Latin American connections with the Holocaust

Tomorrow we commemorate 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.

Utero.pe has a fascinating article on the Peruvian victims of Auschwitz - I confess, I had no idea there were any. But apparently, there were 17 of them. Like Héctor David Levy, shot for asking for water during forced labour, and his wife and two young children, who were gassed. The two children became Peru's youngest victims of the Second World War.

Victoria Barouh Avayü was the only Peruvian Auschwitz survivor, having lost her entire family. Many years later, she went back to the concentration camp to see what had become of it and of fellow survivors.

More information about Peruvians in the camps may be found in the book Estación final by Hugo Coya (Aguilar, 2013).

Los peruanos de Auschwitz, por Hugo Coya (Utero.pe)

Semana discusses the Auschwitz survivors who came to Colombia: Ana Orgel de Czeizler, Raquel Gedalovich, Jacobo Bron and Max Kirschberg. The article is worth reading and illustrated with beautiful photos by Erika Diettes.

"Most people have heard about what happened. But it wasn't just the Jews who suffered. There were non-Jewish Germans there, because they didn't accept the ideology, or because they argued about something, they ended up there. They took people from other faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, and many gypsies", says Kirschberg. When the camp was liberated, Kirschberg had lost his parents, but he recalled that his mother had told him he had an uncle living in Colombia, so he came there. In 1952, he returned to Germany to study, marry and have children, but in 1976 he returned for good with one of his sons.

More information about Colombian survivors may be found in the book Sobrevivientes del Holocausto que rehicieron su vida en Colombia, edited by Hilda Demner and Estela Goldstein

Los sobrevivientes de Auschwitz que hicieron vida en Colombia (Semana)

Uruguay: Update on Graf Spee eagle

Despite being a bit of a detour from the main focus of this blog, my 2010 post on the eagle of the Graf Spee pocket battleship is one of the most-read posts I've written.

We're over four years on and not much progress has been made. Now the BBC asks "What should Uruguay do with its Nazi eagle?".

The country's supreme court has ruled that the Uruguayan state is the owner of the artifact, but that the salvage company should also receive half of the profits in the event of a sale. Businessman Alfredo Etchegaray, one of the men who led the operation to recover the eagle, told the BBC that the eagle could be worth up to US$ 15 million."Having the eagle in a box doesn't benefit anybody," he said.

There has been reporting that the eagle is not appropriately stored, but Uruguay denies this.

I'm tempted to agree with Etchegaray that the country could make good use of the cash and possibly display a replica of the eagle instead of the real thing. It's an amazing historical piece and while I certainly understand the concerns of the German government, I think it should be on display somewhere. I was just listening to a piece on the radio this morning about the difficulties of knowing what to do with the house where Hitler was born, in Austria. These are always thorny issues because the last thing you want is a shrine for neo-Nazis, but letting the sites/objects rot hardly seems to be the solution either.


What should Uruguay do with its Nazi eagle? (BBC)

Chile: "Nazi" school causes outrage

This is one of those stories where you wonder whether you should give it the publicity, but for interest's sake, here goes.

A self-proclaimed advocate of Nazism from Chiloé, Godofredo Rodríguez, plans to open a school called the "Escuela de Arte Nazi Presidente General Augusto Pinochet" in Ancud. The school uses a swastika as its logo and has, not surprisingly, provoked a certain amount of indignation in the area. Various politicians have protested and today it was reported that Rodríguez has been arrested on an open charge of theft.

Rodríguez does appear to be crazy; the conflation of "Nazism" and Pinochet, and the claiming that "others do the same with Salvador Allende, and he was a Jew and a freemason" are pretty hard to take seriously. But of course, this is not to say that the people of Ancud want to see posters with swastikas around the place and it does raise questions about people's right to propagate their own view of history. In Germany, use of Nazi imagery would not be allowed and if Rodríguez tried denying the Holocaust, that would not be allowed either. There is nothing to stop anyone in Chile denying the disappearances and tortures that happened under Pinochet.


Amplio rechazo a “Escuela de arte Nazi Augusto Pinochet” en Chiloé (Diario U Chile)
Ex diputado Ascencio pide a intendente de Los Lagos prohibir "escuela Nazi" en Ancud (La Tercera)

A Nazi School in Chiloé (ilovechile.cl)

PDI detiene a creador de escuela nazi de Chiloé (El Mostrador)

Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke is dead

Erich Priebke, a captain in the Waffen SS convicted of participating in the Andeatine caves massacre in Italy, has died under house arrest in Rome. He was 100.

After helping to co-ordinate the execution of 335 Italians on the outskirts of the Italian capital in 1944, Priebke fled to Argentina at the end of the war and lived for decades in Bariloche. He was "found" there in the '90s by a US film crew.* I say "found" because it doesn't seem to have been that hard. According to the Telegraph, he was listed in the phone book!

