RAUFEISEN, ARMIN (1928–1987). A West German geophysicist
who spied for the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), Armin
Raufeisen was born near Tilsit (now Sovetsk, Russia) on 13 Novem-
ber 1928. Displaced by World War II, his family moved to a small
village near the Erzgebirge mountains in Saxony. After working
in the Wismut mines, Raufeisen was trained as a geophysicist and
recruited as a Perspektivagent by the HVA in 1957. Resettled in
Hanover, he found employment with a large nuclear energy corpora-
tion and began to send confidential information to East Berlin. The
defection of HVA officer Werner Stiller in January 1979 triggered
Raufeisen’s exfiltration to the German Democratic Republic. Soon
disillusioned, he sought to return to the Federal Republic of Ger-
many with his family. The rejection of his exit application led him
to attempt an illegal border crossing in 1981, but he was arrested and
given a life sentence for Republikflucht (flight from the republic)
and aggravated treason. On 12 October 1987, Raufeisen died in a
hospital in Leipzig-Meusdorf under unclarified circumstances.
RAUFF, WALTER (1906–1984). A leading functionary of the Si-
cherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service), Walter Rauff was born on
19 June 1906. An active navy officer until 1935, he joined the SD
three years later and rose to head the office for technical affairs of
the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Well acquainted with Reinhard
Heydrich, Rauff received orders to develop mobile gas chambers
for use on the eastern front. Although the first ones arrived in De-
cember 1941, they never became popular because of frequent mal-
functions. In late 1942, he left Berlin to head a task force in Tunis
and subsequently became the SS and police chief for northern Italy,
based in Milan. In both locales, he had a reputation for exceptional
ruthlessness.
Captured by Allied forces in 1945 and placed in a prisoner of war
camp in Rimini, he escaped, first going to Syria and then Ecuador
and Chile. In 1958, his application for a naval pension from the
government of the Federal Republic of Germany alerted authorities
to his whereabouts, but a request for extradition was denied because
of a Chilean statute of limitations. In 1972, however, he made a
deposition before a West German prosecutor regarding another war
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