The Simon Wiesenthal Center has asked the Vatican to make public its files to determine whether Catholic Church officials aided Nazi war criminals to escape to South America.
In a letter to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, the center’s dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier, asked that responsible researchers be given access to the documents, “particularly for the postwar period of 1945-50.”
His request was triggered by the ceremonial opening on Feb. 3 of Argentina’s police files on Nazi war criminals.
On Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina made the files available to whoever wishes to seem them.
In Los Angeles, Hier held a news conference, at which he said the newly released files enable “a better understanding” of how such Nazi war criminals as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Walter Rauff, Walter Kutschmann, Franz Stangl and Andrija Artukovic “made their way from Rome to freedom in South America.”
He then called on the Vatican and Red Cross to make their files on Nazi war criminals available. He spoke of the aid they received from the so-called “rat line” of intertwined Vatican and Red Cross assistance.
The “rat line,” or “monastery route,” was detailed in a 1947 top secret report by Vincent La Vista, an international lawyer and, at the time, military attache to the American Embassy in Rome as well as an agent of the U.S. State Department.
The Red Cross has so far refused to open its files on the “rat line,” Hier said.
PARAGUAY URGED TO OPEN FILES
Evidence of the Red Cross’s help is revealed in the file on Mengele, the sadistic Auschwitz doctor. The newly opened file describes, in exhaustive detail, how Mengele immigrated to Argentina as an “Italian” named Helmut Gregor on Passport No. 100,501, issued by the International Red Cross.
Hier said Argentina will soon be making available pertinent files of its Foreign Ministry and Central Bank.
He attached particular importance to the bank documents, as they could shed light on persistent but unconfirmed reports that Nazi Germany, in its final days, sent $14 million in gold from Berlin to Buenos Aires.
The Argentine documents now available indicate that in the 1960s, police inspectors cited the names of seven suspected war criminals then living in the country. In the next few days, said Hier, he will forward the names of two ex-Nazis now living in Argentina to police authorities.
The Wiesenthal Center has also sent a letter to President Andres Rodriguez of Paraguay, the country to which Mengele fled in 1959 when tipped off that he was being sought in Argentina.
Hier is urging the Paraguayan leader to follow Argentina’s example and open his country’s files on suspected war criminals.
“In a world no longer divided along East-West ideology, where the Berlin Wall has come down, where communism has collapsed, it is simply not logical to keep secret and protect those whose inhumanity is beyond human comprehension,” Hier wrote.
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