Watch this clip (above), it's truly extraordinary. Priebke (speaking quite good English; it was his language skills which got him sent to Italy in the first place) shows little surprise and openly admits his involvement in the killing of civilians. However, he claims to have been just following orders and denies anti-Semitism. He concludes by accusing the journalist, Sam Donaldson, of not being a gentleman.

Argentine journalist Uki Goñi documented the case of Priebke in his book, The Real Odessa. He tweeted yesterday that Priebke attempted unsuccessfully to sue him twice over the material. He describes the case in more detail here. Priebke was also the subject of a documentary, Pacto de silencio, which you can see here.

Foreign minister Hector Timerman apparently says that Priebke's body will not be welcome back in Argentina, to be buried next to his late wife.

For judgement on Priebke, a clear and dignified statement - cited in the Guardian - from
Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community:

"Over Priebke's death there will be no tears and there will be no laughter because neither of these will bring the victims back to life.... There remains bitterness towards a person who never repented for what he did and who dirtied his hands with blood like all the Nazi troops. Now his victims are waiting for him up there in the hope that there will be divine justice."

Erich Priebke (The Telegraph)
Nazi SS captain Erich Priebke dies at 100 in Rome (The Guardian)
Argentina refuses body of Nazi war criminal Priebke (BBC)
El criminal nazi Erich Priebke murió a los 100 años (Telam)
Murió Erich Priebke, ex oficial nazi que se ocultó en Bariloche (La Nacion)
Desde Bariloche a Roma y de ahí al infierno (Pagina/12)

*Apparently an Argentine writer found him there before the US interview.

Germany: Intelligence services do not have to release Eichmann info

This is a slight departure from my usual focus, but there is an Argentine connection.

German daily Bild, which is not exactly the first publication to spring to mind when you think of investigative journalism, has just lost a court case in which it attempted to force the German intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) to release information pertaining to Adolf Eichmann. The paper wants to prove that Germany knew Eichmann was in hiding in Argentina in the early '50s. It had already reported this on the basis of a partial release of the documentation.

The federal administrative court in Leipzig ruled that the BND does not have to released the unredacted documents. The paper is considering taking the case to Germany's highest court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht) in Karlsruhe.

The BND stressed that the majority of the documentation is available and said that the redaction was to protect personal data and sensitive security information. Bild lawyer Christoph Partsch said that the paper believes that Germany is harmed by the withholding of the information, not by its publication. 

Andreas Nachama, director of the "Topographie des Terrors" foundation, criticised the ruling and suggested that the redacted information could be embarrassing for Germany, since Hans Globke, the head of the federal chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt) after WWII and thus ultimate head of the BND, was a known Nazi supporter. Dieter Graumann, Germany's leading Jewish representative, also expressed his incomprehension at the decision.

This is disappointing. It's hard to believe that there can be 60-year-old information in these documents which could harm Germany's interests. Germany usually, and for obvious reasons, strives to be open about this kind of thing, so this feels like a step backwards. Good on Bild for pursuing the issue and I hope we will see inside the full files at some point.

Germany can keep Eichmann records secret, court rules (Guardian)
Die geheimen Akten des Adolf Eichmann (N24)
BILD verklagt Bundesnachrichtendienst (Bild)
BND muss Eichmann-Akten nicht freigeben (Bild)
Alemania: la justicia rechazó abrir los archivos sobre la fuga de Eichmann a la Argentina (TN.com.ar)

Argentina: AMIA/Mauricio Rosencof

"Memory is a barricade"

Pagina/12 today carries an interview with Mauricio Rosenhof, a former political prisoner, writer, playwright, poet and ex-minister of culture for Uruguay. He is an invited speaker at the commemorations of the AMIA attack on Tuesday. I was interested by what he says because he draws explicit parallels between the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, the Southern Cone military dictatorships, and the memory of the terrorist attacks. This is often implicit in memory discussions but here it it spelled out.

"I think we owe a lot to the old Left, which had a very important presence in the Jewish collective. There were a thousand young people disappeared during our dictatorships who were of Jewish origin. In the international brigades which fought fascism [in Spain], 25% were Jewish. I grew up among tailors, shoemakers, carpenters who spoke in Yiddish. Workers with a clear conscience. In their honour, I'm going to talk at the event organised by Memoria Activa in memory of the victims of the AMIA."

"My presence at the event for the victims of the AMIA is emotional for me. It's remembering and putting things in their place. The voices of the Jews of the Left do not have the presence which they had and which they have to have."

"As a moral reference and example of resistence, I have Mordechai Anielewicz in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Primo Levi, who struggled against the Nazis together with his students and then gave that example of resistence in Auschwitz. Rosa, my father's sister, was the only survivor in her family. They all died in the concentration camps. Raúl Sendic, my friend and the leader of the Tupamaros, said that he took the Kibbutzim in Palastine as a model. Shimon Peres was secretary-general of the Socialist International*. This is why it is necessary to remember the Jewish militants, those who were disappeared and the victims of the two attacks in Buenos Aires. This is what made me accept the invitation. I'm Uruguayan to my toes, Gardel-ian, tango-lover. And I'm Jewish."

