In search of Nazis

Buenos aires, according to lonely planet and myriad other online sources of varying veracity, has the third largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. The south of Argentina, as well as many other portions of south America, is notorious amongst backpackers for having a gringo trail, which has a unique double, an Israeli trail. In of themselves these are mildly interesting facts, but when combined with south Americas history of harrorboring ex-NAZIs and currently outstanding war criminals, you have an extremely interesting juxtaposition on your hands. (1)

Stories abound regarding the connection between South America and the power players in the third Reich: from conspiracy theorist claiming hitler can (or could, he'd be 120+ years old now) be found on the vast content to factual evidence of the likes of Dr. Death (Mengele) living with and raising his family, to actual convicted war criminals being found and extradited to be tried by the Hague.

With these thoughts in mind we set out to visit a small village on the outskirts of Cordoba, with a less-than-pristine reputation, Vila Belgrano Our local hostel owner gave us a brief, and arguably specious, history of the town. He claimed it was founded by a group of German submariners near the end of WWII, who had ventured up a river as a result of being fired upon by the Americans. After abandoning ship, they, presumably, founded the town (lost in this is why the Americans gave up persuit after nearly sinking the sub). To add more intrigue to the story, he claimed that the town held onto its roots, displaying images of swastikas and other nefarious symbols on super-kitsch objects such as coffee mugs, biersteins and t-shirts.





We only had two days in Cordoba, so we decided to combine our visit to the small home town of Che Guevra with that of potential Nazis. Call it the axis of evil meeting the forces of communism, our tour of contentious historia in South America.

Unfortunately, after getting caught up in the life and times of Che we had little time to spare. We made our way to the bus station, which we found closed for siesta. A couple of bus drivers directed us to the main route, telling us we only needed to stand alongside the road, hail a certain company and they would bring us the rest of the way. Dubious, but our only chance at seeing the aborhent past, presently. We took the local bus 20 minutes to the main route where we were dropped into nowhere. We then proceeded to sit alongside the highway for 10 minutes, 20, 45 and right as we were about to give up, at the hour mark, our bus appeared over the horizon.

We didn't realize that it would take an hour and a half more to reach our destination, or that once there the last bus would depart at the setting of the sun (at least organized company; we in fact might have been able to take a collectivo later, but at that point we were so worried about getting stuck in some 30's German propoganda film, we booked the ticket there and then). This gave us 1 hour 30 minutes to find some NAZIs, or at least some filthy sympathizers.

As we rushed through town we encountered fashioned print t-shirts with the word Deutschland, mugs with the emblem of the rising eagle (German, but not condemnable), booby biersteins (self-explanatory), a pretzel dealer (2), and a beer hall by the name of "Viejo Munich", or Old Munich, which wouldn't be so horrible, but for the rumoured history of the town, which leaves one with a bit of that bilous taste in the mouth, especially when considering exactly which "old Munich" they are referring.





This is not to say I'd recommend visiting Villa Belgramo, or even that I had an exceptional experience, solely that the contentious history makes for interesting thought, whether you have 1 1/2 hours or two days, you surely will be forced to face this severely German influenced town. And though, thankfully, we did not encounter any blatant relics of a NAZI past, the fact remains that the taint of history still endures.

(1) Not to mention a fairly significant influence in certain regions by the notoriously anti-Israel group, Hamas.

(2) I must admit here that I did buy a pretzel, which my girlfriend refused to partake in as she did not want to support a possible collaborator/sympathizer. To which I saw the point, but my stomach failed to fully respect, mainly because the woman at the counter was 60 at the oldest, and though she might have been of German descent, clearly she was born outside the age of atrocity.

Note: The inspiration to visit was based solely on the information provided by our hostel owner. To say that anything regarding the history of the town is factual would be a misrepresentation as it is based solely upon word of mouth (a separate hostel guest did corroborate the story claiming to have seen swastikas in some shops). To give some insight into the owner's credentials, after correcting him for the third time regarding my name, I proceeded to go the next three days by my newest, and least exciting, sobriquet: Jeff.