Argentina unveils trove of Nazi war criminal documents online

After the Second World War, many Nazi war criminals fled to Argentina to evade accountability. Now, the government in Buenos Aires has made hundreds of documents accessible online about their activities and investigations.

Files are available on the website of the Argentine National Archives, including those of Auschwitz criminal Josef Mengele and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. For the first time, their records are publicly available in a digital format for everyone.

In the Third Reich, Eichmann orchestrated the deportation of millions of Jews to extermination camps. After the Second World War, he escaped to Argentina, but Israeli agents captured him in May 1960 and took him to Israel, where he was tried and sentenced to death.

Josef Mengele, a medical doctor, was a physician at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. He is responsible for some of the most brutal pseudo-medical experiments. He initially fled to Argentina and later moved to Brazil, where he eventually died. He was never brought to justice.

In total, over 1,850 documents have been made available online, previously accessible only in paper form in the Argentine archive since 1992. Now, due to "extensive restoration and digitization efforts," they are available online, as reported by the Argentine Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The materials stem from investigations conducted by the Argentine police, intelligence service SIDE, and National Gendarmerie from 1950 to 1980.