Eichmann and the Road to Argentina

good afternoon everyone my name is ELISA Cohen I'm the deputy director and senior vice president here at the Museum and we're thrilled to welcome you for the official opening today of the program and if you've gotten our programming brochure we have an amazing line-up of programs around this exhibition so please check them check them out this program today is co-sponsored by the City College of New York we're thrilled to have them on board they'll be doing more with us during the New York Vince badru and Dean Juan Carlos Machado who could have been more helpful in their staffs in helping us out so oaky goñi who we're gonna have the pleasure of hearing from today is the author of the real odessa about the escape of Nazi war criminals from Europe the real Odessa has been the object of many interviews and documentaries on the Discovery Channel the History Channel the BBC and other television stations Matt Seton is here to interview ouki and he is the author of three books on cycling and including the escape artist and a staff editor for the New York Times he's also a colonnade columnist for rule or rule or magazine and is written for publications such as The Observer The Telegraph and vogue and what's gonna happen is he's gonna come up and lay the foundation for the conversation to follow he'll be up here for about ten minutes talking to you and then Matt will join him on stage for the interview we'll hope you'll join us for our upcoming programs and I just have to do a pitch because this week is really an extraordinary week here tomorrow we have Holocaust survivor Pincus guter who is the face of new dimensions in technology and if you haven't from the Shoah foundation if you haven't gone upstairs to three go upstairs and take a look at this installation this is going to be the future of how younger people learn about the Holocaust from survivors who are leaving us unfortunately it's a technology that will eventually be a hologram technology it's very lifelike Pinkus has you will see if you go up there you can ask Pinkus questions and he will answer you right now it looks like a video monitor but it's very real and there's also this is a beta test so it's not perfect and we're also testing a second Holocaust survivor who was Anne Frank's stepsister and so there are two people you can meet up in the third floor gallery now tomorrow Pincus guter the real pinkeye scooter from Toronto will be with us so if you're interested in hearing from him that's tomorrow night and then on Thursday night we have an extraordinary program with Mickey Goldman Gilad who is one of the last eyewitnesses from the Eichmann trial he's 93 years old he's coming here from Israel he was the chief interrogator for the secret police and part of the secret operation that captured Eichmann he was also he's also happens to be a Holocaust survivor so imagine that he was both a victim and then he was stood on the other side and captured and witnessed the execution and was an eyewitness at the trial so he will be here to tell his story to Eli Rosenbaum who has spent his life pursuing Nazi war criminals so that's Thursday night all right back to this program let's find out how these Nazi war criminals got out of Germany and you know why they came to Argentina yes 7:00 o'clock and there's a flyer outside if you go and you buy a book that the Flyers are on the book table and they're also all the information about the programs are on our website just click on the events button so with no more further ado let's welcome mookie goñi [Applause] [Music] well thank you so much it's wonderful to be here it's wonderful to be speaking to you here at the Museum of Jewish heritage it's wonderful to be in New York and how a course would like to thank Lisa Cohen and everybody here at the museum who thought of asking me to come speak to you on Friday I had a chance to have a tour of the of the exhibition operation finale and so I want to thank Bob rahama here who he was the curator of the exhibition has done a wonderful job I suppose you've already you've already seen it and if not you should go I'm here because I'm an expert on the escape of the Nazis from Europe after the war and particularly their escape to Argentina the reason I arrived at this theme is and I'd like to speak about this is because of my own my own particular history I was born in the United States and I grew up in the United States to the age of 14 and I grew up with this very clear dividing line between which is described in American society or at least it was in the 50s and 60s when I grew up between good and evil and between the bad guys and the good guys between the Nazis and us so to speak but after I left the States I'm I lived in two countries that were neutral during the war and these two countries are Ireland where I did all of high school and I lived till I was 21 and then Argentina and I was surprised because in Ireland as you may not know but are going to remain neutral during all of World War two and and and this is what I'd like to the reason people often ask me why did the Nazis escaped to Argentina and I think the reason behind that is because there are certain societies that kind of go off center that go awry they they they make room for the presence of these kind of mass murderers now in when I moved from the United States from going to school in Washington DC I started going to school at a school call saying kahn 'let's and in in dublin and one of my professors at saying call nuts is this man here on the right and a half of the days of a mrs. great guy actually called louis fruit food wrong he was our French teacher food ron had moved from France to to Ireland either the last days of the war were just after the war and I quickly discovered I was 14 at the time to my amazement into my shock that everybody in the school knew that Louie food Ron had been an SS officer a French collaborator during the war and had had to escape France because he had a life sentence on his head and this is food wrong shortly before he died he died a few years ago and this is food Ron when he was an SS officer during the war and that was my first my first coming up close to somebody who had been a perpetrator during the war and it was my say to me and I talked about it with my Irish friends it was how could this be how could we have as a professor at school somebody who we all know was an SS officer during the war and this was because Ireland had been neutral during the war and that helped or at least and made Ireland a likely destination for Nazis or in this case French collaborators who who needed somewhere to go after the liberation of France and this now and then the second country where I lived in that was neutral during the war that accepted Nazis was Argentina and this here we have is out of Eichmann he's on the boat going to Argentina in 1950 you see he's wearing a kind of semi disguise he's wearing these glasses you can't notice it much in the photo but he had he's wearing a mustache and he's wearing this bowtie and I think in the next photo this is interesting this is the his Argentine visa on a Red Cross Passport as you know the problem for for Nancy's escaping from Germany was they had no documents they couldn't use their German passport because it was a real name so that I needed to get a passport from the Red Cross but it wasn't actually despite the the we most of us tend to believe it wasn't that easy to get a passport from the Red Cross you needed a lot of previous documentation to get that passport first and one what you needed most was a visa from a country that would accept you in this case our gen Tina and what is interesting here and we'll get into this probably in more detail later in my conversation with Matt is that Argentina had such a has such an open-door policy regarding Nazis as we in contrast with it's very closed door policies regarding the admittance of Jews is that Nazis oops sorry I wanted to go we're allowed to travel with deficient documentation con documentation deficient a which is something I discovered when I started working with the immigration records in