Hess’s family voices doubts

Press, 23 April 1979, Page 9

Hess’s family voices doubts

NZPA-Reuter Munich The son of the former Nazi deputy leader, Rudolf Hess, has called for a panel! of international experts to determine whether the man in Spandau Prison is his father or an impostor. Mr Wolf-Ruediger Hess appeared to be voicing the first doubts of the Hess family about- the identify of the man sentenced to life imprisonment at the 1948 Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. A British surgeon, Hugh Thomas, who once served on the staff of Spandau Prison, says a lack of First World War bullet wounds proves that the man sentenced at Nuremberg is not Adolf Hitler’s former deputy. He has documented his claim in a book entitled “The Murder of Rudolf Hess.”

Mr Hess junior says that he and his mother, Mrs Use Hess, favour an examination by experts to check whether “the man in Spandau really is Rudolf Hess.” “If he (Mr Thomas) is a serious doctor, and we must assume this, then his observation that there is absolutely no sign of a lung wound gives us much fool for thought,” Mr Hess says. Mr Wolf-Ruediger Hess said that when the family receive a copy of “The Murder of Rudolf Hess” they will ask the Western Allies administering Spandau to convene the medical panel. He says that Mrs Hess intends to visit the man she believes to be her husband on Wednesday, the day before his eighty-fifth birthday.