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Earlier this year a number of documents featuring some of the worst Nazi war criminals were released and made public by Argentine President Javier Meili. The more than 1,850 documents include thousands of pages detailing the South American country’s efforts to track 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 Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who was credited by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his efforts in getting Miley to release the documents.
Most of the materials relate to investigations conducted between the late 1950s and 1980s and were digitized with secret, declassified presidential orders from 1957 to 2005 and made available on the country’s General Archive website.
The original batch of documents released online has been divided into seven large files, largely focused on the main Nazi criminals involved in them. There are a number of documents relating to Adolf Eichmann, the engineer of the “Final Solution”, a plan to exterminate European Jewry. He lived under the name Ricardo Clemente around Buenos Aires until he was captured by Mossad agents on Argentinian soil and taken in a covert operation to stand trial in Jerusalem in 1960.
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Adolf Eichmann, in a bulletproof cabin on December 17, 1961, puts on earphones to listen to the proceedings of the charges against him. He was in charge of the extermination of the 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 features prominently in the files and there is contradictory evidence that Juan Perón’s leftist, populist government not only knew Eichmann was in the country, but also made efforts to protect him.
Several documents also exist detailing the life of Dr. Josef Mengele, the “angel of death” of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, who lived in Argentina and fled to Paraguay and Brazil, where he died in 1979.
Particular attention was paid to the files in the files detailing the search for Hitler’s lieutenant and right-hand man, Martin Bormann, as well as the Croatian assassin, Ante Pavelić, deputy Führer and defector Rudolf Höss, and the so-called “Butcher of Lyon,” Klaus Barbie.
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Three SS officers socialize on the SS retreat grounds outside Auschwitz in 1944. From left to right they are: Richard Baer (Commandant of Auschwitz), Dr. Josef Mengele and Rudolf Höss (former Auschwitz Commandant). Mengele fled to Argentina, later to Paraguay and Brazil. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
According to Harley Lippman, member of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and board member of the European Jewish Federation, the relevance of the Argentine documents’ release cannot be underestimated.
“There are many questions that these documents might shed light on as to why a sophisticated society, so far from the scourges of European anti-Semitism like Argentina, agreed to hide Nazi criminals and their secrets for so long. What happened to the U-boat loaded with Nazi gold that was brought to the country and turned 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 also have to acknowledge the enormous efforts this government is making to make these documents public. While the historical significance is important, it is more important for Argentina to be able to confront its demons as a society than for the Jews,” Lipman said.
This Argentine Federal Police memorandum from 1950, considered top secret and confidential, seeks intelligence about the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, revealing whether Argentine authorities were aware of his possible presence or activity in the area at the time. (General Archives of the Argentine Government)
In addition to the major revelations, in May, when the Argentine Supreme Court was undergoing renovation and document collections were being transferred to museums, a forgotten repository of 83 boxes of Nazi documents was found almost untouched in the basement of the institution. Upon inspection, the boxes revealed documents intercepted by Argentine customs in 1941, sent from the German Third Reich embassy in Tokyo, Japan, to the Argentine capital Buenos Aires on the Japanese steamer Nan-a-Maru.
The documents were sent as personal effects of embassy personnel, but were withheld under orders from the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs so as not to weaken Argentina’s neutral position in the war. The shipment became the subject of an investigation by a commission investigating “anti-Argentine activities”, leading to the country’s Supreme Court seizing and taking possession of the boxes, where they remained for nearly 84 years.
The discovery of the boxes revealed many materials intended to propagate and consolidate the ideologies of the Third Reich and Hitler in Argentina and South America, possibly in an effort to bring neutral countries under the auspices of Germany.
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The document describes an Argentine police report describing a German fugitive, Walter Flegel, believed by some to be Hitler’s former deputy Martin Bormann, who was living under a false identity in Argentina. It was later proven that the lead was false and that Flegel was not Borman. Earlier this year, Argentinian President Javier Mieli declassified and released more than 1,850 documents detailing Argentina’s efforts to track and verify the whereabouts of thousands of Nazi war criminals. (General Archives of the Argentine Government)
After the boxes were opened with prominent members of the country’s Jewish community, the court issued a statement saying that “given the historical relevance of the discovery and the potentially important information it contains to clarify events related to the Holocaust,” a detailed survey of all the materials had been ordered.
The contents of the boxes have not yet been made public, but Miley’s office has said that once all the documents are digitized, they will also be made public and made available.
Guillermo Franco, head of Argentina’s Cabinet, previously said Miley ordered the order “because there is no reason to continue hiding that information, and keeping such secrets is no longer in the interests of the Argentine Republic.”
“Jews lived a golden age of about 80 years after World War II, where anti-Semitism was diminished, at least visibly, and they could be productive and contributing members of society. This has now ended – partly because of the genocide committed against Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, after world opinion falsely accused Israel and the Jews of being perpetrators of genocide in the war in Gaza. anticipated, but also by bringing back the same old anti-Semitic ideas that were alive in Germany and before,” says Lippmann.
A police officer stands in front of a storehouse of Nazi artifacts discovered in 2017 during a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. Argentine authorities found the cache in a secret room behind a bookcase and uncovered the collection during a wide-ranging investigation of artworks of dubious origin found in a gallery in Buenos Aires. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)
“The fact that a lot of people under 30 don’t 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 murder of human beings in history. It happened only 80 years ago. Young people seem not to be able to understand the scale of it, but these documents can bring back the memory of what the Holocaust really was,” he said, comparing it to the propaganda war currently faced by Israel and Jews in progressive and projectionist guises.
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Beyond the lives of senior Nazis who fled to South America on so-called “ratlines” – possibly under the auspices of some local governments – Lippmann said the documents could also provide important information about the role played by Swiss and Argentine banks.
“Holocaust was the biggest theft in history. Several Swiss banks.” [which were the depositaries of Jewish money] Sometimes money will not be released to the sole survivor of a family killed in the Holocaust without a death certificate for their loved one. But Auschwitz didn’t issue death certificates – they only issued ashes.”