Argentina because that might seem fairly harmless but what I discovered is that most of the Nazis who arrived in Argentina arrived under this category which was a category which was dreamt up by the Argentine migrations office especially for them because they had no papers another interesting thing is that his visa is actually from the Year 1948 but Eichmann only arrived in Argentina in 1950 he was a very late arrival because most of the Nazis escaped or arrived during the year in 1948 which is one the year when there were Argentine agents going around Europe handing out visas to to Nazis and from what we know about Eichner history is that he he stayed on living in Germany longer than many did many other criminals did because he was waiting for for his crimes to be forgotten he had this idea that if enough time went by that people would forget about the crimes of the Third Reich and that he would be able to continue living in Germany and the reason I'm pointing out the year 1948 is that the validity of this visa is two years if you don't use it within two years then you can't use it anymore so the impression I get is that that if--when waited as long as he could and then he travelled in 1950 when was the last moment he could possibly use this visa and this is him if you remember the picture of him on the ship he's wearing this bowtie again and he's got the mustache and the glasses which is his people attempted to disguise and this is something that probably got into in more detail later but I thought it would be interesting for you to look at now is this is his red cross passport as well and you will see that his is his alias Ricardo Klement someone has to vouch that this person actually is a Ricardo Klement because if you go to the red cross passport office you don't have papers somebody has to say I vouch to this person as who he says he is and in this case the person who vouched for him is father in the world odometer who was a priest in Genoa who was tapped into the church the church men who were helping Nazis escape and this is domitor himself who was a Hungarian priest maybe that had something to do with him helping I when maybe he knew some of the heisman from Hungary from before we don't know this is when one of the documentaries I did it's a documentary I did for History Channel I think was called fourth right and we went with with the copy a photocopy of Eichmann's Passport red cross passport and with the with da motor signature which is right there to the Church of San Antonio de peg Lea which is the church in Genoa where da motor was the parish priest and this was in the year 2009 that we did this documentary and my hope and the hope of the documentary director was that the this church they would allow us to go in and look at their records and find out exactly who are dodo motor was where he came from and that's me standing outside the church after they told us they wouldn't look they wouldn't allow us into the church to film inside the church or look at their records and we were pretty shocked because by then we were talking you know many many decades after the end of the war and we still found this this just brick wall of silence that surrounds the the subject of how the church aided Nazis to escape which is probably one of the or the main subjects of my book is looking at exactly how and why the church decided to help Nazis escape and to complete my commands escape cycle we first saw the Argentine visa he had since the Year 1948 then you saw the Red Cross passport with with father domitor signing his vouching his his identity this is a disembarkation card his arrival card in Argentina with his name Ricardo Klement he arrives in the year 1950 two years after the visa was granted and the profession he gives is technician and it's very interesting because most of these the worst Nazi criminals who arrived in Argentina most of them arrived that when they filled in their cards they said technician I think except for Mengele Josef Mengele - which doctor if I remember correctly he signed them he put in mechanik which is kind of gruesome and this is this is the the the passenger list of the ship where you will see again his name is Ricardo Klement and these other men and I haven't been able to identify them obviously their aliases this Faust Wolfram was 30 and the strong the close 42 I figure out the other two people in the photo we know the names of the real names of some of the people who came on the ship with Eichmann but I haven't been able to put them together with the alias but what the reason this is interesting is because in the passenger lists next to the name in this case you you find this this file number and these file numbers I was able to put together the file numbers 450 of the top criminals arrived in Argentina people like Josef Mengele out of Eichmann Klaus Barbie Hans Fishbach all these very high-ranking important Nazis and I really struggled with the Argentine government for a very long time to let me have access to these files I have the name of the person then the file was opened under I have the number of the file I want to look at the file I've only been able to see two of those files so far because these files are very important because they include all the paperwork from the first moment they presented an application for a visa for who stood up and vouched for their identity who promised that they would give them work once they arrived in Argentina what government officials intervened and in authorizing their arrival and this is the this is aside the migrations office and in in Argentina unfortunately Argentina there's not there's not a very good there's there's no great tradition of record-keeping or having good archives and the archives of the migrations office were in a very sad state and what I was working in in in this huge building were with broken windows of very old buildings and the windows were broken birds would fly in files were scattered on the floor I literally saw a cat giving birth to a bunch of kittens on top of a bunch of files and to gain access because the the subject of of the Nazi arrivals in Argentina is still it's such a difficult subject to to study if you want to study it seriously your academic historically because Argentines feel that they feel stigmatized by the the the idea that arch teen is always related in the international public mind with the arrival of Nazis so they tend not to not to encourage investigations such as this one so when I went to the migrations office to ask for access to their files I lied I was writing for Time magazine at the time I said I'm a journalist for Time magazine I'm doing an investigation into migration the history of migration in Argentina in general and I kept up this pretense for a few months until I found the passenger list which is this one for iPhones arrival and they had a pile of passenger lists that were a very bad condition for throwing away and I saw the passenger list for Eichmann was on that pile and I said well if I go and tell them they shouldn't throw it away because Eichmann is in that passenger list I'll blow my cover but at the end I decided to do it because I thought it was too important that should not be lost and all hell broke loose on my head because I started being accused they said things to me well now we know what you're really doing you were lying to us you're working for the Jews which is the kind of anti-semitism that is still prevalent in some sectors especially in government sectors so just to explain that it wasn't exactly easy studying this subject and if you've seen the exhibition upstairs these photos will be familiar to you Eichmann got job in a company called Capri which was a company set up by and we will get into this one explain how the escape happened but there are quite a few members of the SS were actually born in Argentina and raised in Argentina who were half Argentine and half Germans and the man who who's one of the main person involved in organizing the escape was one such person born in Argentina lived in Argentina till his teenage years then his family moved back to to Hamburg in his case in Germany