Babiš’s uncle fled to Canada: he earlier served in the Gestapo and SS

The uncle of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, tied to the family story of “emigration” to Canada, turned out to be a former Gestapo officer and SS member. This is according to a new study by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, published in the journal Paměť a dějiny (“Memory and History”).

Babiš has said before that his family suffered persecution under the communists because an aunt left for Canada. No one knew the details — now historians have established them.

Who the prime minister’s uncle was

The journal has published an extensive study titled “The Last Gestapo Man?”. It tells the story of Willibald Otto Erzen and his wife Viola. The woman’s maiden name appears in the article only as the initial B., but journalists found her full name in the German Federal Archives — Viola Babišová. She was the elder sister of the prime minister’s father Štefan — the very aunt who went to Canada — and Erzen was Babiš’s uncle.

The prime minister himself said he had nothing to do with that part of the family: “I never saw them, I never had any contact with them, and I had not even heard the name Willibald.” He did not answer further questions.

According to the study, Erzen became a member of the SS and the Gestapo before marrying Viola. He joined the SS in Vienna, and in October of the same year the NSDAP. He served in the “Der Führer” regiment, made up of Nazis who fled to Germany from Austria after the NSDAP was banned in June 1933. “The unit was deployed in the occupation of the Czech borderlands in October 1938 and of the interior in March 1939,” explains the study’s author, Jan Zumr.

Erzen’s commitment to the SS expired in January 1939, but he did not return to his former trade as a waiter and joined the Gestapo as a criminal assistant, a candidate in preparatory service. His personnel file shows that he was not particularly bright: he failed the criminal investigation exams and held an office post, first in Zlín and then in Brno. In the SS he rose to the rank of Oberscharführer.

A wedding blessed by Himmler

When Erzen met Babiš’s aunt, the study’s author could not establish. He applied for permission to marry in 1940: as an SS and Gestapo member he needed approval from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler personally. The couple underwent medical examinations to prove Aryan descent and attached recommendations from “respectable citizens of the Reich” and NSDAP members. “Ever since I have known him, they have always shown themselves to be fanatics when it comes to defending the German position,” wrote one of the guarantors, party member Robert Stang.

Little is known about Viola Babišová’s political activity: she belonged to the National Socialist Women’s League, one of the NSDAP’s mass organizations. Himmler blessed the couple on 3 December 1941, and the wedding took place in March 1942.

War, interrogations and flight to Canada

Erzen took part in combat only at the very end of the war. In April 1945 his police company was transferred to the newly created Kampfgruppe Böhmen und Mähren (“Bohemia and Moravia Battle Group”), formed at the SS training ground near Benešov. According to the study, that same month the company fought the Red Army near Břeclav and suffered heavy losses: of 160 men, 45 survived.

After Germany’s capitulation, Erzen was investigated several times by Austrian and then Czechoslovak authorities. They found no witnesses who could confirm that he had personally taken part in torture or killings. Even so, the couple decided to emigrate. Erzen applied for asylum in the American, French and British occupation zones, posing as a displaced person and concealing his Nazi past, but was refused every time — the authorities discovered the truth each time. Nevertheless, in 1950 the Erzens managed to leave and settle in Canada. Andrej Babiš was born four years later.

Viola Babišová died in Canada in 1963, aged 48. Willibald, who changed his name in Canada to William Otto Erzen, lived to see his nephew become Czech finance minister and died in 2014 at the age of 101.

What Babiš has said about his family

According to Zumr, Viola’s past caused problems for Babiš’s father: in 1962 Štefan was expelled from the Communist Party for losing his party card and concealing his sister’s emigration. Why he did not admit it is not entirely clear. Nor is it clear whether the State Security (StB) knew about the Nazi shadow in the family. “I found no evidence that it did, though I am not claiming that it didn’t,” says Zumr. In his words, the StB had little reason to take an interest in Erzen: post-war investigators found no evidence of specific crimes of his in Czechoslovakia, and the couple lived quietly in Canada.

Babiš hinted at this story as early as 2013, when he became the publisher of a major daily newspaper. “My father was thrown out of the Communist Party because his aunt said she was leaving and moving to Canada. He did not put it in the questionnaire, and the communists threw him out. Then he could not work for a while. My mother supported the family. In 1968 he was rehabilitated,” he said in an interview. According to the published text, it was in fact the father’s sister, that is, Babiš’s own aunt. He also mentioned two “emigrations” in the family — an uncle and a cousin — and later spoke of three.

Zumr believes that speaking of the “persecution” of Viola’s brother is perhaps too strong: he was later readmitted to the party. He found no other documents. After 1968 Babiš’s father returned to foreign trade, represented Czechoslovakia at the Permanent Mission of Czechoslovakia to the UN, and later headed the foreign trade company Polytechna. Andrej Babiš himself joined the Communist Party in 1980 and worked in foreign trade; the State Security registered him as an agent under the codename Bureš.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz