During the war he worked with the I. G. Farben Company which put a cloud of suspicion over him and his citizenship was questioned. He had to depart quickly and after spending time in Turkey, Switzerland and Spain, he made his way to Argentina where he worked as an advisor on processes to make fuel from coal as well as making sugar from wood.
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War Criminals
We will not waste space here attempting to describe what a war criminal is. That definition can change with the wars and the times in which they are fought. Despite the claims of the Allies in World War Two that all the Germans were terrible people, no nation can claim clean hands. However, let us remember that all the war heroes were on the winning side and all the war criminals were on the side that lost. Amazing, isn’t it?
The winning side therefore, is able to create the definitions of a war criminal and because they are able to create such definitions, they are able to tailor these definitions to fit certain individuals and specific types of people. The winners have the time, money and other resources to relentlessly pursue those determined to be war criminals indefinitely while the alleged war criminals do not usually have the money to keep running or the specific talents to be protected.
Adolf Eichmann
One such escapee who had no fortune when he arrived Argentina nor great talent was SS Standartenführer (Colonel) Adolf Eichmann, Commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp.
When he escaped the crumbled Reich and made his way to Argentina, he did not have great wealth as most of the others, and he had no talent that was in great demand by the Perón Government like most of the others. He was a poor factory worker who lived in a tiny house at 6067 Garibaldi Street.
He and his sons built this tiny house, about 20 feet by 20 feet in a poor neighborhood, now a very dangerous neighborhood, on Garibaldi Street. He first worked in the factory at FV Manufacturing, a company that made fixture for toilets. Later he worked in the factory at Orbis making water heaters and water softeners. The last place he worked was in the factory at Mercedes Benz which required a three hour bus ride each way. One night as he returned from work at about 9pm, half a dozen men of the Mossad lay in wait for him as he got off the bus near the railroad embankment and kidnapped him. Here is the little house with the Reich Flag raised by Eichmann’s oldest son protesting the kidnapping of his father. As we see in the photo of his oldest son, the young man carried the protest even further by putting on the Swastika armband.
To protect their father’s identity in the early days, the two sons referred to Eichmann as their uncle stating that their father had been killed in the war. When Adolf Eichmann first arrived in Argentina, he was welcomed by many of the elite including the Eichhorn family who owned the Hotel Eden in La Falda in Cordoba Province.
This exclusive Sharkhunters photo was taken in the late 1940’s at a picnic grove called El Chorito located some distance behind the Eden Hotel. During the Asado, the cooking of the meat over an open fire, he was using his Hitler Youth dagger to cut the meat – it is in his belt in this photo. He is at the left in the photo and his hat is at its usual rakish tilt.
We spoke at length with Francisco, the tailor who made Eichmann’s suits when he lived on Garibaldi Street. Francisco said that his kids and the two sons of Eichmann were friends and played together when they were young. He said that the younger Eichmann son told Francisco’s kids that they lived for some time in the Vatican before coming to Argentina and that they had met the Pope on several occasions.
To make ends meet, Eichmann also sold fruit juices at the beach on weekends. Both his sons still live in Buenos Aires, but they have changed their names for obvious reasons.
Doctor Carl Värnet
A Dane, Värnet received his Doctorate at the University of Copenhagen and practiced medicine in that city. He studied further in Germany, France and the Netherlands and he became interested in hormonal treatments to modify certain types of behavior.
During the war he held the rank of SS Sturmbannführer (Major) and was a doctor at the Buchenwald concentration camp. He was introduced to various important men of the SS and eventually to Heinrich Himmler himself. He performed glandular experiments on seventeen homosexuals in Buchenwald in an effort to show that their homosexuality can be changed but after some time with no solid results to show, he was more or less defunded.
After the war he was arrested in Copenhagen and Danish authorities were going to bring him to trial, he pretended to have heart trouble. When his chance presented itself, he escaped first to Brazil then to Argentina. He died there in 1965.
This is a memo of Värnet’s describing his treatment to change homosexual behavior. During my expedition to Argentina in in January 2014, I visited what was once his clinic. It is now a residence hotel.
Ludwig Freude
Ludwig Freude (his name is German for Joy or Delight) was a high level German businessman and in the 1940’s was the Director of the Banco Aleman Transatlantico, a subsidiary of the massive Deutsche Bank. At that time he was one the ten wealthiest businessmen in Latin America, was president of the German Clubs in Buenos Aires and one of the most influential men of the Third Reich. He was also a friend of Juan Perón as we see in this photo. The arrow points to Freude and we see Perón putting his hankie into his pocket.
Even before the war ended, Freude worked to help preserve the vast fortunes of individuals on the Reich as well as the treasures of the Reich itself. When things were closing in on Freude, he fled to Argentina.
Because of his friendship with Perón and his financial power, he was instrumental in helping organize “die Spinne” better known as “Odessa”! And when the Allies requested Freude’s extradition, Perón more or less said that Freude was his personal friend and that he was not going to be extradited. His grave is in the beautiful German Cemetery in Buenos Aires, not far from that of Kapitän zur See Langsdorff.
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