Netanyahu to receive huge archive documenting Argentina's Nazi ties
As part of the prime minister’s visit to Buenos Aires, President Macri to announce transfer of 139,544 classified documents containing info on Argentina’s record with Hitler’s regime and government’s post-war harboring of Nazi war criminals.
Argentine media has reported President Mauricio Macri will commit to the transfer of archives to Israel documenting ties between Argentina and the Nazi regime during World War II, and especially in the years following, when the regime of Juan Domingo Perón assisted Nazi officials who fled to Buenos Aires to seek refuge.
Macri is expected to anounce the transfer to Netanyahu during his visit to the country. The reports quoted a local source who claimed that there was documentation of the ties between the government of Argentina and Germany and that the information that would be transferred to Israel would be "of great value to the Jewish people."
In recent months, the Israeli ambassador to Buenos Aires, Ilan Sztulman, has been overseeing the planning of the archival transfer.
The trove is expected to include scans of 139,544 photographs and documents taken during the Holocaust and post-war years that Argentina's Foreign Ministry has yet to share with Israel. Information inside the hitherto classified sources will also enable historians to shed light on the conduct of Argentine diplomats during the most murderous chapter in Jewish history.
The transfer to Israel of documents relating to the period of World War II and the Holocaust is not unprecedented, however. In June, the Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires completed the transfer of 38,779 documents to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, consisting of letters, telegrams and newspaper articles.
In recent years, Israel has also received documents from Argentina relating to the period, but according to Monday's reports, the fresh batch to be transferred by President Macri will contain more significant content.
In the years after the war, Argentina became known as one of the main Latin American countries to harbor Nazi criminals seeking refuge from the victorious nations ready to place them in the dock during Nuremberg Trials for their crimes.
The two most infamous Nazis who fled to Argentina were Adolf Eichmann (a chief architect of the Final Solution who was captured by the Mossad in 1960 in Buenos Aires and executed in Israel) and Erich Priebke, a Nazi SS commander who remained in the country until the 1990s.
