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| Photo: Don Honeyman |
I learned
recently of the death of Gitta Sereny, a great personality and a remarkable
journalist and writer. I first met Gitta Sereny in
the mid-1980's, when she arrived at our office in the Justice Department with certain
documents that, if genuine, would have described the use by US intelligence of
the notorious war criminal, Odilio Globocnik.
It had long
been thought that Globocnik had committed suicide at the end of the war to
avoid internment and trial for his participation in the murder of Jews in his
capacity as SS and Police Leader in Lublin and for his involvement in the liquidation
of the Warsaw and Bialystok Ghettos. The
documents that Gitta presented to us related to the activity of the Army’s CIC
and indicated that Globocnik had been recruited and used by the US in the
postwar period. Gitta had reason to
question the authenticity of the documents, and we agreed to assist her in
determining whether they were genuine because we knew that, if they turned out
to be authentic (or if they were to be made public), we would be called on to
investigate the circumstances that gave rise to them.
Without going
into detail, we conducted, among other things, a forensic analysis of the
documents, including a linguistic evaluation, done with the help of Prof. Murray
Miron, who had consulted on the Son of Sam investigation. At the same time, Gitta, in her inimical way,
carried out creative and indefatigable research about Globocnik. In the end, she was able to locate the British
officer who arrested him and located a photograph of him after his death. Knowing that the documents were forgeries,
Gitta was spared embarrassment. She went
on to write up the story in The Guardian
of the forgery and of her tracking down and confirming Globocnik’s fate.
Gitta was
grateful for our help, and, through the close contact we established during the
Globocnik case, we became friends. I
tried to be of assistance to her over the years, especially when she was
conducting research in the US concerning her own activities following the war,
when she worked for UNRRA, in attempting to reunite children, who had been
removed from their families, with their parents.
In 1994, Gitta
wrote a cover story for The Independent
on Sunday about the Berlin Document Center (BDC) and its transfer from US
administration to the German government.
I was then the director of the BDC and experienced firsthand Gitta’s
renowned skill as an interviewer and investigator. She reported the story with the same kind of
intensity that she devoted to her other efforts. A focused and fearsome interviewer, she
believed that she – and, it seemed, she alone -- could get at the truth. Like a surgeon, she posed questions and
follow-ups with precision -- cutting through layers of obscuring gristle to
reach the heart of the matter. She
followed her deft questions with a piercing and searching look -- both a signal
of kinship and a warning. She employed
this unrelenting and remarkably effective technique in all her work, including
the classic book, Into that Darkness,
in which she dissects the commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl, as well as in
her biography of Albert Speer.
I was fortunate
to have met Gitta Sereny and was richer for having known her.
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