Earlier this year, multiple documents containing some of the worst Nazi war criminals were declassified and released 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 Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who was credited by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his efforts to get Milei to release the documents.
Most of the materials relate to studies conducted between the late 1950s and the 1980s and have been digitized and made available on the country’s General Archives website, along with secret, declassified presidential decrees from 1957 to 2005.
The original set of documents released online are divided into seven major files, roughly centered around the main Nazi criminals featured in them. There are several documents related to Adolf Eichmann, the engineer of the ‘Final Solution’, the plan for the extermination of European Jewry. He lived under the name Ricardo Klement near Buenos Aires until he was captured by Mossad agents on Argentine soil and taken in a secret operation in 1960 to stand trial in Jerusalem.
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In a bulletproof hut, Adolf Eichmann puts on headphones to listen to the reading of the accusation against him on December 17, 1961. He presided over the extermination of Jews in Poland and subsequently 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 conflicting evidence that Juan Perón’s left-wing, populist government not only knew Eichmann was in the country but also made efforts to protect him.
There are also several documents describing the lives 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 on the hunt for Martin Bormann, Hitler’s lieutenant and right-hand man, as well as the Croatian assassin Ante Pavelic, deputy fuhrer and defector Rudolf Hoess and the so-called ‘butcher of Lyon’, Klaus Barbie, received special attention in the files.
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Three SS officers meet on the grounds of the SS retreat outside Auschwitz, 1944. From left to right they are: Richard Baer (commander of Auschwitz), Dr. Josef Mengele and Rudolf Hoess (the former commander of Auschwitz). Mengele fled to Argentina and later fled to Paraguay and Brazil. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
According to Harley Lippman, member of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and board member of the European Jewish Association, the relevance of the release of the Argentine documents cannot be underestimated.
“There are countless questions that these documents can shed light on as to why a developed society, far from the scourges of European anti-Semitism like Argentina’s, agreed to hide Nazi criminals and their secrets for so long. What happened to the U-boats loaded with Nazi gold that were brought to the country and given to the authorities?” he asked.
“On the one hand, it is shameful that Argentina has kept these documents secret for so long, but on the other hand, we must also recognize the enormous efforts this government has made to make these documents public. While the historical significance is important, this is more important for Argentines to confront their demons as a society than for Jews,” Lippman said.
Marked as top secret and confidential, this 1950 Argentine Federal Police memo seeks information about Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor from Auschwitz, suggesting that Argentine authorities were aware of his possible presence or activity in the region at the time. (General Archives of the Government of Argentina)
To add to the big reveal, 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 virtually untouched in the institute’s basement. Upon inspection, the crates revealed documents intercepted by Argentine customs in 1941 and sent from the Third Reich’s German embassy in Tokyo, Japan, to the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires aboard the Japanese steamer Nan-a-Maru.
The documents had been sent as personal belongings 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 became the subject of an investigation by a commission investigating “anti-Argentine activities,” leading to the seizure and possession of the crates by the country’s Supreme Court, where they remained for almost 84 years.
The discovery of the boxes revealed multiple materials intended to spread and consolidate the ideologies of the Third Reich and Hitler in Argentina and South America, possibly in an attempt to bring neutral countries under the auspices of Germany.
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The document tells of an Argentinian police report describing a German fugitive, Walter Flegel. Some think it is Martin Bormann, Hitler’s former deputy, living under a false identity in Argentina. It was later proven that the lead was incorrect and that Flegal was not Borman. Earlier this year, Argentine President Javier Milei declassified and declassified 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 Government of Argentina)
After opening the boxes together with prominent members of the country’s Jewish community, the court issued a statement saying that “given the historical relevance of the find and the potentially crucial information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust,” an exhaustive examination of all materials was ordered.
The contents of the crates have not yet been made public, but Milei’s office has said that once all documents are digitized, they will also be declassified and made available.
Argentina’s chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, Guillermo Francos, has previously said that Milei gave the order “because there is no reason to withhold that information, and it is no longer in the interest of the Republic of Argentina to keep such secrets.”
“Jews lived a golden age of about 80 years after World War II during which anti-Semitism had declined, at least apparently, and they could be productive and contributing members of society. This is now over – partly because of the genocide committed against Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which world opinion projected onto Israelis and Jews the false role of genocide perpetrators in the war in Gaza, but also by bringing back the same old anti-Semitic views that existed in Germany and before lived then,” says Lippman.
A police officer stands in front of a cache of Nazi artifacts discovered in 2017 during a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, October 2, 2019. Argentinian authorities found the cache in a secret room behind a bookcase and had discovered the collection during a broader investigation into artworks of suspicious origin found in a Buenos Aires gallery. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)
‘The fact that many people under thirty don’t know or understand it [the meaning of] the Holocaust is one of the reasons why anti-Semitism is on the rise again. “The Holocaust was the largest systematic industrial murder of people in history. This happened only 80 years ago. Young people seem unable to comprehend the magnitude of this, but these documents can trigger the memory of what the Holocaust really was,” he said, comparing the propaganda war that Israel and the Jews are currently facing under a progressive and oppositional guise.
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In addition to detailing the lives of high-ranking Nazis who fled to South America via so-called ratlines – possibly under the auspices of certain local governments – Lippman said the documents could also provide important information about the role played by Swiss and Argentine banks.
‘The Holocaust was the greatest theft in history. Many Swiss banks [which were the depositaries of Jewish money] would not release money for sometimes the only survivor of a family that died in the Holocaust without a death certificate for their loved ones. But Auschwitz did not issue death certificates – they only issued ashes.”
