Argentina releases secret files on fugitive Nazi war criminals

Several documents featuring some of the worst Nazi war criminals were released and declassified earlier this year by Argentine President Javier Milei. The more than 1,850 documents include thousands of pages detailing the South American country’s efforts to track down and verify the whereabouts of thousands of Nazis who fled Europe after World War II.

The catalyst for this effort came from the Senate Judiciary Committee and its chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has been credited by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his efforts to get Milei to release the documents.

Most of the documents relate to investigations carried out between the late 1950s and the 1980s and have been digitized and made available on the website of the country’s General Archives, alongside secret and declassified presidential decrees from 1957 to 2005.

The original batch of documents published online is divided into seven large files roughly focused on the major Nazi criminals covered there. There are numerous documents linked to Adolf Eichmann, the engineer of the “Final Solution”, the plan to exterminate European Jews. He lived under the name Ricardo Klement around Buenos Aires until he was captured by Mossad agents on Argentine soil and taken in a covert operation to stand trial in Jerusalem in 1960.

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Adolf Eichmann, in a bulletproof booth, puts on headphones to hear the reading of the indictment against him, December 17, 1961. He was responsible for the extermination of Jews in Poland and then organized the deportation and extermination of Jews in 13 European countries. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Eichmann’s case figures prominently in the files, and there is conflicting evidence that Juan Perón’s left-populist government not only knew Eichmann was in the country but was also making efforts to protect him.

There are also numerous documents detailing the life of Josef Mengele, the “angel of death” doctor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps who lived in Argentina and fled to Paraguay and Brazil, where he died in 1979.

Documents detailing the hunt for Martin Bormann, Hitler’s lieutenant and right-hand man, as well as Croatian murderer Ante Pavelic, vice-fuhrer and defector Rudolf Hess and the so-called “butcher of Lyon”, Klaus Barbie, have received particular attention in the files.

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Three SS officers socialize on the SS retreat grounds outside Auschwitz, 1944. From left to right, they are: Richard Baer (commander of Auschwitz), Dr. Josef Mengele, and Rudolf Hoess (former commander of Auschwitz). Mengele fled to Argentina, then to Paraguay and Brazil. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

According to Harley Lippman, a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad and a board member of the European Jewish Association, the relevance of the release of the Argentine documents cannot be underestimated.

“These documents may shed light on many questions about why a sophisticated society, far from the scourges of European anti-Semitism like that of Argentina, agreed to hide Nazi criminals and their secrets for so long. What happened to the submarines loaded with Nazi gold brought to the country and handed over to the authorities?” he asked.

“On the one hand, it is shameful that Argentina kept these documents secret for so long, but on the other hand, we must also recognize the enormous efforts made by this government to make these documents public. Although the historical significance is important, this is more important for Argentines to be able to confront their demons as a society than for Jews,” Lippman said.

This 1950 Argentine Federal Police memo, marked strictly secret and confidential, seeks information on Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, suggesting that Argentine authorities were aware of his possible presence or activity in the area at that time. (General Archives of the Argentine Government)

Adding to this big revelation, in May, while Argentina’s Supreme Court was undergoing renovations and transferring document collections to museums, a forgotten trove of 83 boxes of Nazi documents was discovered almost intact in the institution’s basement. Upon inspection, the crates revealed documents intercepted by Argentine customs in 1941, sent from the Third Reich’s German embassy in Tokyo, Japan, to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, aboard the Japanese liner Nan-a-Maru.

The documents had been sent as personal effects of embassy staff, but were intercepted on the orders of the country’s foreign minister so as not to undermine Argentina’s neutral position in the war. The shipment was the subject of an investigation by a commission charged with investigating “anti-Argentine activities”, which led to the seizure and possession of the boxes by the country’s Supreme Court, where they remained for almost 84 years.

The discovery of the boxes revealed multiple materials intended to propagate and consolidate the ideologies of the Third Reich and Hitler in Argentina and South America, perhaps with the aim of bringing neutral countries under the auspices of Germany.

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The document recounts an Argentine police report describing a German fugitive, Walter Flegel, believed by some to be Martin Bormann, Hitler’s former deputy, living under a false identity in Argentina. The assumption was later proven to be incorrect and that Flegal was not Borman. Earlier this year, Argentine President Javier Milei declassified and released more than 1,850 documents detailing Argentina’s efforts to track down and verify the whereabouts of thousands of Nazi war criminals. (General Archives of the Argentine Government)

After opening the boxes in the company of prominent members of the country’s Jewish community, the court issued a statement saying that “in view of the historical relevance of the discovery and the potential crucial information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust,” a comprehensive study of all the documents was ordered.

The contents of the crates have not yet been made public, but Milei’s office said that once all the documents have been digitized, they will also be declassified and made available.

Argentina’s cabinet chief, Guillermo Francos, previously said Milei gave the order “because there is no reason to continue hiding this information, and it is no longer in the interest of the Republic of Argentina to keep such secrets.”

“Jews after World War II experienced a golden age of about 80 years when anti-Semitism had subsided, at least outwardly, and they could be productive and contributing members of society. This has now ended – in part due to the genocide committed against Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, with world opinion projecting onto Israelis and Jews the false role of the genocide perpetrators in the Gaza war, but also bringing back the same old anti-Semitic views. that existed in Germany and before that,” Lippman says.

A police officer stands in front of a cache of Nazi artifacts discovered in 2017, during a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, October 2, 2019. Argentine authorities found the cache in a secret room behind a bookcase and discovered the collection during a broader investigation into artwork of suspicious origin found in a Buenos Aires gallery. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

“The fact that many people under the age of 30 do not know or understand (the meaning of) the Holocaust is part of the reason why anti-Semitism is on the rise again.” The Holocaust was the largest systematic industrial massacre of human beings in history. This happened only 80 years ago. Young people don’t seem to be able to appreciate the magnitude of it, but these documents can revive the memory of what the Holocaust really was,” he said, comparing the propaganda war currently facing Israel and the Jews in a progressive and projectionist light.

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Beyond the lives of top Nazis who fled to South America on so-called “ratlines” — perhaps under the auspices of some local governments — Lippman said the documents could also provide important insights into the role played by Swiss and Argentine banks.

“The Holocaust was the greatest theft in history. Many Swiss banks (which were the custodians of Jewish money) would sometimes not release funds to a single survivor of a family who perished in the Holocaust without a death certificate for their loved ones. But Auschwitz did not issue a death certificate – they only issued ashes.”