The Last Truth of Guillermo del Valle

Clarification: The story contains references to the Holocaust and World War II. It began as a nameless writing exercise. Later, I researched and loosely based the historical details of the character Wilhelm Krüger on a real-life high-ranking SS officer. All other elements in the story, including the name Guillermo del Valle, are fictional.

“I told the greatest lie of all. However, people believed it, and over time, that lie became accepted as truth, like any other story.

And what is truth, if not a tale told over and over, until the world stops questioning it?

After all, even the digital numbers we transfer between bank accounts, similar to the pieces of paper or the stamped metal that preceded them, only hold value because we all agree to believe they do.

And does a man genuinely own land just by claiming it and producing the required documents?

The story I told has become, over the years, a part of who I am. I no longer know any other truth.

So why confess now, you ask? Well, I’m an old man. Most of my life is behind me.

I married, raised a family, hosted barbecue nights on warm summer evenings.

My children grew up and started families of their own — large, local, and rooted. I never claimed to be a native of this place, but I did everything I could to feel like I belong. Even Spanish now flows off my tongue more easily than my mother tongue. I married a local woman — a good, devoted one.

She never knew anything about my past — and now, she never will. Unless there is indeed judgment in the afterlife. It is from fear of that judgment that I write. I was never a man of faith. In my youth, faith was not a mark of pride; it was seen as weakness, a remnant of the old world.

But after marrying a woman of faith and spending years in the warmth of her devotion, something in me softened. Since her death, I find myself praying to her God. They say God forgives, but I dare not ask. My bones are weakening, my skin creases more deeply, and my memory is slipping. And at last, I can no longer pretend. I was born Wilhelm Krüger. But I will be buried as Guillermo del Valle.”

Her father was a master of beginnings. When she found the letter and the accompanying notebook tucked among his winter clothes on the top shelf of the closet, she was certain it was just another abandoned start. He had always written letters never sent, drafts of memoirs about his childhood in a village near Rosario. He called them “Exercises in Non-Forgetting.” In the end, it was forgetting that claimed him. She placed the folded clothes down, opened the notebook, and sat down to read:

"I was born in Strasbourg, back when it still held that name and when people still spoke German. My father was a senior officer, and my older brother followed in his footsteps. I never had the opportunity to finish my studies — I was sent, still a boy, to a cadet school. For me, there was no other path.

I was a teenager when the Great War started. I served on the Western Front, in the Ruhr Valley. I emerged as a decorated commander, and for a time, I wore the Iron Cross proudly on my chest. However, our beloved homeland suffered a bitter defeat, and Strasbourg fell into foreign hands, never to regain its former glory. Beyond the battlefield, nothing made sense. And nothing—not ranks, not medals—could serve as a source of pride anymore."

She shut her eyes, attempting to envision her father as a young man, not the one she had known amidst the landscapes of her childhood, but a different person from another era, in a place she had never set foot in.

“After the war, I lost my way. I tried to study, but soon realized I had no future in it. I worked as a librarian for a while, then got married and had two sons. Yet, the ground shook beneath us all. After all we had suffered, I yearned for stability. Something to cling to.”

Did she have family somewhere—names and faces she had never known? For a brief moment, she paused, holding her breath. And if they existed, what had happened to them?

"In 1929, I became a member of the Party—not out of conviction, but because it was what everyone did. That was the prevailing atmosphere. The next year, I enlisted in the SA. The brown shirts, the parades, the slogans—finally, I felt a spark of belonging again. In 1931, I joined the SS. Everything unfolded too quickly—like a train leaving the station before passengers had even taken their seats."

She thought of the father she used to know—a man who had woven himself effortlessly into the fabric of the town, beloved by all. Or perhaps, she considered, it had truly been her mother. She had anchored him, and he began to fade away after her passing. At first, he struggled to recall his actions from just hours earlier; eventually, he continued to greet his grandchildren with a warm smile, even though recognition had left his gaze. His identity slipped away, as if he needed her presence to remember who he was. Without it, perhaps he had never really existed. But who had he been?

"In 1932, if I recall correctly, I was appointed head of headquarters in Breslau. I remember the winter most of all — the unrelenting freeze and the snow piling high against the office windows. By 1935, I had been promoted to Oberführer. I didn’t celebrate. I received the news by letter. I had climbed so far up the ladder that I found it hard to look down—or back."

