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We also got a tip that there was a a high-ranking Nazi living in
the town of Waidring in Austria and his name we didn't know. I
thought it was [SS chief] Heinrich Himmler from the description,
but I didn't have a jeep of my own and I didn't have an interpreter
of my own at the time, so I borrowed another guy's jeep and his
driver and the three of us went up the hill to this house, chalet,
chateau, whatever you want to call it, and I entered, with my .45
[pistol] in hand, and I went upstairs. There was a man sitting on
a chair with an easel to his right painting the opposite Alp. And
I asked him his name and he told me "Joseph Sailer." And I said
"where's your identification papers," and he reached right in back
and he pulled out an identification paper made out to the name of
Joseph Sailer. Now it didn't hit me quite that fast that this was
Julius Streicher, and I began asking him things about Himmler,
because I thought I had the wrong guy, and he said he knew nothing
about politics. He was a painter. He knew nothing about anything
that had to do with what I was interested in and then I don't know
why I said, "and what about Julius Streicher?" and he said "Ja, der
bin ich." Now I got that only from the J.S. on his work papers.
Joseph Sailer was Julius Streicher. "Ja, der bin ich," which when
translated into English reads "yeah, that's who I am." Now we had
no further interrogation. In the car, in the jeep on the way he and
I were in the back. I had my gun riding his ribs so nothing was
going to happen there. He wasn't going to jump out or commit
suicide or anything, and I said to him...this is the only
interrogation he got from me...I said to him, "Sind sie der
Streicher, der gegen die Juden war?" which when translated means,
"are you the Streicher who was against the Jews?" And he very
calmly said, "Ja, der bin ich," which meant "yeah, that's who I
am," but he might just as well have said "so what." I mean he was
arrogant to the very end, so much so that when we got to
Berchtesgaden...oh, I'm sorry....I stopped at my regimental
headquarters to notify them I was bringing him in and Berchtesgaden
was about forty miles away from us. When I got to Berchtesgaden, as
he was getting out of the jeep, I booted him a little bit so that
accelerated his departure, and the place was loaded with reporters
and this, that, and the other, and one reporter came up to me and
he said, "you know, you just killed the greatest story of the war."
I said "how?" He said "can you imagine if a guy named Cohen or
Goldberg or Levy had captured this arch-antisemite, what a great
story it would be?" I said "why?" He said "because a Jew would be
doing this." And I told him "I'm Jewish," and that's when the
microphones came into my face and the cameras started clicking away
and things started to happen that changed the rest of my life.
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