and this young man joins the SS and at the end of the war he escapes to Argentina and he arrives in Argentina Arsen time passport he's got a German passport he speaks perfect Spanish perfect German also spoke very good English by the way and he became the main agent who travelled back to Europe to bring the Nazis to Argentina and once he'd done that the completed this operation which was in the year 1948 when he arrived in Argentina President Peron gave him a contract for measuring waterways in different areas of Argentina for the building of dams and and he set up this company called Capri where there was lots of former SS technicians such as artifact man who worked there and this is out of Eichmann working in the province of tucumán in this company called Capri which was involved in the measuring of rivers and lakes and that's a my command again dressed up in a traditional way he's dressed in a poncho which is what the there's a an orange sign equivalent of Cowboys because our scene is is a cattle rearing nation just like the states and so the Cowboys over there are called Gauchos and they were this this garment called the poncho so Eichmann is dressed up like an Argentine cowboy here Eichmann didn't do too well economically he he wasn't from a well-off family in contrast for example Yosef Mangal his family was very very wealthy and Yosef Mengele always lived under very good houses he had no problems with money I don't like him had terrible problems with money so after Capri he lost his job in Capri or Capri actually folded he set up a rabbit rearing farm outside Buenos Aires and that's him raising rabbits and this is the the town were that farm was located and we all know the story and you will see it in the exhibition of operation finale upstairs that Eichmann was kidnapped from a house that he'd bought in in an area of town outside the city of the main city of Buenos Aires but before that for a long time he rented this house which is a very traditional middle-class quite a nice home actually where he lived for a good few years that he run this is me in another documentary where I want to visit the house and actually rang the doorbell of that house and and I was fortunate enough that the man who the owner came on said Oh actually I've read I've read your book and I'm a big fan of your work so I got a huge tour of that house and so I was inside the house where Eichmann lived and I I spoke to lots of the neighbors and if anybody wants to ask there's some incredible anecdotes to tell about Eichmann's relationship with his neighbors and what his neighbors knew about him about his personal life in argentina and this is the house of Josef Mengele where Yusuf Mengele lived in Orson aforetime your Sebago they've moved quite a few times but when he first arrived he lived in this house for a while now the ID there's this idea in people's minds that when the Nazis escaped to Argentina they lived maybe hiding in the in the Amazon jungle somewhere or they lived somewhere high up on the Andes Mountains this is not true they lived right smack dab in the middle of town inside when Osiris most of them this house that were Yosef Mengele lives the house that I showed you before Reichman used to live are in typical middle class or even upper-middle class neighborhoods there they did not live in hiding as a matter of fact Josef Mengele lived under his the some of them were they arrived under false names but some of them quickly changed back to their own name and Yosef Mengele did and I know people who lived in who bought the house not this one but another house that year some Engel who lived in and they bought the house the architect was fixing up the house for them and suddenly he looked under the door and the gas gas bill had arrived and it was in the name of Jose Mengele so they lived he even had his name and what is are his phone book at the time so they lived very very openly and well here's the end of the stories out of Lachman facing trial and Jerusalem and but the story of course never has after Eichmann was kidnapped his he had four sons in Argentina and some of them were very very upset at the kidnapping of the father I think this is Klaus Eichmann his eldest son who gave lots of interviews wearing an armband with the swastika so I think that kind of rounds up what to give you a brief introduction into the work I've been doing and how it's not just about the escape which is of course extremely important but it's it's about how societies such like a society such as Argentina which was very it's are seen as the the country with the largest middle class in South America with a very high educational level it's got the highest literacy rate in all of South America how could it allowed these murderers to live in its mist and what effect it had on Argentina and the appearance of a dictatorship in the 1970s in Argentina that similarly to the Nazis on a much smaller scale also set up death camps and disappeared tens of thousands of people and which is my subject of interest was did the presence of these Nazis have any influence on what happened in Argentina this mass killing that went on during the 1970s so I'd like to invite Madame's up here and we can have a conversation about this [Applause] is my mic working okay you can hear no louder any good okay thank you this by the way I'm just gonna plug the book because Sookie hasn't done a great job so far of plugging his own book is just a totally fascinating story and you know the work that went into this and the detective work and the investigative work that went into this is truly remarkable and it's a really complicated multi-dimensional story you know we've heard about the the the main of famous perpetrators Mengele Eichmann pre-pro was another who appears in the book senior SS people all involved in the final solution but yeah I was curious and I think what the book does such a great job of exposing is how well the y argentina question certainly but yeah how was this accomplished how was it possible for so many Nazis and not only Nazis but but fascists of all stripes from all over Europe there's a fascinating chapter in this book in fact about the pistachio the Croatian fascist regime who perpetrated you know grotesque war crimes and they were also enabled to move to Argentina thousands of Croatian fascists also were enabled to travel to Argentina and find refuge in the immediate post-war period so what I wanted to ask first and foremost was who were the key enablers of this flight of the Nazis and they and their axis allies to Argentina and South America in the immediate post-war years that's a great question because the book is called the real Odessa because of Frederick Forsyth famous novel in 1972 I wasn't called the Odessa file which proposed the idea and and Frederick Forsyth was actually a secret and my five ages it's a part of something so he must have had access but he proposed me I did that there was an organization called Odessa made up by former members of the SS Odessa and German is the acronym for former members of the SS who were dreaming of setting up a Fourth Reich in Argentina after the war to continue Hitler his idea of and so what I decided when I started looking at this book of course I thought well maybe is it true was Baron Odessa and the thing is I found that there wasn't there really was there was a small organization called Odessa and there's some American there's some American documents about that but they operated only inside Germany around the Year in 1947 1948 and they quickly dismantled so I suppose Forsyth must have had access to that information that he used the name but there was no organization per se but what we had what I discovered that's why I call it the real Odessa is you have these different different actors in this drama the first thing you had to do of course was get the Germans the Nazis out of Germany it was difficult to get them out of Germany because you couldn't leave - how many unless you had an allied pass to leave Germany because at that time Germany was still there were still American forces French forces Soviet forces occupying Germany so how do