Word: gerhard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...said, she and her engineer husband Geza were living on a coffee and fruit farm in Nova Europa, 175 miles north of Sao Paulo, when they were introduced at a social function to Wolfgang Gerhard. Gerhard, an Austrian living in Brazil, asked the Stammers if they could take in a Swiss friend of his named Peter Hochbichlet. The friend, Gerhard said, would be able to help out around the farm. Agreeing to put up Peter, or "Pedro," in a separate house on their property, the family found him to be as good as Gerhard's word: the man paid...
...that point, the Stammers asked Gerhard to find another home for his friend. He promised to do so, but nothing happened. Weeks turned into months, months into years. Pedro stayed. Why did the Stammers not report their guest to the police? Because, said Gitta, Gerhard told them their lives would be in danger if they talked. Even after Gerhard had left Brazil, and died in Austria in 1978, said Stammer, she feared retribution from his "friends" if ever she went to the authorities. Throughout, Pedro never once threatened her family; he even went so far as to chide Gerhard...
...left Pedro in their former home in nearby Caieiras. After they sold the Caieiras property in 1975, they bought a home in the suburb of Eldorado Paulista and permitted the old man to stay there. By then he had grown close to the Bosserts, whom he had met through Gerhard in 1970. In Pedro's final years, said Stammer, she saw him only rarely, including one chance encounter with his son Rolf. "I don't feel I was really guilty," said Stammer. "I feel I was a donkey...
...police and to the press, a vivid picture began to emerge of the strange, solitary life of the man who may have been Mengele. Ernesto Glawe, an Argentine-born engineer with a German father, described in a deposition how he had been drawn into the expatriate circles of Gerhard and the Bosserts. Only one year after that initial meeting, said Glawe, Gerhard asked him if he would help an old Austrian friend. Somewhat taken aback at this request, Glawe eventually acquiesced and began paying monthly visits to the aging Pedro, bringing him biscuits and chocolate. Surprisingly, said Glawe, Pedro spoke...
...dimensions of the drama widened in Brazil, a little more light was shed upon some of its shadowy supporting players. Wolfgang Gerhard, who seemed to have been Pedro's ubiquitous fixer, was, said Austrian Consul-General Otto Heller in Sao Paulo, a fanatic Nazi who brought out a fascist propaganda sheet called Der Reichsbrief (The Reich Letter). By the age of twelve, Gerhard had become a member of the Hitler Youth and later boasted of being a committed Nazi. Nonetheless, in the Austrian town of Graz last week, Gerhard's 26-year- old son Adolf firmly rejected the stories told...