The official website of the National Archives of Argentina has recently offered a new opportunity. With just one click, visitors have access to documents that shed light on some of the darkest episodes in the country's history.
"Data on Mengele and Eichmann"
These are documents related to the arrival and activities of high-ranking Nazi functionaries in Argentina after the end of World War II. The public now has free access to more than 1,800 digitized original documents.
“The historical value of this material is enormous“, Argentine author and researcher Julio Muti, who has been researching the ties between the South American country and the Nazis for years, told DW. "These are extensive files - including migration data and police reports on figures such as Mengele and Eichmann," he added.
Both Mengele, a doctor at Auschwitz known for his brutal human experiments, and Adolf Eichmann, the main organizer of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", managed to hide in Argentina after the end of the war.
The documents are not being published now for the first time. This happened back in 1992 during the administration of President Carlos Menem. This time, however, they have been digitized and publicly available.
"Credit Suisse" and "The Road of the Rats"
The "Simon Wiesenthal" center, which documents the crimes of Nazism, is currently examining a large volume of documents. “We are specifically investigating how the Nazi escape to Argentina was financed“, says Ariel Gelblung, director of the Center for Latin America. The focus is on the activities of “Credit Suisse“ and the bank's potential involvement in financing the so-called Rat Road - the routes along which many war criminals escaped to South America.
“We are following a trail that no one has explored before“, explains Gelblung. “We are analyzing suspicious financial transactions that were disguised as diplomatic missions or accounting records in the archives of the Central Bank.“
New documents and connections
However, the key clues are clearly not found in the standard archives. "Many of the documents are in state institutions that have not been examined in connection with the Nazi escapes," Gelblung reports. It was only after a meeting with President Javier Milley that the decision was made to publish these files, which were previously inaccessible to the general public.
Thus, the Wiesenthal Center gains access to documents from the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as to the library of the Argentine Central Bank.
The documents in the archive contain valuable information about Adolf Eichmann - the "architect" of the so-called "final solution" of the Jewish question. Special attention is currently being paid to secret documents from the state arms company "Fabricaciones Militares". According to Muti, these files from 1945-1948 prove that the company recruited personnel in Europe and purchased materials. “Another link in the chain of complicity would be if it were proven that these funds were not used for legitimate weapons purposes, but to aid escapes“, Muti says. “This would mean that public funds were used to support war criminals.“
“A late but important form of justice“
For journalist and author Facundo di Genova, the opening of the archives is overdue: “There has always been a suspicion that the Argentine state knows more than it admits,“ he says. “The new transparency sends a signal, but much more revelations are needed (…) The Argentine government must continue to reveal classified information. "Many stories are still covered up," the journalist adds.
The documents that the "Wiesenthal" center receives have been handed over to an international team from the United States and Europe, which is studying them and should publish them next year. "We believe that there is a responsibility that has not yet been borne," says Gelblung. For him, this work is also personal - as the grandson of European immigrants in Argentina, he wants to contribute to the historical reassessment of the events. "This is a belated but important form of justice - for the victims of the Holocaust," says the expert.
Author: Maricel Draser