you get them out so Argentina when they sent this special agent who was a former SS captain who was actually Argentine - to figure out how to get them out he had conversations with people in the Swiss government with the Minister of Justice a man called Edward wants tiger and with the Chief of Police Heinrich rotten wound and rotten Lind in particular and staggered to a lesser extent were the men who were probably responsible for the famous Jay being stabbed on the passports of German Jews because the Swiss said they the Swiss asked the Germans to provide something in the passport so that they would know when not to allow people in because they were Jewish and and Rutland was one of the Swiss officials involved in these conversations with the Germans for that passport so when the SS agent was a man called Carlos fuller met with Heinrich Rutland he was quite open and and this is the fascinating thing the Swiss are amazing record keepers as opposed to the Argentine so there and and the first heard about this because a Swiss historian came to see mr. dookey I know you're working on the subject there's these documents and Switzer that nobody dares work with in Switzerland because they're so they're just so incriminate in for Switzerland and these were the Heinrich Rockman's with Heinrich Rothman's private papers about his meetings with these Argentines German Argentine agents so every time he met with Carlos fuller who's this former SS captain who was also an Argentine who has been sent back to Europe to arrange the escape the Nazis folder says I want to bring Nazis out of Germany to send them to Argentina and since I can't get allied passes for them I would like to ask the Swiss government to let me smuggle them illegally through Switzerland so Horner Heinrich Rothman said well ok we can do that but in exchange we want Argentina to do something for us and what Rodman proposed is we will let you smuggle the nancy's across the border at night I'll pretend that we don't see them coming through because once they went through Switzerland so easily suzana didn't require an exit pass so they could send them from Switzerland to Italy to take a boat to Argentina ship and Rodman said we'll let you smuggle the Nazis through but we have in Switzerland lots of Jews who escaped from from Germany and other countries during the war and we don't want them here so we'll let you take the Nazis as long as you take the some of these Jews as well and Rahman had a list of about I think nine hundred people and and folder was kind of well I don't know we don't really want to as an Argentine either but they did reach an agreement and Switzerland became a key player and Heinrich rötteln became a key player because despite their best attempts sometimes they were stopped at the border and Heinrich Watling would get phone calls from border guards saying there's some weird Argentine Germans here are trying to smuggle Nazis across the border and we caught them last night and what should we do with them and roadman intervened and and and told the border guards you have to let them through and then since he's such a note keeper he would meet with these German hearts and times who were doing the smuggling and he was he would say I scold them severely and ask them that oh I don't want this to happen again and if they're gonna do this they have to do it you know secretly and not getting because if this became public because it scared so Switzerland was a key player but on top of the Swiss but it was also Franco's Spain Madrid was a kinetic on with and and Rome and in many ways the Vatican was intimately involved could you talk about both of those conduits a little yeah the because once you got them through Switzerland and to Switzerland it was easy to get them out because Switzerland didn't ask for exit visas they didn't check the who was leaving Switzerland they would smuggle them to Italy and the question is what do I do with them in Italy and how do I get papers for them to put them on ships to arrive because there's all this myth that goes on which some of the press and some of the movies in Hollywood that the idea that they flew in planes that they arrived in submarines that night and got off a submarine secretly on the coast of Patagonia this did not happen they traveled not always first class but tourists class on normal passenger ships sometimes they did they lost them Charles via KLM because KLM had flights out of Geneva I think so it was easy once they in Switzerland they could put them on Kalin and the u.s. complain to pay them about it and they and they spoke to the Dutch government about it because it's a Dutch airline and they were not able to stop it because KLM knew that this was such good business one that they refused to help the Americans on this so the question is why the Vatican right this is a super interesting question and and and it gets into it you're mentioning about the Croatians and the others who came to Argentina because when you look at the Nazis who came to our city the Nazis only start arriving around 1940 mid 1947 which is one these special missions are are arranged by Peron and by Argentina and but before that already you see in Rome even before the end of the war once France was liberated and once Belgium had been liberated by the Allies in 1944 you had lots of French collaborators particularly who escaped to Rome first they escaped to spank first they escaped to Berlin but once they realized that Germany was going to lose the war then they escaped to Spain and then many of them to Rome so by the end of the war there were a lot of French collaborators Nazi collaborators who were living in Rome under the protection of the Vatican and in housing and lodging provided by the Vatican and being fed and Vatican dining halls so there was an Argentine Cardinal who traveled to Rome in 1946 and he offered Argentina as a refuge for these French war criminals now why this is interesting because during that period just after the war while the Nuremberg trials were going on while the Nazis were seen as the as the incarnation of evil that they were there wasn't much room for helping German and Austrian Nazis escape but there was lots of room and the Vatican had very in had deep interest in rescuing Catholic fascists this means Belgian collaborators French collaborators and Croatian collaborators especially who were Catholic fascists and in the case of Belgian for example the collaborationist party in Belgium is called the wreck cyst party and why was it called the rectus party is because it was the party of Christo's Rex the party of Christ the King so what what these French Belgian and Croatian fascists did is they managed to reconcile Catholicism and fascism and that's why Argentina was interested in an Argentine right-wing nationalist deeply Catholic people in the military and in the church Cardinal Caggiano this he went to Rome he offered Argentina as a refuge for these Catholic fascists and actually when he when the Cardinal took a ship back to Argentina the first criminal who arrives in Argentina is a French war criminal who travels on the ship in the same ship with the cargo and there's lots of documentation that I find that I found of the cardinal ordering visas to be ground to this view so what happened is between 46 and 48 you will find most of the French Belgian and creation war criminals especially creations numbering in that many many thousands who escaped to Argentina arrived in that time period but then in 1947 1948 was the escape of the Austrian and German Nazi start they plug into this network of priests of Vatican of the Vatican helping these French and Belgians operations obtain Red Cross passports and the Vatican would step in and vouch for the identity of these people under false names of these Catholic French and Belgians and when you see father de moto signing Eichmann's application for a Red Cross Passport it's the continuation see about the actors you have Switzerland is interested because they have their own vested interests in the hope that Argentina will take some of the Jews that have sought refuge in Switzerland during the war you