Argentine Pres Milei to declassify documents on how Nazis fled to Argentina after Holocaust

At a meeting at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, Argentinian President Javier Milei assured visiting officials from the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) that he would grant them access to classified documents detailing how 5,000 Nazi war criminals settled in Argentina after the Holocaust. 

Ten thousand Nazi war criminals are estimated to have fled Europe – and justice – following World War II via escape routes known as the so-called “ratlines.” The records on the escapes and who financed them have remained classified with historians and Nazi hunters, including the SWC, unable to gain access.  

“While some previous leaders promised full cooperation to get to the hard truths that involved Argentina’s past, Milei is the first to act with lightning speed to enable the SWC to uncover important pieces of the historic puzzle, especially as it related to involvement with Nazis before, during and after the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the SWC.

Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, also sent a letter to Milei, requesting his help in finding out how the Nazi escape routes were organized and funded.

The letter was delivered to the Argentinian president by Jonathan Missner, managing partner at Stein, Mitchell, Beato & Missner. Missner legally represents the SWC and the victims of the Iran-Hezbollah bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

“President Milei is a staunch ally of the global Jewish community and was eager to open these archives. He knows that confronting Argentina’s history of Nazi collaboration requires nothing less than full transparency, and the same principle undergirds his pursuit of justice for the AMIA bombing,” said Missner.

He noted that uncovering the history of the escape routes will reveal the collusion of governments and large corporations in assisting Nazi war criminals.

“People should understand that for many decades after the Holocaust, governments and multinational corporations helped Nazis hide their stolen money, avoid prosecution, and live the free lives that their victims deserved,” Missner said. 

In Argentina, that collusion went straight to the top government echelons with then-President Juan Peron, authorizing key aspects of the ratlines. Peron, alongside other South American leaders, not only welcomed German members of the Nazi party but also Hungarian, Croatian and other Nazi war criminals. 

Alongside Argentina, several countries in the Americas secretly welcomed the fleeing Nazi war criminals, including Canada, the United States and Mexico. The Nazis who fled also found safe havens in Australia, Spain and Switzerland. The ratlines were known to U.S. intelligence, which reportedly handpicked top Nazi scientists from the escape routes. 

There were two primary escape routes with one passing through Germany and Spain – and across the Atlantic to Argentina – and the second via Germany and Italy and across the Atlantic. The escape routes, which were quite elaborate, were reportedly established with the secret support of several officials from the Vatican.

Among the roughly 5,000 Nazis who were allowed to live out their lives in freedom in Argentina were war criminals Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. The latter fled via the ratlines in 1948 by using the false identity of Helmut Gregor. 

While Rabbi Cooper of the SWC said that access to the documents would be “instrumental in obtaining justice," Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said that at this late time, declassifying the secret files would only benefit historians. 

“My impression is that the decision to open all the archives regarding the entry to Argentina of Nazi criminals will only help historians, if at all. To the best of my knowledge, all the perpetrators are already dead, as well as the individuals who assisted their escape,” Zuroff, the director of the SWC office in Jerusalem until last year, told The Times of Israel.

Zuroff also said that the identities of the Nazis who fled to Argentina and those who helped them escape were already revealed by author Uki Goni in his book, “The Real Odessa.”