MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina releases Nazi-related documents online

Mengele entered Argentina in 1949 under the name of Gregor Helmut. In 1956 he submitted his legalized birth certificate

Argentina's General Archives (AGN) made available some 1,850 documents regarding Nazi activities in the country, including the presence of Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke and Adolf Eichmann. These files can now be accessed online at argentina.gob.ar/interior/archivo-general and include intelligence reports, photographs, and police records. Until now, the documents could only be accessed on site at the AGN headquarters.

“The General Archive of the Nation made public declassified documents on Nazi activities in Argentina and secret presidential decrees. Thanks to extensive restoration and digitization work, more than 1,850 reports and almost 1,300 classified decrees are now accessible,” Argentina's Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” entered Argentina in 1949 under a false name and lived openly in the country. Priebke, involved in a 1944 massacre in Italy, was extradited in 1995. Additionally, about 1,300 secret presidential decrees from 1957 to 2005, covering topics like arms purchases and intelligence operations, have been released.

The records show how Mengele entered Argentina in 1949 under the name of Gregor Helmut. In 1956 he submitted his legalized birth certificate as Joseph Mengele. Other files offer testimonies of those who knew him during his residence in Vicente Lopez, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

“References obtained from different sectors of the German community allowed us to learn that he was commander of the Assault Guards and, at the same time, doctor in the German extermination camp of Auschwitz,” reads one of the memorandums written months after the Federal Republic of Germany requested Mengele's extradition.

Also available are Priebke's extradition documents from 1995. The former Nazi officer participated in the massacre of 335 civilians in the Ardeatine Graves, in the outskirts of Rome.

The archives on Nazi activities in Argentine territory consist of around 1,850 documentary pieces. The State handed them over in copies to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is currently investigating the links between the Credit Suisse bank and Nazism and had requested them to the government last February.

The AGN also made available confidential presidential decrees issued between 1957 and 2005 dealing with various topics, including the purchase and sale of arms, budget modifications, the organization of the Argentine Intelligence Service, and the “fight against communism” in the 1960s and 1970s. Also available is María Estela Martínez de Perón's “Decree for the purchase of EXOCET missiles” eventually used in the 1982 South Atlantic War.

See Documentación cobre el Nazismo