Life

Former Nazi leader Pablo Simons D'Aerschot (born Paul van Aerschodt in Belgium) died last Thursday in Donostia-San Sebastian. He was 89.

Paul van Aerschodt had just turned 18 when he joined Hitler's army where he earned the nickname 'The Giant Blond with the Gun'.

D'Aerschot was arrested at the end of the Second World War and sentenced to the death penalty by a war crimes tribunal after sending more than 2,500 people to nazi concentration camps. He escaped before the sentence could be carried out.

Van Aerschodt was detained at a camp for foreigners in Mirando de Ebro (Burgos, Spain) before managing to escape to Bolivia with forged papers provided by a Spanish Bishop. In Bolivia he lived under the name Juan Pablo Simons, the same name under which he travelled to the Basque Country in 1964, where he set up home in the Gipuzkoan capital.

Twenty years later he began to make periodic trips to his native Belgium. It was during one of those trips in 2007 that he was arrested after being reported by former members of the Belgian resistance. By that time, however, the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out.

He died peacefully last Thursday at his home in Donostia-San Sebastian aged 89, still proud of his Nazi past.