The tales of the survivors mention feeble hopes, continuous punishments, violence, tortures, scarce food, no hygiene, exhausting work, adding to the rigid temperatures.
"One night 'the Tigress' delivered two poor Jewish women," reads one of the testimonies. "Apparently they upset her because, being ill, they were moaning. They were killed in the most beastly way: stripped naked in January, drenched with buckets of water, left to die. They were mother and daughter. The younger one, too slow in dying, was drowned in a bucket. At least 20 of us heard her last gasp." Two kids, 16 and 4, attempted to escape and return to their mothers. "They were just in the springtime of life, but they were recaptured, clubbed, and finally strangled." Or a young partisan, accused of stealing some bread. "The two, Seifert and Sein, killed him on Easter day, hitting his head repeatedly against the walls of his cell. No one in that block will ever forget that day: scream by scream, blow by blow. Other prisoners were strangled. On those occasions, 'Micha' and 'Otto' paced the corridors wearing black leather gloves. Those gloves became a symbol, and when we saw them we trembled in our cells. Nobody knew whose turn it would be."
A woman in tears told the judge in Verona the story of an epileptic boy. "He was alone, with no relatives in the camp; I don't even know where in Italy he came from. Due to his illness, he didn't comply with the camp rules; for instance, he couldn't take off his cap when a German soldier passed by. How they beat him! He was locked up in his cell and never came out alive: we only saw his coffin. He was killed by two Ukrainian guards, extremely cruel people, they were terrible... Terrible! I also remember a prisoner who tried to escape. He was recaptured and flogged to death. Violence was an everyday occurrence: slaps, punches, lashes, to say nothing of the malnutrition, or of the constant humiliation. These abject torturers 'enjoyed' forcing us to do the 'rabbit march', consisting in dragging ourselves on the ground with our elbows. Old people, people who did not make it, got the same treatment: punches, kicks, and clubbing."
Indelible traces of inhuman life in Bolzano's camp where Michael Seifert "ruled like God". Those memories were repeated in front of the Canadian judge who ruled in favour of extradition to Italy. As soon as Minister Cauchon gives his consent, the day of reckoning will come for Micha, who evaded the ghosts of World War II for far too long.

Publication Date: 2003-10-05
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3222