Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentin

Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentin
by: Goni Uki (Author)
Publisher: Granta Books
Publication Date: 10 Jan. 2002
Language: English
Print Length: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 1862074038
ISBN-13: 9781862074033
Book Description
It has been long known that Adolf Eichmann (the organizer of the Final Solution), Josef Mengele (the SS doctor at Auschwitz), Eric Priebke (the SS officer who massacred Italians in the closing stages of the war) and many other war criminals found refuge in Argentina. In this book, the author shows exctly how it was done – and reveals that the escape mechanisms were organized with the enthusiastic support of President Juan Peron. The populist general wished to bring in as many top Nazis as he could to help him shore up his authoritarian regime and prepare for the coming battle with communism. Goni describes the prewar anti-semitism of the Argentine elite, and documents the early contacts between Peron and the Nazis. Towards the end of the war, a group of bizarre and crooked SS men arrived in Argentina and set up a Nazi rescue organization with tentacles in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and the Vatican. The organization operated out of the Presidential Palace. Even at this late date, when so much is known about the complicity of the Church and Alled intelligence agencies in the flight of the Nazis, Goni’s material still has the power to shock. He describes the moral blindness of the Argentinian nationalists in the face of the revelations about Hitler’s death camps, and the way in which the Argentine security services absorbed the lessons of their new friends. Thirty years later the methods of the Nazi police were applied in Argentina’s own dirty war.