Peron’s Return May Exacerbate Anti-semitism; Report Peron Aided Bormann

The return of Juan Domingo Peron to Buenos Aires has frightened some Jews there but it is still too early to assess the consequences his return will have on the lives of Argentina’s Jews, according to Avraham Shenker, director of the World Zionist Organization’s Department of Information. Shenker, who just returned from Argentina, told a press conference that he felt Peron’s return might exacerbate anti-Semitic feelings in Argentina.

Discussing his recent trip through Latin America after participating in the conference of Latin American Jewish communities in Lima, Shenker said that Argentina “is the only country where anti-Semitism is open and straightforward while in other countries it is more obscure and below the surface.” Peron, who returned to Buenos Aires after an exile of 17 years, is reportedly seeking to regain the power he began to build in that country as a pro-Nazi colonel in 1943. The then President Ramon Castillo was ousted by Peron and other colonels who installed Pedro Pablo Ramirez. A wave of anti-Semitism was unleashed by the new government and universities and the labor movement was purged of liberal and radical elements. Roman Catholic instruction was imposed on public schools.

PERON ADMIRED MUSSOLINI

Peron, who became President in 1945, was a disciple of Benito Mussolini. “Mussolini was the greatest man of this century, but he committed certain errors,” Peron declared early in his reign as Argentina’s dictator. “I will do what Mussolini did, but without his errors.” During World War II, Argentina was a haven for Nazis fleeing from Europe and for heavy investments by German industrialists and financiers in Argentina’s industries and cattle market.

Now there is news that Martin Bormann, former chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery and secretary to Hitler, is alive and prosperous in Argentina, residing in a cottage on the Rancho Grande, the estate of Arndt von Bohlen-Hahlbach, last scion of the Krupp family. This report is contained in a five-part series in the New York Daily News written by Ladislas Farago in collaboration with Stewart Steven of the London Daily Express. According to the authors, “Bormann sneaked into Buenos Aires in 1948, to join a treasure which previously had been shipped to four trusted bankers in Argentina, with the knowledge, if not under the personal supervision of Col. Juan Domingo Peron.”

The authors also state that according to detailed documents, “Bormann, established in Argentina feeling safe in the knowledge that he was enjoying the total protection of the Peron regime.” After Peron’s downfall in 1955, Bormann vanished, “but not into thin air,” Farago and Steven write. He reappeared in Buenos Aires in the fall of 1968, according to a report cited by them, to be treated by a local doctor for an acute attack of gastritis.