The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has acquired my Nazi escape document collection. This is probably the single most important collection on the post-war escape of Nazi war criminals from Europe. It is now available to researchers at the USHMM in Washington DC.

I assembled over 22,000 pages of documents while researching my book The Real Odessa (Granta Books, London-New York) by combing through archives in Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Argentina. The collection was furthermore enriched by my continuing work on the subject even after the first publication of Odessa. It represents over 12 years of constant research between 1996 and 2008.

The collection additionally includes some 260 interviews I conducted with individuals in Argentina, Germany, Austria, the United States and other countries. It also comprises a large number of documents and interviews relating to Argentina's secret immigration policy against the arrival of Jewish refugees during the 1930s and 1940s.

It took over two years to catalog, microfilm and transfer to digital format the Uki Goñi Collection. In accordance with the terms of our agreement, the USHMM also transferred my interview cassettes to digital sound files. The USHMM also received a copy of all my digital notes, summaries, transcripts and images, as well as my original interview cassettes.

Uki Goñi

The backbone of the Uki Goñi Collection at the USHMM is 22,309 microfilmed and scanned pages of documents related to the post-war escape from justice of Nazi war criminals.

This is the result of a painstaking search in archives in Switzerland, Belgium, Argentina, Germany, the United States and Great Britain. The documents, photocopied, sorted and indexed, constitute the basis of my book The Real Odessa, which for the first time reveals the names and methods used by the real Nazi helpers, as opposed to the Odessa of fiction.

Now finally united in a single place for public consultation at the USHMM, the collection includes once-secret files that the Argentine government only made public after the publication of Odessa, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in the USA, applications for Red Cross passports by Nazi war criminals, as well as secret documents from the CIA, Argentina's Migrations Office, and from other vital archives.

This is undoubtedly the single most important publicly available collection on the subject of the post-war Nazi escape anywhere in the world.

Photo: Archive at Argentina's Migrations Office.

Wilfred von Oven, the private secretary of Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, was a willing interviewee.

The Uki Goni Collection includes over 260 interviews that I conducted regarding the escape of Nazis from Europe after World Warr II.

No single interview on its own contains the whole story in a nutshell. On the contrary, the final picture only emerges by assembling minute pieces of data extracted from each individual interview. Some proved sadly to be too short and frustrating. Given the difficult subject matter, they often did not go beyond a single phone call. But others are suprisingly lengthy and revealing.

In any case, given the fragility of oral testimony, very early on in my investigation I already decided I would base The Real Odessa on archive documentation primarily. But I still believe the interviews are invaluable to get a ‘feel’ for the period and the role players.

The recorded conversations are contained on 62 cassettes that are now at the USHMM, most cassettes containing more than just one interview. I also gave the museum my (not always complete) transcripts of the recorded interviews as well as my notes of the unrecorded ones.

The majority were conducted in Spanish, although there are some English-language interviews as well. Highlights include SS officer and Nazi spy Reinhard Spitzy, Alan Darré, brother of Hitler's Argentine-born Minister of Agriculture Richard Walther Darré, and the private secretary of Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, Wilfred von Oven.

Carlos Horst Fuldner, in his 1930s German passport.

Carlos Horst Fuldner was the SS captain who arranged the escape of major Nazi criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, from Europe.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Fuldner arrived with his German parents in Hamburg as a teenager and joined the SS in 1932.

In the last days of the war he flew out of Berlin on a confidential mission for the SS secret service to organize the escape in Madrid. With his dual German-Argentine citizenship and being bilingual German-Spanish, he was ideally suited for the job. After meeting with General Perón in Buenos Aires in 1947, he returned to Europe and with the help of Swiss government officials and Catholic prelates in Rome, he organized the escape of fellow SS officers out of Europe.

Below you can retrieve two documents from US archives that I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, an invaluable treasure that I found during the early stages of my investigation. It relates Fuldner's move from Berlin to Madrid in March 1945 and how Nazi officials in Spain knew that ‘his real activity will not begin until the end of the war’.

Download Fuldner Reports

Uki Goñi

Archives Reference Desk
Tel.: +1-202-488-6113
E-mail: archives@ushmm.org

Link: USHMM ARCHIVES CONTACT PAGE

Uki Goñi habla durante el acta de donación de su colección a la Fundación IWO.

El UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM (USHMM) ha adquirido la colección del autor argentino Uki Goñi de documentos referentes al escape de criminales nazis. Esta es probablemente la más importante colección referente al escape de la justicia de los criminales de la Segunda Guerra. La colección se hará disponible a los investigadores en los archivos de la USHMM en Washington D.C. durante el transcurso del 2010.

El fuerte de la Uki Goñi Collection son 22.309 páginas de documentos hallados por el autor en archivos de Suiza, Bélgica, Argentina, Alemania, los Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña durante 12 años de investigación entre 1996 y 2008. La colección incluye adicionalmente unas 260 entrevistas hechas por Goñi con individuos en Argentina, Alemania, Austria, los Estados Unidos y otros países.

Esta colección constituye la base del libro The Real Odessa de Uki Goñi (publicado en Argentina y España como La auténtica Odessa), que reveló por primera vez la identidad de los verdaderos ayudantes del escape de nazis en Berna, Roma, Génova y Buenos Aires, que hasta su publicación se escondían tras los nombres irreales de la Odessa de ficción.

La colección completa ha sido indexada, microfilmada, escaneada y las entrevistas transferidas a soporte digital sonoro en un proceso que llevó dos años completar. Una copia de la colección ha sido conjuntamente donada por el USHMM y Goñi a la Fundación IWO en Buenos Aires para su consulta por investigadores en la Argentina.

UkiNet - 10 mayo 2010

En la Feria del Libro 2010, Uki Goñi donó oficialmente su archivo a la Fundación IWO, donde está abierto para la consulta de investigadores y estudiantes. El acto tuvo lugar el lunes 10 de mayo a las 19hs en la Sala Leopoldo Lugones de la 36° Feria del Libro, Sociedad Rural Argentina.