Riddle of the amateur Nazi hunter

TO THE old man, Mark Gould was a sympathetic ear, interested in stories of his wartime exploits. But in fact Gould was on a mission to expose 97-year-old Bernhard Frank as an ageing Nazi and, some claim, to secure a book and movie deal.

Earlier this month Gould revealed to Frank that he had pretended to be a neo-Nazi to the former SS (Schutzstaffel) officer, once a trusted aide to Reichsfhrer Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany after Adolf Hitler.

According to a transcript of the encounter provided by Gould, Frank looked at his accuser and, through the confusion of age and betrayal, asked: "Are you my enemy or my friend?".

"I am your enemy," Gould said, leaning in toward Frank. "I am your enemy."

"My enemy, why?" Frank demanded. "Because you killed my family," Gould replied.

Gould announced last week that, with his cousin, Burton Bernstein, he was filing a federal civil lawsuit against Frank in Washington DC that would claim Frank was responsible for orders issued on 28 July, 1941, that spurred SS troops to kill their ancestors in the Ukrainian village of Korets.

Gould says he can provide documentary proof Frank had a central role in the administration of the earliest days of the Holocaust as a desk officer who help run the Nazi extermination project.

The case will reveal the unusual journey of a self-styled historian and his staged friendship with Frank, who confided in one taped interview that Himmler "was a good man" and that six million Jews "dug their own grave" by oppressing the Germans.

However, Frank is not regarded as a war criminal by the authorities in Germany responsible for policing the Nazi past. Indeed, four years ago Frank published a book about his Nazi career, entitled As Hitler's Commandant — From the Wewelsburg to the Berghof, complete with photographs of himself in Nazi uniform.

During the Nazi era, he served as a librarian at Wewelsburg Castle, the ideological training ground for the SS. He subsequently occupied a senior position on Himmler's administrative staff, keeping what was called the war diary.

He co-signed some of Himmler's orders and later served as a commander at the eastern front. He was made commander of Obersalzberg, the site of Hitler's mountain retreat, the Berghof. Toward the end of the war, Frank was ordered to arrest and kill Luftwaffe boss Hermann Gring as a traitor, an order he defied.

All that is in Frank's book.Kurt Schrimm, chief of the Federal Archives Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Germany, said Frank's name appeared in the archives, but never in connection with war crimes

Gould, though not Jewish, has an "extended Jewish family," because his stepfather is a Jew. He tells of a rough upbringing in Texas marked by fighting, heavy drinking and drug use, and said he was in rehabilitation by the time he was 18, dropped out of college and started selling stock.

He said he realised he could make money selling lists of investors, created his own company and moved to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, with whom he had three daughters. He was speaking to a coin dealer one day for business when he saw that the man was also selling a Nazi flag.

Gould bought the flag and started buying up Second World War memorabilia, which he stored in his apartment. One day, he said, he purchased the gun Gring had surrendered to the Americans. Then, he said, he learned the weapon had been turned over to a Jewish American soldier.

He said that inspired him to film members of the team who had arrested Gring. He then decided to take his video camera to Germany. He realised quickly, he claimed, that he could penetrate deep into the neo-Nazi community if he pretended to be a rich sympathiser.

"I have been living underground for a long time now," Gould said, seated in an office in Berlin. He has grown his hair long since, a reaction to the years he had to remain clean-cut as a neo-Nazi. "I lived in that world. I saw things in a National Socialist point of view. I compartmentalised my life."

How he tracked down Frank is difficult to verify. He suggests intelligence agencies helped in exchange for information on neo-Nazis. It is unclear how he funded his work, while some experts chose not to help him because they were dubious about his tactics, including hidden cameras, and were sceptical of his goals. Some academics in the US and officials in Israel have been impressed with his work.

"I think Mark is an unconventional guy who has done courageous and lonely work," said Stephen D Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California and founder of The Holocaust Centre in Britain.

After reviewing the material, he said he thought Gould's work raised an important question of how society defined culpability. "Of all the Nazis that have surfaced over the years, Bernhard Frank sends the biggest shiver down my spine," Smith wrote in an essay. "Not because he was an outright killer, but because he was active right in the heart of darkness, at the epicentre of the Holocaust, at the scene of the crime. For some reason we let him get away with it."

Gould swept into Germany earlier this month to complete his project, entering Frank's home last weekend.

Frank was with his nurse and a friend and, according to the transcript, kept shouting, "Nothing, nothing, nothing," waving a hand and at one point feigning sleep. The cameras were rolling. "You'll be dead soon," Gould said before he left. "And the whole world will know."