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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Documentary uncovers Nazi gold trail to Argentina [Big Surprise!] |
| 2004-11-07 |
| BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) -- 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. This is completely unbelievable! How could Swiss banks and the Roman Catholic Church possibly have any interest in robbing the Jews of their wealth?!? 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. Unless you happened to have watched the superb documentary by Frontline called; "Nazi Gold." 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. How sad that Simon Wiesenthal and Ellie Wiesel weren't able to take part in this. 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. And who did what to stop it? 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 an unexpected relevation! "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. Time for the good guys to triumph, for a change. |
| Posted by:Zenster |