The decision of Argentina's government to declassify document showing how Nazi fugitives were able to escape Germany and flee to the South American country at the end of World War II brings both a sense of justice and pain to the Jewish community, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of "Holocaust Holiday" and "The Israel Warrior," told Newsmax on Sunday.
"At least we know more about how these people escaped, but to be honest, what it means is just more pain," Boteach said on "Sunday Report. "So few Nazis paid the price for the greatest genocide in the history of the world."
On Friday, the Argentine government announced the release of nearly 1,850 classified documents showing how the Nazis escaped through so-called ratlines. The release comes after the urging of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, reports The Times of Israel.
Argentine President Javier Milei ordered the declassification after meeting with Simon Wiesenthal Center leaders, who delivered a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requesting the records as well.
Boteach called Milei the "greatest friend that Israel has ever had" in Argentina, noting that before him, the country was "understandably petrified, disgraced, and ashamed that they became a sanctuary to the greatest monsters that ever lived.
"The last thing they wanted was to face global ignominy in seeing actual documents that showed how they brought in the murderers of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Let's remember that just three days ago was the 80th anniversary of the suicide of Adolf Hitler. This is all very recent."
Some of the worst Nazi war criminals ended up in Argentina, said Boteach.
"You're talking Adolf Eichmann, who would be later captured by Israel in 1960," he said. "You're talking about the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, who was never brought to justice. They were all granted sanctuary and an escape haven in Argentina, so of course they were going to cover this up."
Still, out of 22 defendants at the Nuremberg trials, only about half were put to death, said Boteach.
"You had Albert Speer, who just bamboozled even the international tribunal in Nuremberg and only got 20 years," he said. "He went on to write bestselling books and became a multimillionaire. But nearly all the SS generals, nearly all the SS camp guards in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Mathausen, they were never punished."
Then there were the "worst of the worst," like Mengele, who conducted horrific experiments on twins and suffocated Jewish prisoners to learn how German pilots who crashed into the North Sea could survive cold waters, said Boteach.
"Of course, these were all Nazis who had Ph.D.s," he said. "They weren't just medical doctors who violated the Hippocratic Oath. They violated humanity, decency."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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