*Actually, vice-president, according to my research.

The whole thing is here:

“La memoria es una barricada” (Pagina/12)

News/Blogging Round-Up

Bolivia

"Inspectors discovered that former Gen. Luis Garcia Meza had installed a sauna, gymnasium, ping pong table, dining room and even a barbecue grill in his quarters at the Chonchocoro prison."
Bolivia Jailer Ousted over Favors for Ex-dictator (NY Times)

According to someone who REALLY knows, this is why Evo Morales should win the Nobel Peace Prize (IKN)

Brazil

Brazilian former political prisoners call for creation of Truth Commission (Mercopress)

Uruguay

Here's an update to my post on the Graf Spee which has got quite a lot of hits recently. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has been expressing the opinion of his nation about the appropriate use of the wreckage:
Germany wants "Graf Spee" Nazi eagle displayed in a museum (Mercopress)

Uruguay/Germany: Eagle of the Graf Spee

The raising of the Graf Spee eagle, with swastika covered over as a mark of respect, image source

This article in Pagina/12 provoked my interest in the bronze eagle salvaged from the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. It's a story I knew nothing about.

The Graf Spee was a small German battleship which owed its dimensions to the Treaty of Versailles restrictions imposed on Germany after WWI. It sank 9 British ships in 1939 before becoming involved in the Battle of the River Plate. It was damaged there and sailed to neutral Montevideo for repairs. However, as the ship was unable to stay in port due to the terms of international law, its captain Hans Lansdorff took the decision to scuttle it delibarately rather than put his crew at further risk. Three days later, he took his own life.

In 2006, divers salvaged the huge bronze eagle with the swastika at its base from the waters off the Uruguayan capital. It's the swastika that is causing the trouble. The German government, as represented by its ambassador in Uruguay, is opposed to the display of the eagle with the Nazi cross. Germany, understandably enough, is sensitive about the ultimate symbol of National Symbolism. Public display of it is generally illegal in Germany although exceptions are made for historical and educational purposes.

There now seems to be some uncertainty about the ownership of the eagle. Germany believes the ship to be part of its cultural heritage. According to Uruguayan law, sunken ships predating 1973 in their waters are generally considered property of the Uruguayan state. Uruguayan businessman Alfredo Etchegaray has the rights to salvage the wreck and he doesn't believe that Germany even has the right to express an opinion on the matter. He points out that Germany has its own share of historical relics from other countries, including the head of Nefertiti which Egypt would very much like back. Uruguayan newspaper El Pais notes that Germany contributes money to the preservation of concentration camp Auschwitz, in modern-day Poland.

The latter example, obviously hinting at hypocrisy or a discrepancy of policy, seems to be somewhat of a red herring to me. Any suggestion that Germany is unilaterally opposed to the memory of the Nazi period is bizarre; surely no other country has been as concerned with apologising for and commemorating its past crimes. Germany is full of monuments and museums dealing with National Socialism, including the spectacular Jewish Museum in Berlin, which is a shining international example. Nevertheless, precisely because of its history, the German state attempts to carefully control public display and even freedom of speech on the subject - hence the fact that Holocaust denial is illegal. It now seems to be trying to extend this reach as far as Uruguay, something which Uruguay cannot really be obliged to accept. Judging by the fact that the planned exhibition of the eagle has not yet taken place, Uruguay is listening to Germany's concerns, but ultimately it should make its own decisions.

I can't say whether Germany's worry about the appropriateness or otherwise of plans for the eagle is justified. Yet Uruguay, with its own history of military dictatorship, is also an interesting backdrop for such an exhibition.

Disputa diplomatica y demanda por Graf Spee (El Pais, Uruguay)

****UPDATE**** More on statements from Germany regarding 'appropriate' use of the wreckage here

Bolivia: News

Although Bolivia is principally in the news today for expelling the US ambassador, two other stories caught my eye:

Nazi-era photos surface in Bolivia (BBC)

On September 9th a group of approximately 50 vandals entered by force, completely sacked and set on fire the offices of the Center for Juridical Studies and Social Investigation (CEJIS) in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Eastern Bolivia.
Bolivia: Violent groups take over human rights organisation (Upside Down World)

News Headlines

Argentina: on the hunt for Aribert Heim, Nazi-hunter says he's closing in on 'Dr Death' (Yahoo)

Argentina: the 14th anniversary of the attacks on the AMIA, Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died.
En un nuevo aniversario del atentado a la AMIA, volvieron los reclamos al Gobierno y la Justicia (Clarin)

Peru: this can't be good for Peruvian President Alan Garcia. IPS is reporting that members of the shadowy paramilitary group Rodrigo Franco Commandos (CRF) are to be prosecuted for crimes committed during Garcia's first administration (1985-90). There are also alleged links between the CRF and the Colina Group.
Aprista Party Members Under Investigation for '80s Crimes (IPS)