Note: This is an encore episode of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in August 2021.
Otto von Wächter was an Austrian lawyer, husband, father, and a senior SS officer. Creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, Wächter was hunted for three years following WWII.
In his newest book, The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wächter's extraordinary, shocking story. Given full access to the Wächter family archives--journals, diaries, tapes, and more--and with the assistance of the Wächters' son Horst, Sands writes of Wächter's rise through the Nazi high command, his "blissful" marriage and family life as their world was brought to ruin, and his four-year flight to escape justice
Philippe Sands is a Professor of Law at University College London and a practicing barrister at Matrix Chambers. His books include Lawless World and Torture Team. He is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair.