In the Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers, one of the characters says in a moment of frustration: ‘I thought all the Nazis ran away to Argentina.’ This line got a big laugh in cinemas in Buenos Aires. But while the events this joke alludes to now lie far enough in the past for today’s Argentines to chuckle at, the flight of Nazis to its shores remains an extremely uncomfortable period in the history of the South American country.
Many former Nazi officers and party members fled Europe for South America in the years after the war and Argentina became a popular destination. Estimates for how many Nazis settled in the country range from between about 5,000 to as many as 12,000, and their ranks included Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust, and the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele.
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