As the illness progressed, another self began to surface — harsh, irritable — like a buried stratum of ancient rock rising through the floor of a dried-up lake. She lingered over the short sentences, the blocky handwriting, and could not find in them the warm, cheerful man she had known. The one who used to play, laugh freely, and surprise her with small, spontaneous gestures of affection, as if some part of the child he once was had never truly left him, even in old age.

She recalled the times he gently bounced her, his youngest, on his knee, humming an old tune in a language she didn’t understand—something about a rider who had fallen from his horse. She would burst into laughter, pleading for just one more ride, and he, always patient, would happily oblige each time.

She yearned to dwell in that memory—yet curiosity, or perhaps fear, of what else she might uncover urged her to continue.

She turned back to the page and resumed reading:

“In October 1939, if memory serves me, I was appointed as Chief of the SS and Police in the General Government. By that time, I had come to terms with what had to be done. I had rank, purpose, and a role to fulfill. An office was assigned to me in Lublin, a city I recall for its distinctive smell of wet coal. I received clerks and resources to aid my work. There was a palpable sense of urgency, as if preparing for a major operation. Something important was on the verge of happening. One question lingered throughout: how much should one know? Maintaining secrecy was crucial to the mission's success.

My responsibility was ‘ghetto logistics’ — the terminology used at the time — which involved coordinating with authorities, managing registration, and overseeing transportation.

In 1942, a decision was made — in my absence. I had broken my arm and couldn’t attend the conference. Later, I discovered I was reassigned to the Office of Homeland Security—a primarily technical position.

I was put in charge of Globocnik. He was a coarse man, a political operator. Some would say he was a criminal who rose to power. Unlike Governor General Hans Frank—who was a man of letters. Sure, we had our differences, and we clashed quite often, but I always appreciated his style and his refinement.

Still, I held no grievances. Globocnik got things done. He fulfilled his role with loyalty and diligence, never expressing a single doubt. Bełżec. Sobibór. Treblinka. The names sounded like train stations. But they were not. They state that 1.7 million passed through them. Perhaps more.”

The notebook slipped from her hands. Without a moment’s pause, she turned to her father’s study — to the locked drawer in his old desk. The key had to be somewhere nearby. She rummaged through the pen holders, slid the paperweight aside, and opened the loose drawers.

Then she spotted it — a small, worn key. Her heart pounded. She slid it into the lock, turned it, and the drawer creaked open.

Amid yellowing papers, old IOUs, and clipped newspaper articles, she found an old passport. On the cover was the eagle of the Reich, its wings spread, talons clutching a circle that enclosed a swastika. She opened it carefully. The name was printed in bold black letters against a pale yellow background:

Wilhelm Krüger

She froze. Thoughts scrambled in her mind.

She couldn’t make out the face in the blurred, half-erased photo, marked by a faded red stamp. The eyes—maybe—resembled something. The jawline was familiar. But the expression was rigid, solemn, and frozen. It bore no resemblance to her father. Even if it was him, she told herself it had to be a mistake, a forgery, or an old document he’d found and kept as some form of memorabilia, stripped of meaning.

But then she reread the name:

Wilhelm Krüger.

And her heart sank.

She turned to the dusty computer in the corner, wiped its surface clean, and plugged in the cable. The screen flickered, beeped, then slowly came to life.

She opened the browser, typed in “Wilhelm Krüger,” and the biography appeared at once: Lublin—correct. Globocnik—there. Hans Frank—accurate. Bełżec, Treblinka, Operation Reinhard—all of it, nearly in the same order.

But as she read, something began to gnaw at her. Her eyes darted over the screen.

Something didn’t add up.

The birth year was wrong—SS commander Wilhelm Krüger had been born in 1894. He couldn’t possibly have lived that long. It also stated that he’d been captured by the Americans in Austria in 1945 and had committed suicide in a detention camp.

Her body sank into her father’s old chair, wrapped in the scent of aging leather and traces of his presence.

Who was her father before he became Guillermo? Had he lied? Appropriated someone else’s narrative? Or was he simply confused?

Perhaps the more pressing question is: Was he lying back then — or is he lying now?

Driven by a need to understand, she came across an old video clip of an interview with a Nazi hunter. The speaker, an elderly man with sharp eyes, expressed his long-held belief that Wilhelm Krüger had not taken his own life.

“It’s possible he never committed suicide, as the Americans claimed. There was no body and no formal documentation. Everything relied on verbal reports and rumors.

