Argentina unveils digital archive of Nazi war criminals
The government in Buenos Aires has made hundreds of documents about Nazi war criminals who fled to Argentina available online.
After the Second World War, many Nazi war criminals escaped to Argentina to avoid accountability. Now, the government in Buenos Aires has made hundreds of documents related to its activities and investigations available on the internet.
Mengele and Eichmann
On the website of the Argentine National Archives, files are available on, among others, the Auschwitz criminal Josef Mengele and the architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann. For the first time, their files are publicly available in digital format for everyone.
In the Third Reich, Eichmann ordered the deportation of millions of Jews to extermination camps. After the Second World War, he fled to Argentina before Israeli agents captured him in May 1960 and brought him to Israel, where he was charged and sentenced to death.
Josef Mengele, a doctor of medicine, was a physician at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. He is responsible for some of the cruellest pseudo-medical experiments. He first fled to Argentina and later to Brazil, where he eventually died. He was never punished.
Available online
In total, over 1,850 documents have been uploaded online, which were previously only available in paper form at the Argentine archive since 1992. Now, thanks to "extensive restoration and digitisation work," they are online, the Ministry of the Interior of Argentina reported.
The materials come from investigations conducted by the Argentine police, SIDE intelligence services, and the National Gendarmerie from 1950 to 1980.