have the Vatican who is trying to find shelter or Catholic fascists and who and who willingly then participate was this route is open to help Nazis as well and Argentina so you have three I'm correct me if I'm wrong but you know at a certain point once there are you know German Nazi refugees in Rome getting this kind of assistance whenever they're given you know false names and false papers to enable their escape to Argentina they're always certified as being Catholic even though officially as German Nazi Party members they would have been pagan or you know godless I mean it's the most it's the most remarkable story the involvement of I mean I think a lot of us probably knew that Pope Pius the 12th was rather squishy in terms of his you know shall we say complicity with the persecution of Jews in in Mussolini's Italy but the extent of the involvement of the church the Roman Catholic Church under his papacy with this enabling of with this well with this collaboration with the Nazis is just as a shocking part of the story to me I wanted to jump in here because I think now we're talking about Catholic nationalism as a sort of motivating force and a unifying force in these unholy alliances I wanted to hear about one pair on and the figure of the figure of Juan Peron and his involvement in this way you know he had to enable all this in some sense he is the most morally culpable figure in in the story on Argentine side so I wanted to ask about Peron ISM and how did Peron ISM which is such a powerful force in Argentine politics to this day more or less how did it become so closely allied with narcissism could you talk to that a little okay yeah already during the war already during the war there were very close links between the Nazi regime and and these right-wing Catholic military men in Argentina including Juan Peron who at that time was not yet president he was part of a military dictatorship he was the Minister of War and vice president and he had had training in with the Italian army under Mussolini great from 1939 to 1941 Peron was kind of pressed the military attache at the Argentine embassy in Rome and he he is claimed and we don't know if this true because there's no historical evidence that he traveled into Germany and that he was visited Nazi Germany and he's talked about his admiration especially for Mussolini as a great admirer room was Fellini so there is there's that element in it but the interesting thing is that you're getting into kind of fairly my new detail here but already during the word there was a very important Nazi spy ring operating in South America during the war and of course the main object of interest was spying on the United States and these SS spies or SS officers SS captain's Muslim who what in order to travel freely around the American continent they needed papers and Argentina provided them papers Argentina provided these SS officers with Argentine documents Argentine passports so they could travel freely throughout through the American Compton in carry out the spying activities so already during the war there was this this habit of Argentina granting documents to SS officers and there were quid pro quos in trade as well whether or not I mean there was money laundering of hard currency for that the Nazis there was there were a lot of imports of important minerals for the Nazi war machine and in exchange guns arms traveling back to Argentina during the war Argentina did provide lots of vital elements that the Germans couldn't get anywhere else that they couldn't get anywhere else also Argentine are that's the German banks there was the Deutsche Bank on a tear of the Navy there's two very important German banks and are one of the most important thing for the Nazis was to be able to get hold of dollars foreign currency which they couldn't get hold of so by whitewashing money through Argentina they were able to get hold of dollar currency to trade and buy the things that the Germany needed to for its war effort so there was that as well so there was this already this habit and and these contacts with the SS Secret Service there was there was a radio contact that went on between Berlin and when Azhar is constantly between the SS officers and when Osiris and the SS headquarters in Berlin and that was often used by Argentines as well in the communications because during the war Tina sent two emissaries that meant secret there's one who's met secretly with Ribbentrop there's a foreign minister of the Nazi regime he met with Heinrich Himmler the head of the SS and apparently he met even with with was Hitler now Argentina was neutral during the war and so what this emissary was asking for if we maintain our neutrality and Germany wins we hope that we will get trade preferences once the war is over that you will archana become an important trading partner for you and Archie Neal was desperately looking for weapons because Peron was very interested in acquiring German submarine and submarines airplanes and it's interesting because the there is the the answers back especially from the German Navy saying look we've barely got enough submarines to fight you know okay fighting the war we're not going to give any submarines to Argentina right now but keep pretending like we're gonna give Argentina something so that they stay on our side so those were the those were some of the motivations but in terms of Peron himself and his own allegiances or his own ideology if you like he was I mean had an extraordinary career for one thing I mean that you know he came to power through a coup d'etat during in the 1940 43 43 he was subsequently elected president and then he himself was ultimately deposed and went into exile and Franco's Spain and while he was in exile relatively late in his life he gave a series of interviews and recorded recorded in effect his political memoirs is that would I be right to say and he was asked specifically about this question of why he'd you know given safe haven to so many fleeing war criminals and his answer was that he was outraged by the Nuremberg tribunals and he felt it was Victor's justice I suppose would that be right and was in some way an affront to well how would you explain his personal motivation and and how how much was that a true explanation Parag this question I get asked a lot was Perona Nancy and always safer was a parent he's a politician he thinks about nothing except himself he's a demagogue he's a populist he was good for Argentina in many ways because Archie knew was a very conservative society where the working class had hardly any rights at all so he gave all these rights to the working class which the other was otherwise wouldn't have had but he was definitely was out for himself now regarding the Nazis he said this and it's in these memoirs that you mentioned these or these interviews that he gave he says that it offended his military sense of honour to see a defeated army put on trial and that he took it upon himself to rescue as many German officers as he could from those trials so as a military man he considered that offensive now he had other reasons as well he had he had a natural affinity with fascism so that also played into the reason why he decided to help Croatian fascists and and that's he Nazi Germans and Austrians escape and then there's a third reason is that by mid 1947 was the Nuremberg trials that occurred it turns out that the Americans to a lesser extent the British and the Vatican had been using many former Nazi officers and Croatians especially as anti-communist agents the Cold War was now starting and half of Europe had fallen behind the Iron Curtain and and especially Yugoslavia had turned communist under marshal Tito and for example the case of the Croatians the Vatican hired lots of these former host a she who were some of the worst criminals ever because they didn't even go to the bother of creating industrial death camps they butchered their victims with with with sticks and knives and horrible killing even the Germans were horrified by the kind of thing that equations were doing so they sent these former Croatian officers into Yugoslavia and the hope