After Germany lost World War II, numerous Nazi officials followed ratlines to escape to South America as Europe wasn’t safe for any Nazi supporters. So many of them moved to Argentina, where they went undercover. However, there’s been a discovery of massive artefacts from Nazi Germany.
Argentine police collaborated with Interpol to raid a collector’s home in the district of Béccar. In this place, they discovered a hidden room behind a bookshelf that led to a secret passageway. This room contained about 75 Nazi artefacts, most of which were considered authentic.
So many of the magnifying glasses were seen next to a picture of Adolf Hitler holding what has been assumed to be the same magnifying glasses engraved with swastikas. Numerous devices were also seen, including a device used by Nazi doctors to measure head size, which they believed helped to identify a person’s race.
No conclusion has been reached on the origin of the artefacts, nor has any headway on how these artefacts arrived in Argentina. It is common knowledge, however, that Argentina had a Nazi pro-government and took a Nazi pro stance when President Juan Domingo Perón was in power.
He made Argentina safe for Nazi supporters, and so a lot of people, including Dr Wesley Fisher, Director of Research for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the opinion that while the Nazi officials were escaping Germany, the probability of them leaving with important Nazi artefacts was very high.
He went on to say that while these items would have belonged to high-ranking officials, it was possible that they were stolen, and there was an underground market for these artefacts.
A lot of other people debate the importance of these artefacts. Author of Hunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Dramatic Hunt to Bring Them to Justice, 2009 bestseller Guy Walters, argues that the Nazi officials were more occupied with trying to escape after the war judgement than staking claims on artefacts. He also argued that these artefacts could have been collected by anyone, not necessarily Nazi officials and sold online.
The artefacts were displayed at the Delegation of Argentine Israelites Associations in Buenos Aires.
