Nov. 5


ARGENTINA:

Documentary uncovers Nazi gold trail to Argentina


A new documentary thick with tales of spies and secretive submarine
landings traces how Nazis smuggled gold and cash from Europe to
Argentina, a notorious safe haven for war criminals after World War Two.


"Nazi Gold in Argentina," directed by Argentine filmmaker Rolo Pereyra,
aims to break new ground by revealing how Swiss banks, Roman Catholic
bishops and Argentine politicians helped to plunder hundreds of millions
of dollars in Third Reich treasures.

The flight of many Nazis, including notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef
Mengele and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, from war-torn Europe to
South America has been extensively documented.

But the trail of a fortune in gold and cash has been much less explored.

The documentary, partly financed by HBO, re-enacts stories of Nazi
submarines loaded with gold landing in Argentina's far-flung Patagonia,
the mysterious deaths of Nazi conspirators, and spy-novel machinations
based on 10 years of research.

It received a standing ovation at Sao Paulo's International Film Festival
last month, and director Pereyra suspects the audience enjoyed the film's
dramatic flair. The documentary will be screened at film festivals in
Belgium, Spain and Cuba through December.

"My idea was to give it a bit of that spy story rhythm ... with spies
spying on spies ... People appreciate that," Pereyra said.

Banker's suspicious suicide

The film includes vignettes on such figures as Hermann Doerge, a powerful
German banker who worked at Argentina's Central Bank in the 1940's and
died in a suspicious suicide after destroying proof of the Nazi wealth
transfers, according to Argentine central bank archives and Allied
intelligence.

The film -- based on the book "Odessa al Sur" by Argentine writer Jorge
Camarasa -- connects the dots between Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany
and Argentina to show how Nazis and their wealth were smuggled to the New
World.

What surprised us is that the trail of this smuggled money leads to the
heirs of many families, even up to the 1980's and 90's.
-- Rolo Pereyra, filmmaker

Hundreds of Nazis flocked to Argentina after the war, drawn by the
open-door policy of Gen. Juan Domingo Peron, a pragmatic politician with
fascist sympathies. But Nazi ties to the political and economic elite
outlasted Peron, Pereyra said. "What surprised us is that the trail of
this smuggled money leads to the heirs of many families, even up to the
1980's and 90's," Pereyra said. "These people are linked to the
Argentine oligarchy and the economically powerful."

Pereyra was nominated for an Emmy Award in the mid-1980's for an
investigative report on the burning alive of a young couple during
Chile's military dictatorship.

"Nazi Gold in Argentina" includes interviews in Argentina with Wilfred
Von Oven, a former aide to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and
the son of Erich Priebke, a former SS captain who was extradited to Italy
and jailed for his role in the murder of 335 civilians in Rome in 1944.

Camarasa said the importance of the probes is that they unearthed
conspiracies and complicities hidden for decades.

"Bringing this to light allowed people to confront a quite shameful
episode in Argentina," Camarasa said.

"This is just another story about the good guys and the bad guys and how the
bad guys triumph," he said, chuckling.

(source: Reuters)