Nazi War Criminals Flee to Latin America
By Reinaldo -Rey- Romero
Since the end of World War II, the existence of a secret organization dedicated to the refuge of Nazi war criminals has been the topic of many magazine articles, documentaries, novels and even movies. This is a synthesis of several articles and books that tell how war criminal such as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele used different sources of aid to escape to Latin America.
Argentina had remained neutral during the war, but this changed in 1945, when economic pressure forced the country to join the Allies. However, prior to this, Argentina was in close contact with Hitler's regime and the fascist Franco government in Spain. Brazil’s deposed dictator, Getulio Vargas had instilled a fascist-friendly mindset in the government. As a result of these fascist-friendly leaders of these countries there was support for fleeing Nazis. The true story of how Nazi war criminals like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele escaped to Latin America is not known by many. The three main sources of help for the war criminals’ escape to Latin America included Odessa , the Catholic Church, and Juan Peron of Argentina.
By 1944 it was clear that the tides had changed against Nazi Germany. With many Nazi Germans anticipating defeat plans started to be made for that eventuality. Rather than facing punishment for their war crimes, they decided to seek safe havens outside Germany, and beyond the reach of the Allies’ justice system. On August 10, 1944, a secret meeting of top German industrialists and bankers was held at the Maison Rouge hotel in Strasbourg to come up with a way to insure a safe future for Nazis. According to Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 novel The Odessa File, a secret group supposedly used stashed war treasure collected from invaded countries that had been invaded and connections in high places to put high ranking Nazis out of reach of the Allies. This secret organization was called the "Organization Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen" ( "The Organization of former SS ‘Schutzstaffel’ members) — better known as Odessa. Nazi persecutor Simon Wiesenthal says he first heard about Odessa during the Nuremberg trials, and in his 1989 book Justice, Not Vengeance he seems convinced it exists, or did existed. Simon has evidence of their existence, but others have their doubts and argue that the evidence is insufficient.
There are claims that members of the Catholic Church helped get documents, cash, and arranging safe passage for many escaping Nazis. The benevolent view is that individual clerics acted out of humanitarian concern and [they believed they were helping refugees from postwar communist persecution] were not aware of the charges against them and the war crimes they had committed. However, others argue that the Vatican knew very well what had happened but it wanted former Nazis as partners in its struggle against the reds. Alois Hudal was an openly pro-Nazi German bishop in Rome who is said to have helped plan the escapes of many Nazis. The Nazis associated with Hudal include Adolf Eichmann and Franz Stangl who were caught living in Argentina and Brazil in 1960 and 1967 respectively. Uki Goñi, a native of Argentina and the author of The Real Odessa:.. says that patient digging in British postwar documents revealed direct Papal complicity in the protection of war criminals.
Juan Peron is one of the bigger names of Latin American leaders who used his powers to harbor Nazi war criminals. In the book titled The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina (2002), Argentine journalist Uki Goñi, puts earlier theories together that say Argentina was a safe haven for Nazi war criminals. According to Goñi the "Real Odessa," consisted of about a dozen faithful Nazi collaborators from several nations, including a few wanted war criminals working in cohorts with the Peron regime and sympathetic Catholic officials in both Europe and Argentina. Goñi conducted extensive research to make such statements. The cover-up on the Nazi flee had been so complete that only separate parts of the jigsaw puzzle survived in each country. Goñi had no choice but to assemble and compare the varying information available in four languages French, German, English and Spanish, from different parts of the globe such as Brussels, Berne, London, Maryland and Buenos Aires. In the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, a lot of the vital documentation had reportedly been destroyed back in 1955, during the last days of Perón's government. Then, in 1996 again, the burning of confidential immigration records containing the landing papers of Nazi war criminals seems to have been ordered. Goñi had some luck when he got some leads in other Argentine files that had somehow survived the destruction. These files led him to Belgium, where vital information on what he discovered to be Perón's long-denied Odessa-like organization had luckily remained out of the reach of Argentina's document destroyers .
Goñi says the regime, organized in Buenos Aires after Peron was elected as Argentina's president in 1946, organized the transportation of hundreds in not thousands of Nazis to the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At night, large crates packed with Nazi gold and secret archives of Hitler's Reich were reportedly collected from windy beaches and taken across the continent to isolated sanctuaries in the Andes Mountains. The Nazi conspirators made trips to Europe to look for more fugitives. There were more war criminals had to be smuggled out, but in other cases they didn’t have to be so secretive because some countries were relieved to unload their troublesome Nazi refugees. Visas and landing permits were handed out with full cooperation, but the big concern was that no communists or Jews be allowed in to Argentina by mistake. It is not known how many ex-Nazis made it to Argentina. What is known is that during Goñi’s six years of research, he identified 300 and it is reasonable to believe that there were many more.
Goñi admits that many vital Argentine records that would've substantiated his story have been destroyed. Yet, the simple fact is that all those Nazi war criminals didn't end up in Latin America by coincidence, they went where they were welcomed. Many critics agree that although Goñi's book isn’t complete, it may be as close as anyone may get to the truth.
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