Nazis in Argentina: the complicity of a government

[Louis]

Sándor Képíró

Hungarian Sándor Képíró (born 18 Feb 1914) was a former gendarmerie captain accused of war crimes committed by Hungarian forces during WW2.

Kepiro served as a gendarme during the war, when parts of Serbia were occupied by troops from Hungary, then allied with Nazi Germany.

More than 1,000 civilians - Serbs, Jews and Roma - were killed in the 1942 Novi Sad massacre, ordered in retaliation for attacks by partisans.

Kepiro lived in Argentina from 1948 to 1996 (here everyone was welcome) . He was spotted in 2006 in Budapest by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center, which informed Hungarian authorities.

The prosecution had said Kepiro was involved in a series of events in which people were rounded up and sent to their deaths before a firing squad.

Kepiro was also charged with being a member of a squad that murdered people in their homes. He denied committing murder or knowing about the crimes at the time.

On 14 Feb 2011, Hungarian prosecutors formally charged Képíró with war crimes. The case came to trial on 18 July 2011, when he was found not guilty by a Budapest court.

Képíró died in a hospital in Budapest on Sept. 3 2011 at the age of 97. His death was reported by his family, and his lawyer, who said he believed the trial had contributed to his client's poor health.
Until 2011, Képíró was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.​

 

[Louis]

Friedrich Josef Rauch (born on 1906, Munich) was an SS Lieutenant Col in charge of the Führer's personal security at the Reich Chancellery after 1942 and was alleged to be involved in the disposal of Nazi gold in 1945.

Rauch surrendered to US troops in June 1945 but was soon released under curious circumstances after helping US military personnel locate much of the loot, which was never properly processed to the appropriate US military financial authorities. Rauch should have been automatically arrested due to his SS rank, but he was not interned until 27 November when a special Counter Intelligence Corps agent seized and interrogated him at Tegernsee city jail. Rauch was then, inexplicably, transferred to a Civilian Enclosure at Stephanskirchen and released the following year.

In February 1948 Rauch and his wife emigrated to Argentina where he became Jose Federico Rauch. Rauch soon "became a partner in a metallurgical firm by the name of Exact SCL, a company formed by Germans and based at Santa Rosa" in Buenos Aires.-

The exact details of his demise are unclear, but it is understood that Rauch may have returned to Europe and settled in Austria shortly before his death in the 1990s.-​

 

[Louis]

Bernardurs Andreas "Dries" Riphagen
(1909/1973)

Also named "the Dutch Al Capone" or we could also call him one of the most despised Nazi collaborators after the WWII.
Riphagen was Dutch gangster who did not prevent him from being one of the SD's closest collaborators in his hometown during the German occupation. But "Dries" had as its main objective to collaborate with himself. He amassed a fortune by duping Jews hiding in the attics of Amsterdam, who gave him all their jewels and wealth in exchange for protection. Once the Israelites had been stripped, Riphagen reported them to his superiors with detailed lists.

After the war he was arrested, but collusion within Dutch intelligence led to the escape of the despicable Nazi. After wandering around Europe for a couple of years, he finally managed to sneak to America. Where? Towards Argentina, obviously!!!
A quick request for Dutch extradition did not make a dent in the Peronist government, which, of course, had already known how to appreciate the now famous “qualities” of the Dutch Nazi. Riphagen collaborated with the Peronist intelligence service, among other things.
Despite the extradition request and the notoriety of this criminal in Holland, his name, for some reason, did not appear on the list of criminals and Nazi collaborators who arrived in Argentina.

After the overthrow of Gen. Juan D. Perón he returned to Europe, lived in Spain and died in Switzerland in 1973.​

 

[julianj]

A horrible bunch.

 

[julianj]

@Louis Thanks for posting this. It is instructive learning more about these low-middle ranking Nazis, and how much suffering they caused. And often escaped justice completely.

 

[Louis]

Conclusion:

"It is believed that up to 90% of Nazis who fled Europe did so through Italy, Germany's main ally during the war.

Although some escaped to the UK, Canada, the USA, Australia and the Middle East, the vast majority fled to South America.

And on that continent there was one country that attracted more Nazi fugitives than any other: Argentina.

Secret Nazi documents revealed in 2012 by German authorities indicated that some 9,000 soldiers and collaborators of the Third Reich fled to South America after the war.

Of them, about 5,000 stayed in Argentina, the place Simon Wiesenthal called the "Cape of Last Hope" for the National Socialists.

Many of those who ended up in other countries, such as Brazil (which housed between 1,500 and 2,000 war criminals), Chile (which housed between 500 and 1,000), and other nations with smaller numbers such as Paraguay, Bolivia, and Ecuador, traveled there after having arrived first in Argentina".

Both flags fly in Buenos Aires, 1943.

And why Argentina?

"Many attribute the choice of Argentina as a destination country to the open sympathy that the then ruler Juan Domingo Peron (who became president in 1946) had with the Third Reich.

But the Argentine journalist Uki Goñi, one of the people who most investigated the arrival of Nazi criminals in the country, assures that the link between Argentina and Hitler's Germany predated Peron's rise to power.

According to Goñi, since 1943 there was a secret agreement between the Schutzstaffel, the German security forces, better known as SS, and the secret service of the Argentine navy.

The agreement consisted of Argentina giving documents from that country to secret SS agents so that they could move freely through South America, where they operated a large spy network.

In exchange, our country received confidential information about its neighbors.

In a book that Goñi published in 2002, where he describes in detail the "Nazi escape to Argentina," Goñi points out that after Germany lost the war, Argentina maintained the cooperation agreement and continued to provide false documentation to Nazi agents, only then it was already with the intention of rescuing them".

Sources: Various internet sources

 

[Gunner]

I always wondered why Argentina was a destination.
I always assumes it was because there were many German immigrants there long before the war.