that they would be able to have staged some kind of coup to overthrow the communist government that had taken over he was lucky and also in two other countries such as Romania and and of course this did not work so by mid 1947 early 1948 but by mid 1947 you're already see cables from the British Foreign Office and the US State Department because they start appearing British diplomats and American diplomats saying hey in Europe saying I'm seeing all these Nazis and former Croatian you know collaborators and criminals that are traveling to Argentina and we're doing nothing about it what's going on and the answer back from London and from Washington is hush we've reached a secretive arrangement between the Vatican and Buenos Aires that were gonna send these people somewhere and we don't know and and the man who raised his hand and said I'll accept them is Juan Peron in Argentina I think because of his his sympathy for that kind of thinking so Peron which is a i supposes is the signature of a true demagogue he was he was helping basically himself but he was he was helping fellow military man because it offended a sense of military honor that they should be put on trial he was helping Argentina because he thought he was bringing technicians airplane designers he brought in an atomic scientist who promised Peron he would build an atomic bomb for Argentina it eventually didn't happen but he worked on it for a couple of years and he did it also because it turned out that this way he was helping London Washington and the Vatican who needed somewhere to send these anti-communist agents who were formerly collaborators and Nazis that needed to be sent somewhere because if especially there's the famous case of Klaus Barbie the butcher of Lyon and if you heard about Klaus Barbie he was an SS officer in the on France who was responsible for from the killing of large number of Jews and and members of the French Resistance some very important members of the French Resistance and he escaped through this Vatican Network and he ended up in Bolivia not Argentina but Klaus Barbie had to be sent somewhere because he'd been working for the Americans for a couple of years and so the Americans got in contact with this Vatican escape Network and said and it had to pay this priest in charge on a great paid him $1,200 to send Klaus Barbie somewhere I wanted to I mean I'm conscious that I mean we're planning to have a microphone go around and I'm sure you've got your own questions but Buki I wanted to kind of bring it sort of taught the present-day a little bit more and - you mentioned that part of the impulse for your work on this was the fact that you were investigating the crimes of the military dictatorship in Argentina from that ran from 1976 to 1983 and the dirty war that it conducted against its own its own opponents its own domestic opponents and you know just as a sort of sheer matter of kind of demographics and numbers it occurred to me that if you've imported you know 5000 Croatian sir fascists and and you have a you know a Nazi you have Nazi war criminals that you're sheltering and they're so sympathetic elements of your own Italian and German communities who have always were sympathetic to Nazism you know that must have had a role in domestic politics and in in in you know enabling some of the some of the the regimes that the Argentine regimes own war crimes against its people in in that period in the certain late 70s and early 80s could you elaborate on that a little for us and then pass we'll have a Q&A yeah that is timely especially what what's happening all over the world today now we're even places like Poland where they passed laws prohibiting academics from looking into the responsibility of the Poland and the extermination of Jews and that was just the Germans to put the concentration camps here do with it this is a question when I arrived in Argentina at the age of 75 though I'd been there a couple of times as a kid but in in the year 1975 at the age of 21 and I saw the build-up to the dictatorship that was about to happen and I could sense in the air this this this this change of the paradigm were suddenly things that before were not acceptable to talk about in in normal society suddenly became acceptable and in terms of we need to kill people we need to kill the young people who have left-wing ideas we need to stop the the danger of a Cuban style regime being imposed in Argentina was anti-semitic discourse also part of that very strongly this is one of the things that shocked me most about arriving in Argentina's I could see and they have these kiosks where they sell newspapers and books on the street you know like a newspaper stand we call them Kyoko's kiosks and mine can't was for sale in Spanish me lucha at basically any kiosk or subway newsstand and put his iris there were all these books about because conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories about that Israel really wanted to take over Patagonia which is the southernmost area of Argentina because it's largely uninhabited and that is rohad secret planet so this kind of it and this was also foreign part of the discourse because they saw the the youth movement and the guerrilla movement in the military mind this was mixed year that the idea that the guerrilla movement the left-wing insurgents in in the minds of the older military who were men who were trained in the military academy during the years when Argentina was neutral during the war and then it get MIT got mixed up with with the idea of the youth movement and the hippies and and long hair and the free love and this became something so when the military took over when I saw the build-up to that were this conversation in society that would have been unthinkable before became part of society we have to stop this it's going to change our country our country's going to stop being the kind of country it is and when the military took over in their speeches they went they repeated over and over again that their purpose was to defend Argentina's Western and Christian style of living and there's also this discourse that the idea that Western civilization is is under a menace that the West itself is not aware of so that Argentina will take on this war that the United States and Europe don't realize needs to be taken on so and I thought can it be a coincidence that this kind of thinking has arisen in the country were people like Eichmann and Mengele and and so many others lived freely among us because when I arrived I discovered that two doors down from my house lived this actually this SS captain was one who organized the escape and I'd speak to neighbors and they'd say oh yes yeah he was hope this house folder he had - pounds and he had horses and I taught his wife Spanish because she couldn't speak goods my neighbor told me and there was such nice people and so when I talked about normalization we didn't saw what we're talking about his normalization we were talking about and this is what I when I talk about when I when I started it wasn't too confusing where I made this point that I went from United States when I grew up the United States I lived in Washington on a street called Cathedral Avenue and the back alley there was a house were lived a mother with her son who her son had been an Air Force pilot for the United States during World War two and I kind of made you know friends with this guy and he showed me his his you know paintings of airplanes and he told me how he was a pilot how he'd fought in World War two and I I grew up in a society where there was no muddy issue around good or bad and then I suddenly moved to Arlen I saw Louis Foote Ron it was my French teacher had been an assessment it was totally accepted by but and then I moved to Argentina war and except that in Argentina so when the dictatorship dictatorship happened obviously the question I said well this is what it must have been and Bert like in Berlin in 1941 you see people disappearing they no longer live there are the people who live in that house or gone and now somebody else is living there but we don't know what's happening so the question I ask