Hidden trove of suspected Nazi artifacts found in Argentina

[Hammock Parties]

Amazing. The Nazis really did flee to Argentina.



http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ntina-48145123

In a hidden room in a house near Argentina's capital, police believe they have found the biggest collection of Nazi artifacts 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.

Some 75 objects were found in a collector's home in Beccar, a suburb north of Buenos Aires, and authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany 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. "This is a way to commercialize them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Fuhrer. 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.

Police say one of the most-compelling pieces of evidence of the historical importance of the find is a photo negative of Hitler holding a magnifying glass similar to those found in the boxes.

"We have turned to historians and they've told us it is the original magnifying glass" that Hitler was using, said Nestor Roncaglia, head of Argentina's federal police. "We are reaching out to international experts to deepen" the investigation.

The photograph was not released to the public, but was shown to The Associated Press on the condition that it not be published.

The investigation that culminated in the discovery of the collection began when authorities found artworks of illicit origin in a gallery in north Buenos Aires.

Agents with the international police force Interpol began following the collector and with a judicial order raided the house on June 8. A large bookshelf caught their attention and behind it agents found a hidden passageway to a room filled with Nazi imagery.

Authorities did not identify the collector who remains free but under investigation by a federal judge.

"There are no precedents for a find like this. Pieces are stolen or are imitations. But this is original and we have to get to the bottom of it," said Roncaglia.

Police are trying to determine how the artifacts entered Argentina.

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.

As leading members of Hitler's Third Reich were put on trial for war crimes, Josef Mengele fled to Argentina and lived in Buenos Aires for a decade. He moved to Paraguay after Israeli Mossad agents captured Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann, who was also living in Buenos Aires. Mengele later died in Brazil in 1979 while swimming in a beach in the town of Bertioga.

While police in Argentina did not name any high-ranking Nazis to whom the objects might have originally belonged, Bullrich noted there were medical devices.

"There are objects to measure heads that was the logic of the Aryan race," she said.

Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the DAIA, a political umbrella for Argentina's Jewish institutes, called the find "unheard of" in Argentina.

"Finding 75 original pieces is historic and could offer irrefutable proof of the presence of top leaders who escaped from Nazi Germany," Cohen told the AP

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[Baby Lee]

Meanwhile in Brazil

[SBInfinity]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

Amazing. The Nazis really did flee to Argentina.

you weren't sure?

[carlos3652]

My country also kicked out all of the slaves in the 1800's by passing laws (they fled to Brazil) - it wouldn't surprise me that Germany felt safe in a country that protected white Europeans.

This is an awesome discovery though.

[Baby Lee]

[siberian khatru]

Don't look, Marion!

[mr. tegu]

Plenty of high ranking Nazis where caught there in the past. There isn't some mystery as to whether not they went there, but this is still definitely interesting.

[gblowfish]

What were the Nazis doing with harmonicas?

[scho63]

Did they find anything with the name Drumpf on it?

[Halfcan]

Probably Hitler's private collection.

History Chanel has a very interesting show on this. It follows the passageways many Nazi's took through Italy, staying in safe houses provided by the Catholic church. Test on the supposed body of Hitler proved negative. They are not sure what body the Russians have, but it is not a man.

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Halfcan

Probably Hitler's private collection.

History Chanel has a very interesting show on this. It follows the passageways many Nazi's took through Italy, staying in safe houses provided by the Catholic church. Test on the supposed body of Hitler proved negative. They are not sure what body the Russians have, but it is not a man.

Wonder if they tested it to see if it was Emilia Earhart

[JakeF]

Destroy it all, don't keep and let it become some kind of display.

[Hoover]

This point of view just drives me nuts. The worst thing we can do is ignore or pretend that things in the past did not happen. Now I'm not for flying the stars and bars or having swastikas tiled in to my pool, so this new facination with erasing the sins of the past is not wise.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by JakeF

Destroy it all, don't keep and let it become some kind of display.

I'd say put it in museums.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in the ideology, it's still an interesting sliver of human history.

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Hoover

This point of view just drives me nuts. The worst thing we can do is ignore or pretend that things in the past did not happen. Now I'm not for flying the stars and bars or having swastikas tiled in to my pool, so this new facination with erasing the sins of the past is not wise.

Snowflakes can't handle the truth