The story of this journalist’s attempt to go through the archives in Buenos Aires detailing the mass immigration of Nazis to Peron’s Argentina after the war.
This is a Granta book that came out in the mid-1990s by an Argentinian-Irish journalist and it’s an excellent story of how he was the first person to go through the files in Buenos Aires from Peron’s time to see how widespread the immigration of Nazis to Argentina had been and how they got there. Peron was, of course, immensely sympathetic to Nazis and brought them in by the thousand after the war. The files have mostly disappeared and while Goni was doing his research there were mysterious fires that destroyed the documents he was working on and things were disappearing all over the place. It is as much about how Argentina came to terms with its dictatorial past as it is about Nazi history. It’s thanks to him that what’s left is left.
Times journalist Guy Walters is the author of eight books, which include four wartime thrillers, the critically acclaimed Berlin Games and his latest work on Nazi hunting, Hunting Evil.
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