myself could the presence of these people have the Nazi criminals and Croatians especially have affected Argentina in some kind of way that made this possible the answer i think is yes that you what i it's what i call this this slow habit of coexisting with evil if your next door neighbor was Eichmann or just some German that you don't know his name but that he knew that he did bad things in the war then once that starts happening in your own country and it's being done by Argentines against other Argentines what you're already this is already part of your it's already been normalized which is the word that's being used in the United States so much now yes this is the big fear and and and the reason I've documented this and we've talked to not too much about Eichmann is that I wanted to prove that this happened because what happens normalization is that people say it's not as bad as it was you get not necessarily negationism but you get relativism which is like the politically correct face of negationism where people say yeah well but there's also Nazis in what United staes look at Verner von Braun and and it's not so bad or like when the military took took power in 1976 and I realized that they were coming in for a bloodbath but many people said no that they're just saying they're gonna do that but they're not gonna do it and I think this is so dumb my the end of the conclusion I and I'll just wrap this up here saying the problem is not the bad guys the problem is not the bad guys the problem is the good guys my book is not about Eichmann my book is not about the Nazis it's not a it's not a book about what they did during the Holocaust my book is about the Swiss government it's about the Vatican about the Argentine government you know democratically elected presidents in Argentina a democratically neglected Pramod government in switzerland and institutions such like such as the catholic church whose avowed purpose and his main purpose and who actually do do lots of good in so many ways in the world how could they be twisted and how could they allow themselves to be used for this purpose so the book is how what can because the bad guys they're pretty much blunt about what they're gonna do you know I think you've seen that you can see that here and I've talked about it you know politicians who say I'm gonna do mass deportation and during the electoral campaign people say no he's not really gonna do that he's just saying that so I can I can vote for him because I know he won't but they will so the the bad guys are pretty blunt about what they're gonna do they're identifiable they're difficult to stop once you get a demagogue gets his foot in the door he takes over the house very quickly because democracy has no no defense against people who don't abide by any kind of rule so I think we should go [Applause] on that cheerful note can I see some hands we have a microphone so this lady there in the orange t-shirt and right in front of me we'll have I think about 15 minutes could you please talk about the neighbors of Eichmann and Mengele in the case of mango that I didn't but when because I knew the man who oh I didn't know him but I met him by ringing his doorbell and I went back a few times so I got a chance to speak to two neighbors on the corner was a dentist's office so I thought I'd ring the doorbell and and it was a husband-and-wife team they were both dentists and they'd they'd looked after the Eichmann family and the story they told me which I must believe is true I don't know if it's true but they told me that they'd made Eichmann's dentures and he's quite young man he was in his forties but apparently he had no teeth left and in the story--the and they'd also did dental work on the wife and on the children and they knew the family quite well and it's fascinating stories kind of gruesome they told me is that that after Eichmann was was was captured and taken to Israel and put on trial and and and executed sometime later one of one of Eichmann's son showed up at their office with his father's dentures saying they sent us back his belongings and among the belongings are this and we don't want them so they gave them to the dentist so this is the kind of intimate detail of their day-to-day life which just goes to the I just want to do away with this idea that they were living in some kind of super hiding they weren't and iPhone was captured actually because he lived in the name Clement but he wanted to keep the family name alive so his children kept on living under the name Eichmann so that's how he was found part of the reason saris a gentleman over there thank you thank you for the fine presentation I've read and we're heard that the Pope seems to have given refuge to Jews in Rome during the Holocaust how does that jibe with the fact that he was so complicit with getting refuge for the Nazis to escape yeah they're not mutually exclusive they're not contradictory in the minds of people who at the church in this case it's a little known fact that Pope Pius the 12th and I can remember the years exactly I think 49 50 51 he started asking he started putting pressure on on the bishops and Germany to request amnesties for Germans convicted and for war crimes in Germany including someone who had been convicted the Nuremberg trials because of this a Catholic idea of forgiveness but the best explanation like if there was a Belgian collaborator remember this rexis party called pure day and pure day was a very important collaborator in Belgium and he was a devout Catholic man and he was also luckily for me a writer who kept journals and when he after he escaped to Argentina eventually and the journals all his wives were sent back to his family and I had to get permission from his family in Belgium and had to travel to - to Belgium to look at the they wouldn't they had to look at the his his journals there and during the war this thing was on his mind as well on period BAE's mind he was quite a smart man a total Nazi and he'd he'd met Hitler personally he'd had tea with Ribbentrop but and in 1943 he traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Pius the 12th and and the question that it was on his mind continually is what is the church what is the church's position between communism and capitalism and Nazism because pure a day being a Catholic he himself was trying to reconcile his Catholicism with his admiration of Hitler because Hitler as you know believed in paganism and was not supportive of the Catholic Church and he meets with Pope Pius and his journalist he says a very highly placed churchmen and we don't know who it was probably Pope Pius if not Montini who was known as secretaries of state who then became Pope Paul the sixth I think and he poses this question to him and the answer he got from this church man who was either a pastor that a present Pope or a future Pope was he said the Catholic Church is like a cat that has to walk across a table that's finally set out for a dinner with for a fine dinner with candelabra and and and crystal glasses and the place and has to walk across all the table without knocking anything over also after the war the the British became obsessed with the and that first period up to admit 1947 became obsessed with how the Vatican was helping the Nazis and the the British ambassador to the Vatican man called Henry Osbourne had lots of meetings with Montini especially and other high-ranking saying you're gonna you're gonna be found out at some point history is gonna pass judgment on the fact that the Vatican is helping Nazis escape and when he writes back to the Foreign Office had Nero's was going it's a process because the Vatican does not think in years it does not think in decades it thinks in centuries so it was very difficult to get the Vatican to even worry about the fact that it could be tainted by its support of healthy Nazis escape I don't know if that answers the question that's about as close as his icon let's take a question from over here it's gentlemanly I'll bring you the mic yes what was the reason that the Israelis did not pursue to catch Mengele I mean they were close to it but at the end