IF forensic experts prove that a body exhumed here 10 days ago is that of the Auschwitz death camp doctor Josef Mengele, as his son, Rolf, affirmed last week, the most-wanted Nazi would have lived in South America for 30 years without being caught. If the bones are not his, Dr. Mengele could still be at large.
In either case, he was not alone. Tens of thousands of Nazis escaped to Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil after World War II. In 40 years, one war criminal was murdered, another was kidnapped and just three were extradited to face trial in Europe. Dr. Mengele was widely hunted, but Brazilian police believe he lived undisturbed in the Sao Paulo area from 1961. Other fugitives, many in their 70's and 80's, have little reason for fear.
The Nazi flight to South America was no accident. Large, long-established German colonies quickly absorbed the new wave of immigrants. Some Nazis changed their names, yet surprisingly few felt a need to do so. Many fared well on farms, in industry - not infrequently in West German multinational companies - and even occasionally as police and military advisers.
The political mood was not hostile. Responding to domestic fascist movements, several governments leaned toward Germany and Italy until their defeat became certain. Even after the war, pro-Nazi sympathies survived. Argentina's President Juan D. Peron welcomed fleeing Nazis. When General Peron was ousted in 1955, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, the grandson of Bavarian immigrants, opened Paraguay to the fugitives.
During his early years in the region, even Dr. Mengele felt safe. He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1949 and made little attempt to hide his identity. He was married under his own name in Uruguay in 1958 and, as ''Jose Mengele'' in 1959, became a citizen of Paraguay, where he lived briefly in a German colony and was befriended by local Nazi sympathizers.
German Hospitality
Then, in 1960, after Israeli agents in Buenos Aires kidnapped Adolph Eichmann, who had masterminded the extermination of Jews, Dr. Mengele disappeared. Nazi hunters presumed he was protected by a Nazi organization such as Odessa or Kameradenwerk, but anonymity may have been his best shield. According to testimony given to the Brazilian police, he was sheltered by a Hungarian couple and later by an Austrian couple, while only his family in West Germany and a tiny circle of friends in South America knew his whereabouts. Now he is said to have died in a swimming accident in 1979.
As with other Nazis, he was helped by the easy acceptance of immigrants, including many aging Europeans who speak with a heavy German accent. Descendants of Germans account for 3.6 million of Brazil's 130 million inhabitants, one million of Argentina's 28 million people, and 200,000 of the 3.5 million Paraguayans. Many of them maintain the language and traditions of their forefathers. Because of their strong cultural identity, the older German farming communities in southern Brazil and southern Paraguay have often been accused of harboring Nazis. As recently as 1962, Colonia Dignidad -Dignity Colony - was founded in southern Chile as a hideaway for 300 German families. Yet if Nazis live in these refuges, they are well hidden.
The few war criminals identified in South America have led relatively public lives. Gerhard Bohne, blamed for 15,000 deaths, was living in Buenos Aires when he was extradited by Argentina in 1966. Franz Stangl, commander of the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps, was employed by Volkswagen when he was returned to Germany by Brazil in 1967. Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo chief in France, was a familiar figure in La Paz for more than a decade before his extradition by Bolivia in 1983. The first two are now dead, while Mr. Barbie awaits trial in Lyons, France.
Those who escaped extradition displayed greater bravado. Col. Walter Rauff, the SS officer in charge of developing mobile gas chambers, lived in Chile under his own name from 1958 until his death last year. At his funeral, German and Chilean mourners offered Nazi salutes and cries of ''Heil Hitler.'' In 1979, Brazil's Supreme Court rejected the extradition of Gustav Franz Wagner, nicknamed the ''hangman'' of Sobibor; he committed suicide a year later. And, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Walter Kutschmann, accused of murdering 2,000 Poles, is still living in Miramar, 300 miles south of Buenos Aires.
Occasionally, Nazi activity becomes public. During Mr. Wagner's extradition hearings, swastikas and pro-Nazi graffiti appeared in southern Brazil. A party given by a Nazi hotelkeeper near Rio de Janeiro in April 1978 to mark Hitler's 90th birthday became a cause celebre. In Buenos Aires, home of the continent's largest Jewish community - 230,000 - and strongest anti-Semitism, some restaurants are known as Nazi meeting places.
The discovery of Dr. Mengele's life in Brazil, just weeks after the country returned to civilian rule, enabled the new Government to denounce the Nazi legacy, while Argentina's new democracy and the Stroessner Government in Paraguay cooperated in the investigation. Yet, once this case is settled, there is little reason to expect a purge of remaining Nazis. In South America at least, their past is largely forgotten.
Fuente:
RIDING, Alan. (1985). Where Nazi Refugees found the climate to their liking. Recuperado el 28 de noviembre de 2018 de https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/16/weekinreview/where-nazi-refugees-found-the-climate-to-their-liking.html