The Case of Hans Klose

It was Sept. 2, 1945, less than four months after war's end--and Berlin lay in its ruins. At the door of an apartment on rubble-heaped Kurfuerstendamm, a British noncom banged imperatively. A man answered. "Are you Klose?" the noncom demanded. Hans Klose answered yes, and his five-year nightmare began.

Taken to a villa in the British sector, he was asked more questions by British intelligence agents. Soon Klose began to understand: they were looking for another Klose, a former Abwehr (counterespionage) officer, about 20 years older, whose first name was Erich or Emil. Monotonously, Hans Klose repeated that he was the wrong Klose: not Erich but Hans, not 54 years old but 34, not an ex-officer but an ex-private in the Wehrmacht. A British sergeant snapped, "You lie." Hans Klose produced his Wehrpass (military identity card); the British shrugged. They turned him over to the Russian army HQ; again he swore that his first name was Hans, again a Red officer said: "You lie."

The Reds put him into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which like Buchenwald was taken over from the Nazis; to this day the Reds still use both. For five years Hans Klose, along with 60,000 other prisoners in Sachsenhausen, slept on a wooden pallet 2-ft. wide (if one man in the row turned in discomfort, all had to turn). He lost his teeth and got tuberculosis. He was never tried, got no hearing, was charged with nothing. Then, on Jan. 27, 1950, the Russians abruptly told him that he was a free man.

Once out of prison, Klose took treatment for his TB (but was not cured), prepared to demand financial restitution from the British for false arrest. At 42, his hair was almost white.

Last week his suit for 60,000 Deutsche Mark ($14,286) damages came up in a British occupation court. It was quickly rejected. At the time of his arrest, said the judges, there had been a number of mistaken arrests, but the true identity had always come to light in the subsequent trials. If such a trial had not taken place in the case of Hans Klose, "the entire responsibility rests with the power that had demanded Klose's arrest. It is not for this court to decide claims against the Soviet occupation power." Too bad.

What ever happened to the other Klose? Two months after they had jailed him, Hans later found out, the Russians picked up the Erich Klose they were looking for; he died of tuberculosis in a Red jail in 1947, or maybe it was 1948. No one really knew, and no one much cared.

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