Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy, who was at first believed to have been killed in Berlin in 1945, but was later reported to have escaped to South America, was in Argentina when Adolf Eichmann was captured there last year, a former Argentine diplomat told a press conference here today.
The diplomat, Dr. Gregario Topolevsky former Argentine Ambassador to Israel, said that Bormann, who was living in Argentina under another name, fled to Brazil when he heard about Eichmann’s capture in May last year. (Dr. Fritz Eauer, chief prosecutor at Frankfurt, Germany, reported only last Sunday that he has “virtually certain proof” that Bormann is alive and hiding “outside Germany. “)
Argentine police knew that Bormann was in the country, according to Dr. Topolevsky, who added that if Israel had asked for Eichmann’s extradition through diplomatic channels, he, too, would have fled the country. The former diplomat said that Argentine authorities also knew of the presence in the country of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz physician who selected victims for the gas chambers. He added that Mengele disappeared when he heard that West German authorities were looking for him.
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