862.20235/7–3147
The United States Political Adviser for Germany (Murphy) to the Secretary of State
No. 10577
The Political Adviser for Germany refers to his telegram no. 1683, dated July 15, 194756—in which he announced the conclusion of the interrogation of five of the eight Germans recently deported from Argentina aboard the SS Río Teueo—and has the honor to enclose herewith the sworn statement of one of the repatriates, Albert Treusch.56
Treusch was without doubt the individual least implicated in espionage of any of the components of the two 1947 deportation groups on the Pampa and the Río Teuco, with the possible exception of Alfred Voelckers. His fourteen-months’ imprisonment rested on the flimsy basis of his having unwittingly aided Melita Tietz and Johannes Siegfried Becker to find a Buenos Aires apartment, without at the time [Page 204] knowing their real identity. There was nothing in the brief background material on this prisoner to indicate that his involvement went further. Probably the only case comparable to Treusch’s is that of Heinz Beckedahl, a young Alsatian who was deported on the Highland Monarch in 1946 because in 1938 he had lived in the same boarding house with Siegfried Becker; this circumstance led the Argentine police to arrest and torture Beckedahl in 1945 in the conviction that he must then, seven years later, know of Becker’s whereabouts.
While Treusch’s resentment at the complete disruption of his life conduced to a favorable clime for revelation concerning the mass of collusion, fact-juggling and false witness which went to make up the Argentine handling of the espionage cases, it appears that this very resentment led the prisoner, while in jail, to maintain himself as far as possible removed from the rest of the group. Treusch refused to have anything to do with the habeas corpus defense offered by the lawyer Octavio Rivarola, as he had no desire to be further involved with the people who had been responsible for ruining his career. Since his tenuous connection with the organization did not take place until well after the others had been arrested, he was not required to make false declarations nor to alter his testimony in the interests of a “rounded-out picture” and a dovetailing, if largely fabricated whole. (See the interrogations of Hans Lieberth and Anna Assmann, Berlin despatches nos. 10549 and 10588, dated July 25 and July 31, 1947, respectively.59)
Once he was released from prison in June, 1946, Treusch was taken back at his old job, and remained working in Buenos Aires until he heard from Willi Lindenstruth, at the end of October, 1946, that new arrests were in the air. When he had confirmed this rumor through Gustav Utzinger—who was also preparing to go into hiding—Treusch fled to the Argentine interior and remained there inconspicuously until he was arrested by the Federal Police in Córdoba on March 13, 1947. The prisoner was unable to say whether the police had just then discovered his presence in the Córdoba hills or whether they had previously known he was there.
In view of the Department’s concurrence with Treusch’s release (Department’s telegram no. 1556, dated July 28, 194760) he has been transferred from Berlin to the Repatriation Center at Ludwigsburg, where he will be processed and set at liberty.