Nazi collection found in Argentina could offer 'irrefutable proof' of top leaders' escape

In a hidden room in a house near Argentina's capital, police believe they have found the biggest collection of Nazi artefacts in the country's history, including a bust relief of Adolf Hitler, magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with swastikas and even a macabre medical device used to measure head size. In a raid conducted on June 8, around 75 objects were found in a collector’s home in Beccar, a suburb north of the Argentinian Capital, which, authorities suspect, are originals belonging to high-ranking Nazi officials during World War II. "Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces,'' Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told The Associated Press on Monday, saying that some pieces were accompanied by old photographs. There are photos of him with the objects.” Among the disturbing items were toys that Bullrich said would have been used to indoctrinate children, a large statue of the Nazi Eagle above a swastika, a Nazi hourglass and a box of harmonicas. A member of the federal police shows a box with swastikas containing harmonicas for children at the Interpol headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

“There are no precedents for a find like this,” Nestor Roncaglia, head of Argentina’s federal police, told the Associated Press. Authorities, who have not revealed the identity of the collector, said they were working with historians to trace the objects and identify how and when they likely entered Argentina. “Pieces are stolen or are imitations. The police is now trying to determine how these artefacts entered Argentina and came to be in the room hidden behind a library in the house, she said. (Photo: AP via CP)

The main hypothesis among investigators and member of Argentina's Jewish community is that they were brought to Argentina by a high-ranking Nazi or Nazis after World War II, when the South American country became a refuge for fleeing war criminals, including some of the best known. While leading members of the Third Reich were put on trial for war crimes, Josef Mengele, who was the leading physician in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, fled to Argentina after the war and lived in Buenos Aires for close to a decade. After the Israeli Mossad agents managed to capture Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires, Mengele, who was known as the “Angel of Death” during World War II, moved to Paraguay. Mengele later died in Brazil in 1979 while swimming at a beach in the town of Bertioga. While the police did not name any high-ranking Nazi officials to whom these objects might have belonged, Bullrich pointed out that there were medical devices found. Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, told the AP: "There are objects to measure heads that was the logic of the Aryan race."
A secret collection of Nazi heritage is found in Argentina.