List of Thousands of Nazi War Criminals Uncovered in Argentina
A list of 12,000 Nazi officers who fled to Argentina following the defeat of the Third Reich was uncovered at the former Nazi headquarters in Buenos Aires by Argentine investigator Pedro Filipuzzi.
The documents revealed that most of the officers had bank accounts in Switzerland.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US has asked the Zurich-based Credit Suisse investment bank to identify the inactive accounts that have remained since, claiming many of the center’s funds were stolen from these bank accounts.
“We believe that these accounts, which have been dormant for a long time, hold money looted from Jewish victims,” the Wiesenthal Center stated. In a letter addressed to Credit Suisse bank manager Christian Küng, Wiesenthal Center officials said, “We believe that it’s highly likely that these dormant accounts hold funds looted from Jewish victims under the Nuremberg Laws of the 1930s.”
“We are aware that you have already been sued by ex-Nazi heirs who are alleged to be on the now-discovered lists,” the letter continued.
The Wiesenthal Center claims that many of the Nazis whose names appear in the newly unveiled documents owned accounts in one or more bank accounts in the Swiss bank, which later became Credit Suisse.
Nazi Germany began to plunder Jewish property shortly after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, when huge sums of money were looted from European Jews. Much of the funds was transferred to Nazi accounts at the Swiss bank. Swiss bank chiefs said that in 1997-1999 they carried out an investigation into claims that the Nazis held bank accounts in Switzerland, but following the new disclosure, they promised to “re-examine this affair.”