My suspicions led me to South America—specifically, to Argentina, Brazil, and even Bolivia. Clues were always present: an elderly man with changing names, missing documents, and neighbors mentioning a German who ‘stirred clear of attention.’ Yet I never grasped anything solid. Something always eluded me, just at the last moment.”

She sat in front of the screen, hitting pause repeatedly, scrolling back, checking every word. The man never mentioned the name of their town — not Rosario, not her father. But one sentence caught her attention:

“I don’t know what became of Krüger, but I believe to this day that his identity-or perhaps his assumed identity—lived on long after he was said to have died.”

Doubt began to corrode her. Had Wilhelm Krüger truly died in that detention camp, as the Americans claimed, or had he survived the war and assumed a new identity in a distant land?

If he had died, how would his passport have ended up in her father’s drawer? And if he had lived, could her father have been the fugitive himself?

If so, how had he managed to live all these years and avoid being discovered?

And what had made the Nazi hunter — the one who had followed trails and came so close — stop searching right at the threshold of truth?

She was now determined to understand everything. Anger, arising from the fear that her entire life had been a lie, fueled her resolve. She wanted to know — truly know — who her father had been before he became Guillermo.

She searched the name again: Wilhelm Krüger.

This time, a different result appeared—not the one with a Wikipedia entry, but a name that emerged from a series of old documents in the Red Cross archives. She contacted the archives in Bern and then the military archives in Germany. It took weeks of relentless searching, sending emails, waiting, and staring at blank screens. At last, a thin file surfaced:

Wilhelm Krüger, born 1918. A Wehrmacht soldier, rank: Gefreiter. Served in the maintenance corps.

Not SS. Not Gestapo. No indictment. No crime. Just a name in a list of enlisted men.

The birth year matched her father’s profile. 1922 — that made sense.

He could have been a simple soldier in his late teens during the war. It sounded plausible. Human.

For a fleeting moment, she exhaled in relief.

But the questions returned, intertwining once more — like curls of smoke in her head.

Why did he write what he wrote? Why insist on identifying as that Wilhelm Krüger — the high-ranking officer, the war criminal? And how did he obtain the passport?

Perhaps he encountered the man in the camp — still alive or maybe already dead — and discovered in his documents a ticket to another life, as many had during the post-war chaos. Or maybe he procured the passport on the black market, seizing the opportunity to disappear and start anew.

If that were the case, what did he know, if anything, about the man whose name he had assumed?

And perhaps, as forgetfulness crept in — soft-footed and sure — he attempted to reclaim what memory had already begun to surrender. Maybe he stumbled upon the passport in a drawer. Possibly he searched for it, and perhaps he discovered the very name she herself had uncovered — Wilhelm Krüger — and unwittingly began to weave its contours into the gaps of his unraveling self. Not to deceive, but like someone mending old cloth with borrowed thread.

Or perhaps, as the Nazi hunter might have hinted, it had been a fleeting encounter years later, somewhere in South America. She pictured them on a wooden bench in a local market, sipping sweet sherry and murmuring in hushed German.

Maybe it was all a disguise — not a confession, but an act of atonement.

Suppose he met Krüger years after the war — not as a namesake, but as a flesh-and-blood man. Suppose that night, under the haze of alcohol, he saw in him a mirror of all he had spent a lifetime trying to forget. And he panicked.

Perhaps he wanted to silence the questions. And possibly, just possibly, knowing that no one would mourn him, he chose to end it, not out of vengeance, but to eliminate all doubt. And maybe that’s why the Nazi hunter stopped his search right there —

On the brink of discovery.

For a long time, she tried to follow the frayed threads he left behind.

But they led her, again and again, to silence.

To a dead end.

It was only much later that she dared to return to the notebook he had left. There was no continuation of the story. As always, he had been a man of beginnings; he never knew how to write endings.

But tucked between the pages, she found one final letter. A letter he had written to her mother after her death. A love letter, in elegant Spanish cursive, in the stylized script he had taught himself. In it, he thanked her, his Clara, for who she had been to him. For from the moment he met her, she had allowed him to be nothing more than Guillermo del Valle — and asked for nothing else.

That was the man she had known. Not a soldier. Not a war criminal. Perhaps not even Wilhelm Krüger.

Just Guillerm, a loving father. Gentle and patient. At times, funny enough to make her cry with laughter. The man who sang lullabies in a strange tongue. The man who knew how to brew coffee exactly as she liked it. He looked at her as if she were the world’s last miracle.

She may never piece together his entire story; however, what he meant to her, she knew completely. And in the end, that was the truest thing about him.