Argentina Delivers Thousands Of Documents To U.S. Holocaust Museum
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington Image by ushmm.org
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — The Argentine Foreign Ministry delivered to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington a series of documents about World War II, some of them related to Nazi war criminals.
The digital copies of the documents delivered are mainly letters, telegrams, newspaper articles, notes and reports, totaling almost 40,000 documents. An agreement for this transfer was signed on Friday in Buenos Aires between Argentina´s Secretary of International Cooperation Ernesto Gaspari and USHMM representative Samanta Casareto.
The 38,779 documents were produced by Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1939 and 1950.
Among the documents are the communications between Argentina and countries involved in the war, as well as information sent by the Argentinean embassy in Germany. Some documents also record a meeting of chancellors in 1944.
Argentina was a refuge for Nazis after World War II. Adolf Eichmann was captured in the northern area of Buenos Aires in 1960; another Nazi war criminal, Erich Priebke, also lived there.
The primary South American destination for Holocaust survivor was also Argentina, which became home to at least 4,800 Holocaust survivors. Others settled in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica.
Nazi criminals’ presence in Argentina was recently in the news after a trove of Nazi objects discovered earlier this month by the Argentine Federal Police has been evaluated as “unprecedented” and “the biggest” discovery of its type. Now a judiciary investigation is underway to confirm their origins and how they arrived in Argentina.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
