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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve
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camera. It's ready. Are you welcome
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to stuff you should know? Runhouse
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Stuff Works dot Com?
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I welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
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I'm a staff writer here at how Stuff Works dot
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Com. With me as always is my very
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attractive and trust the editor Chris Palette.
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Chris, how's your go kie? Oh? It's great?
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Thanks. So we wrote
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this article about whether or not Nazi
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war criminals are still a large and UM
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the Simon Weisenthal Center. UH.
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This this group that's dedicated to finding
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rooting out the last of the Nazi
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war criminals who may or may not be
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still alive. UM has launched
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Operation Last Day, Last Chance
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UH in a in a in a last ditch effort.
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But UM, while
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I was researching this, Chris, I found a
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lot of stuff that that just I couldn't
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fit into the article. UM. One
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of the things that that stuck out to me
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the most was the Massad. You know
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what the Massada is. That's the Israeli
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secret service right it is now.
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They have been chasing
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Nazis for decades and
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have been fairly successful at it. They found
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Klaus Barbie. UH. They also
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found Adolf Eichmann, who was pretty
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much the engineer of the nazis
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final solution of exterminating
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all these um supposedly unwanted
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races. UM. But I also
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found something very um interesting.
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The Massad actually engaged
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in UH employing and hiding
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some wanted Nazi war criminals, which
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I found startling. You know, this this group
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that's dedicated to rooting out
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for conviction UM or at the very
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least for trial Nazi war criminals
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UM having employed one
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the guy they employed UM was
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this doctor who actually
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came up with the idea of mobile
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gas vans, right, so
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that the the Nazis wouldn't
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have to shoot the Jews any
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longer to kill them. They could just load them up in
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these vans and carbon monoxide
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was put into the end of the vans
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and and whoever was inside was killed. And the
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worst part was these vans were
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they looked like Red Cross ambulances,
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which is just just about as bad as it gets
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time to think. Yeah, I think it's also a violation
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of the Geneva Convention. I'm quite sure, but I
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think pretty much percent of what the
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Nazis did was in violation of the
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Geneva Conventions. That was much
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out the window from day one, you know, not about
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following the rules. Well you said too
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in the article that they weren't the only ones who
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had employed some of the
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former Nazis certainly not. Yeah,
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who else, um, you know, even the American
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government. Um, I think you said the British
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too. You know. Basically, if they had something,
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uh that that they could use, the governments
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could use that, they were willing to
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take them on. I know a lot of that. The nuclear
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and rocket scientists too, were
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were very important for them to uh
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to grab before they could be tried.
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I guess definitely Project paper Clip.
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It was an actual secret
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project undertaken by the United States
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government to poach as many Nazi
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scientists as possible. Some of them
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were war criminals, some of them were lesser
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known, lesser involved people. But
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you know, a lot of people argue that
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we wouldn't have made it to space first had
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it not been for former Nazi
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scientists like Verna von Brown and
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some of the other guys like him who really
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helped on the American rocket
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team. That's amazing to think about
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that they would be exonerated, you know, simply because
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of you know, some of the other things that they
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could bring. But at least maybe they could uh
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make some positive contributions. And I think
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also, um, from my understanding, Americans
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did undertake a process of determining
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just how involved you know, a certain
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person was, at least
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the the U. S. Government. I think with the c i A.
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It was a a different matter.
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I think they used whoever they
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felt could help them. I wouldn't no matter
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what involvement they had. Do you know anything about
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that? Honestly, I don't. I haven't done
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done nearly as much research as year. Well,
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let me Adolf Eichmann,
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who, like I said, was finally captured.
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He was actually kidnapped in Argentina by the
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massade. Uh. He was
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used by the CIA as a
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West German agent um
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and they knew who he was, they knew what he'd
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done, and they were still using him as a secret
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agent in West Germany. It's
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amazing. Well that's it for
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for Are there still Nazi more criminals
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at large? You can find out more about it on
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how stuff works dot com. Thanks for listening
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for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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Because it how stuff works dot Com
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brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve
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