Argentina has declassified more than 1,850 documents documenting investigations from the late 1950s through the 1980s into Nazi fugitives who settled in South America. The digitized files — released at President Javier Milei's direction after pressure from U.S. officials and Jewish organizations — include material on Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and other senior Nazis. A separate discovery of 83 boxes seized in 1941 from a German embassy shipment revealed propaganda and documents held for nearly 84 years; those crates are now being surveyed and will be digitized and declassified. Scholars say the records could clarify how fugitives and assets were sheltered and help restore public memory of the Holocaust.
Argentina Declassifies WWII Files: New Evidence on Nazi Fugitives and Hidden Networks
Argentina has declassified more than 1,850 documents documenting investigations from the late 1950s through the 1980s into Nazi fugitives who settled in South America. The digitized files — released at President Javier Milei's direction after pressure from U.S. officials and Jewish organizations — include material on Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and other senior Nazis. A separate discovery of 83 boxes seized in 1941 from a German embassy shipment revealed propaganda and documents held for nearly 84 years; those crates are now being surveyed and will be digitized and declassified. Scholars say the records could clarify how fugitives and assets were sheltered and help restore public memory of the Holocaust.
11:04 PM, 11/13/2025Conflict
Argentina declassifies extensive wartime files on Nazis who escaped to South America
Argentina has released and declassified more than 1,850 documents — comprising thousands of pages — that record the country's long effort to locate and verify the whereabouts of Nazi fugitives who fled Europe before and after World War II. President Javier Milei ordered the release earlier this year after the records were digitized and posted on the General Archive website.
The move followed pressure from U.S. officials, notably the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and advocacy by organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Most of the material documents investigations carried out between the late 1950s and the 1980s and is accompanied on the archive site by once-secret presidential decrees spanning 1957 through 2005.
Main figures and findings
The online release is organized into seven large collections focused on prominent Nazi fugitives. Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who played a central role in the “Final Solution,†appears repeatedly. The files include information about his life in Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement and material suggesting that the government of Juan Peron may have been aware of his presence and, according to some records, may have taken steps that shielded him. Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and brought to Israel for trial in 1960.
Other dossiers document the postwar paths of notorious figures such as Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz physician known as the 'angel of death,' who lived in Argentina before fleeing to Paraguay and Brazil; Martin Bormann; Croatian leader Ante Pavelic; Nazi official Rudolf Höss; and Klaus Barbie, the so-called 'butcher of Lyon.'
Forgotten crates and propaganda material
In May, workers moving Supreme Court records during renovations discovered a nearly untouched trove of 83 boxes in the court's basement. The crates contained material intercepted by Argentine customs in 1941 that had been shipped from the German Reich Embassy in Tokyo aboard the steamer Nan-a-Maru and initially declared as personal effects. The shipment was seized on orders from the foreign minister at the time so as not to compromise Argentina's then-neutral stance in the war. Those files remained under the court's custody for nearly 84 years.
Inspections indicate the intercepted materials include propaganda and other items intended to promote Third Reich ideology in Argentina and across South America, possibly as part of efforts to influence neutral countries. Argentine authorities, together with members of the Jewish community, ordered a comprehensive survey of the boxes; the government says the contents will be digitized and declassified for public release once processing is complete.
Significance and unanswered questions
Harley Lippman, a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad and a board member of the European Jewish Association, called the release 'hugely significant.' He said the records may help explain how Argentina became a refuge for Nazi fugitives and what happened to assets associated with them, including reports of U-boat consignments of Nazi gold and the role of Swiss and Argentine banks in hiding or transferring funds.
These documents can help Argentinians confront painful parts of their history and clarify whether and how institutions and officials aided or tolerated Nazi networks,
Lippman also warned that fading public memory of the Holocaust and a rise in antisemitic narratives make the declassification timely. He noted that many survivors and heirs struggled to reclaim assets after the war because institutions often demanded death certificates that did not exist for victims killed in extermination camps.
Argentina's chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, Guillermo Francos, said President Milei ordered the declassifications because there was no reason to continue withholding the information and it was no longer in the public interest to keep such records secret. Historians, legal experts and Jewish organizations are expected to scrutinize the digitized files in the months ahead as researchers seek to reconstruct postwar escape networks, financial flows and local complicity.
Note: The newly released archive and the discovery of the 83 boxes do not by themselves resolve all historical questions, but they provide primary-source material that could illuminate long-standing mysteries about Nazi fugitives in South America.