World

Documents on the life of fugitive Nazis declassified in Argentina

In Argentina, the General Archive of the Nation has released 1,850 declassified documents detailing the activities of Nazi fugitives who found refuge in the country after World War II.

This was reported by the Buenos Aires Times, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.

The files, which were previously kept under the “state secret” classification, were made public by order of President Javier Millais. They had been digitized and restored beforehand, and are now available to the public on the government website.

The files include details of investigations conducted between the 1950s and 1980s by the Foreign Affairs Department of the Federal Police, Argentina’s intelligence services, and the National Gendarmerie (border guard).

Organized into seven files, they also contain confidential presidential decrees signed between 1957 and 2005. Copies of the documents have also been provided to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is investigating Credit Suisse’s ties to Nazism.

Some of the most startling revelations concern the so-called Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, who conducted brutal experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Intelligence documents show that after arriving in Argentina in 1949, Mengele initially lived openly under his real name.

Only later did he adopt the pseudonym Gregor Helmuth and claim to be from the Italian region of Trent. During his stay in Argentina, Mengele married for the second time-to Martha Maria Will, a fellow countryman and ex-wife of his deceased younger brother-and officially adopted his nephew Karl-Heinz.

In 1956, the family applied for police clearance certificates to obtain permission to travel to Chile. Despite an extradition request from Germany, the then Argentine authorities rejected it, citing technical and procedural issues.

Intelligence reports indicate that no action was taken against Mengele, and he subsequently fled to Paraguay and then to Brazil, where he died in 1979 under an assumed name.

A number of other Nazi fugitives also lived in Argentina with the knowledge of the authorities, as documented, including Adolf Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust. Eichmann, under the pseudonym Ricardo Clement, settled in Lanús, south of Buenos Aires. He lived peacefully with his family until 1960, when he was reportedly captured by Mossad agents. He was tried for war crimes and later executed in Israel.

Another well-known figure was former SS officer Erich Priebke, responsible for the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves in Italy in 1944. Priebke arrived in Argentina in 1948 and lived for several decades in Bariloche.

Eventually, in the 1990s, he was extradited to Italy after media reports openly spoke of his crimes. The newly released files include a 1995 decree issued by then-President Carlos Menem authorizing Priebke’s extradition.

The documents that have now been made public were first handed over to the AGN in 1992 under a presidential decree that terminated their protected status. But until then, they could only be accessed in a special room at the AGN headquarters.

Another document from 1963 describes the creation of a “General Military Plan for the Defense of the American Continent” against potential communist aggression, emphasizing the impact of Cold War tensions even during the time of constitutional governments in Argentina.