Nicholas Lezard's choice: Jan 11 | Books | The Guardian

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Nicholas Lezard's choice

Why the Nazis felt at home in Argentina

Uki Goi anatomises the links between Nazi Germany and Argentina in The Real Odessa
Nicholas Lezard The Guardian, Saturday 11 January 2003

Buy The Real Odessa at Amazon.co.uk

The Real Odessa, by Uki Goi (Granta, 9.99) The Nazis, you may not be surprised to learn, always had a soft spot for a militarily governed Argentina, noting approvingly the comfortable fit between their ideologies. So what this book chronicles, in painstaking detail and with meticulous and courageous scholarship - namely, the scope of Argentine connivance in helping Nazi criminals to evade justice after the war - was always inevitable, and not a fluke of history. You may wonder if it is strictly necessary to digest this book, if the title's allusion to Frederick Forsyth is a kind of warning signal. The reader will, after all, be forced into the company of some deeply revolting people - the kind who, on wartime travel documents, would give "liquidation of the Jews" as their business; or members of the Croatian Ustashi, whose inhumanity was so extreme that even the SS were disgusted. Well, apart from the obligation to memory, and the small matter of eternal vigilance, some of the issues related to the Nazis are still live. Goi does not force unnecessary connections upon us, but he does remind us of, for example, the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which may have been the belated consummation of a threat made by certain Peronistas after the abduction of Eichmann. Whoever was behind the bombing remains a mystery and will continue to be so, as the case was never

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Nicholas Lezard's choice: Jan 11 | Books | The Guardian

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brought to trial. The country's recent economic collapse is also down to the extraordinary evil and corruption of her rulers, who when not plundering state resources would find the time to cover up the true extent of their wartime and post-wartime record. Anti-semitism, when unchecked by legislation or even the vaguest semblance of shame, is hard to eradicate. After the first edition of this book appeared, Goi was taken to task by an Argentine foreign ministry official, who suggested that his next book be about the "Argentine Raoul Wallenberg". When Goi demurred, on the grounds that his research had failed to unearth any such person, the official replied that someone must have been helping Jews enter the country, because "there are so many of them". As for the brutality of the country's military dictatorships, this is very much a legacy of the techniques and lessons learnt from their German friends. Despite being thwarted by Argentine bureaucracy, we now have the full, scandalous picture. A big danke schn should go to the Vatican, which worked tirelessly to supply Nazi and Ustashi vermin with new identities and safe routes across the Atlantic. And since the hardback edition appeared, Goi has found evidence of papal connivance: Pius XII repeatedly petitioned the UK Foreign Office over the fate of 15 Ustashi prisoners being held in a British-controlled military prison in Rome; the men had, wrote the pontiff, been "at all times staunch advocates of the application of humanitarian principles". An odd choice of words, as Goi notes. Goi tells a complex story very well. He is good at reminding you who is who, and he maintains his authorial composure in the face of some quite nauseating details. On the other hand, the suspiciously prurient sadism that disfigures many an account of National Socialism is quite absent. And in the face of Argentine amnesia - a condition that, sadly, obtains at all levels of her society - he has performed an essential task with bravery and discipline.

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Nicholas Lezard's choice: Jan 11 | Books | The Guardian

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