The Milei government has published online declassified files on the activities of war criminals in the country
On June 22, 1949, Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele arrived at the port of Buenos Aires in search of impunity. Known as “The Angel of Death” for murdering thousands and conducting grotesque experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Mengele entered Argentina using a false passport under the name Helmut Gregor. He was 38 years old and claimed to be a “mechanical technician” looking to begin a new life far from his country after World War II. He felt so secure that, six years later, he applied for new documentation under his real name and remained in Buenos Aires until the arrest of fellow Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann by Israeli secret services.
The movements of Mengele, Eichmann, and other high-ranking members of Hitler’s regime in Argentina can now be traced thanks to a trove of declassified documents recently published online by Argentina’s National Archive (AGN).
The collection, comprising nearly 2,000 documents, was originally declassified in 1992 but could only be consulted in person at the AGN. On Monday, President Javier Milei’s government announced it would make the materials publicly accessible, following the delivery of a copy to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is currently investigating Credit Suisse’s alleged ties to Nazism. “[The Argentine state] has no reason to continue safeguarding this information,” said Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos during the announcement.
Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann, arrived in Argentina in 1948, followed by Mengele in 1949 and Adolf Eichmann — one of the chief architects of the Holocaust — in 1950. All three fled Europe via the so-called “Ratlines” — clandestine escape routes used by Nazi fugitives — and settled in Argentina, which at the time was governed by Juan Domingo Perón.
From refuge to extradition According to Ariel Gelblung, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the newly released archives may not provide new information for experts, but will allow all interested parties to examine original sources and draw their own conclusions about the years when Argentina served as a sanctuary for fugitive war criminals. “This shows how Argentina’s position on this issue in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was very different from what it was after the return of democracy in 1983, when all the war criminals found were extradited.”
The initial impunity is evident when looking at the official documents. Mengele’s police record shows that on November 26, 1956, he applied for a new national identity document as Jose Mengele, “a manufacturer by profession,” “in connection with the rectification of his first and last name.” With his true identity restored, he crossed into Uruguay to marry his brother’s widow, and the two returned to live in Argentina.