they relented aside the afro he would probably be much better suited to answer the question but the question the answer that I know is that when they sent the mission to capture Eichmann it was also on her mind it was part of the plan that maybe they could capture Mengele as well but once they had captured Eichmann they got scared the team the Mossad team got scared that if they put the mission at risk by supposedly they went for Mengele and something went wrong because they were they were very scared that something could go wrong they could get caught it would be imagine the embarrassment Israeli agents caught an Argentine trying to kidnap Michael and they didn't kidnap him and then they got arrested by the Argentine police deeply embarrassing and so they was they had Eichmann they abandoned the idea of going from Mengele as well because they thought it was too risky we've gone we've gone Eichmann we don't want to jeopardize you know what we've done so far and obviously it's it's it's grating because he's saying why you could come in Billy as well why didn't they but I think it does make sense in terms of the mission itself you know we've got this far let's cut our winnings and run here and I mean wouldn't it be also true to say that I mean a lot of governments had mixed records some cells I mean even the Americans and the British were not necessarily keen to ultimately pursue every Nazi I mean Israel of course had its own motives but but you know Simon vision tiles did of course an independent Nazi hunter had to in the end played a crucial role in forcing prosecutors to take up cases like the one against Klaus Barbie for instance it's very difficult to put these kind of these kind of crimes on trial back we got a microphone down here we've got I think two or three more time for two or three more questions if we're quick so gentlemen if the leather jacket if we don't get to all your questions in the public arena I'm sure Oakley will be glad to talk to you afterwards so I have two questions for you number one how true is if you came by in the boat in first class they were argentinian immigration didn't check your papers because they consider you have money and they want you there that's the first question the second question is what changed Peron after the war in the 50s to the Jewish community I live in Argentina and the Jewish community was very happy with bid on in the 50s and here that quite an amount or support in there in Argentina yes this opens up the whole other kettle of fish which is the Argentina's politics regarding the arrival of Jews before the war during the war and after the war it is true what you say is right during the for a very long period of time anybody who traveled first class to Argentina would get off the ship no questions asked until the rcent government in the late 30s or early 40s I became worried that there were lots of communists and Jews who were using the first-class loophole to get into Argentina escaping controls and there's something it's very important part of the book and this I knew my grandfather was I'm gonna try and summarizes my grandfather was a diplomat from Argentina before and during the war he was posted in San Francisco so but then he was posted in Vienna my my father grew up in Vienna spoke perfect German went to school in high school in Germany and in Vienna saw the rise of Hitler ISM in Vienna and then he was posted in Bolivia so I knew from family history that there had been a secret order that Argentina had put in place prohibiting granting visa two Jews fleeing the Holocaust now this would seemed and this was a no history book I never met so but I eventually found a copy of this order by somebody who who got a copy illegally from a secret archive and gave me a photocopy and I published it in the book and I raised a huge consciousness awareness program by going television and finally opened I wrote an open letter to the government in 2005 saying my grandfather participated in denying visas to to Jews escaping the Holocaust I think it's time Argentina admitted this apologized for it and eventually it did I convinced the government and the equivalent of the Argentine White House the Casa Rosada the pink house there was a ceremony with the president there an appearance and art scene apologized for the secret order now there's a contradiction because our CV is the country that received the largest amount of Jews during this period and the reason is why because they got an illegally through the tremendous corruption in the art Stein diplomatic service on the one hand who would grant visas to Jews pretending there were Catholics so there's large number of Jews and iWork of the passion passenger lists and I know people who arrive they figure as Catholics because they paid a bribe under the table the diplomat would write your Catholic and they would get into Argentina that way and also although Argentina did not give visas neighboring countries did Bolivia in particular so in Bolivia there were about 30,000 mostly german jews who escaped crossing the panama canal then they go down at ela and take a train up to bolivia there were about 30,000 Jews who escaped to Bolivia and from Bolivia crossed the border illegally into Argentina so there's the the holes if there's a whole chapter about it in the book and it's extremely important just very briefly to the gentleman's question about Perrins relationship for Jewish community and the fifties and that he was popular what was that about I have two answers to that Peron divided the the Jewish community there was one Jewish institution called Gaia which was the most important it's that represented the Jewish community and he created a parentless Jewish organization called oh yeah and oh yeah got more and three permits for Jews and aya did because oh yes supported perón's policies so he divided he applied to divide and rule politics towards the Jewish community and then when I first started speaking about Argentina's secure against the Jews one woman came up to me a woman and this is like 10 or 15 years ago woman in her 60s down late 60 37 days and she tell me look when I arrived in Argentina and I was a kid she was her family fled the Holocaust and she said at the dinner table I said to my parents once how can we be in Argentina with this man Coronas president who's helping the Nazis and who was a Nazi himself and the question the answer I got from my parents was shut up and eat because at least here they don't kill us so I think this this I'm sorry about putting it so bluntly but that's I think that this perception from so many Holocaust where we see refugees arrived in Argentina they were so grateful to live in a country where there was some light Catholic style Spanish style anti-semitism but not the kind of horrific anti-semitism that they had suffered in Europe do we take one more how about the one closest to you in the 1920s Hitler was broke he was a painter in the 1930s he was able to pay the essay where'd he get the money did he get it from the Vatican did he get money from Argentina I don't think so no the Vatican all from the Vatican no it's still the way around we actually you know why was the Vatican so so slow and reacting against over this Germany is is is one of the largest Catholic nations in the world and it's also one of the richest nations of the world so the Catholic community in Germany are one of the greatest contributors to the finances of the Vatican and that's why Pope Pius tried reaching a concordant with Mussolini and then with with the for this it was very important for the for the Vatican to maintain the safety and the economic safety of the Catholic Church within Germany I mean I don't I've never heard or seen anything regarding the idea that the Vatican might have supported have to financially I don't think so I think we have to wrap up there at Blaz I say I'm sure [Applause]

Channel: Museum of Jewish Heritage

Views: 68,083

Rating: 4.5047617 out of 5

Keywords: Operation Finale, Museum of Jewish Heritage, Eichmann Capture

Id: Nv-ntFDRy8w

Length: 76min 19sec (4579 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017