- A body unearthed on a Berlin building
site in 1972 has been definitively identified through DNA testing as Adolf
Hitler's right-hand man, Martin Bormann.
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- Experts said at the time of the discovery
that the remains were those of Bormann, who helped to organise the Holocaust.
They concluded that he died by his own hand on May 2, 1945 -- possibly
by taking poison -- as the Soviet army invaded, BBC News reports.
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- But rumors persisted that Bormann had
fled the country for South America before the end of the Second World War.
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- The German authorities ordered genetic
tests after a British book asserted that Bormann had been spirited away
by British commandos after the war to help them track down looted Nazi
gold.
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- An 83-year-old relative of Bormann supplied
the samples for the DNA comparison.
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- The Welt am Sonntag newspaper says German
authorities are now certain Bormann committed suicide. Bormann's family
now intends to cremate the body.
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- A newspaper in Paraguay reported in 1993
that Bormann had lived in that country for three years, had died in Asuncion
on February 15, 1959, and was buried in a nearby town.
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- As one of the top Nazi suspects, Bormann
was charged with war crimes and found guilty and sentenced to death in
absentia in 1946 by an international military tribunal in Nuremberg.
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- Argentina has created a special bureau
to track down any remaining Nazi war criminals hiding in a country that
was once the refuge of top Nazis like Josef Mengele. The launch coincided
with the arrest last Thursday of Dinko Sakic, sought for alleged war crimes
as the head of a concentration camp, BBC reports.
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- Victor Ramos, head of the government's
Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, says Argentina
wants to ensure there are no more like Sakic and former Nazi Erich Priebke,
who was extradited to Italy in 1995.
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- "Some people said when Priebke was
arrested that because of his age -- these crimes were committed in the
1930s and 1940s -- he was the last Nazi," Ramos said. "But Sakic
triggered a red light. It made us think there could be more."
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