FrontPage

Nation

World

Media

Culture

Technology

Commentary

Argentine President Apologizes for Country's Nazi Past

June 13, 2000

In a visit to Washington to meet with President Clinton, President Fernando de la Rua of Argentina apologized "with a deep feeling of pain" Tuesday for his country's role in providing sanctuary to Nazis after World War II. He promised that his government will investigate how Nazis were allowed to enter Argentina after the war and punish anyone who committed crimes and may still be at large.

Referring to how Nazis were smuggled in or received visas, de la Rua said, "I apologize that this was allowed to happen. ... This we regret with a deep feeling of pain." He said it was important for present and future generations to publicize these events "to avoid any repetition, to prevent other forms of xenophobia and racism from taking root."

De la Rua said he had apologized twice before for the sanctuary his country offered Nazis, "but it is important to repeat it and express solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust."

The Washington representative of the World Jewish Congress, Douglas Bloomfield, listened to de la Rua's statement and called it "commendable and very important."

De la Rua said the apology was appropriate because "Nazi war criminals took advantage of an opportunity to find shelter in Argentina" as some consular officials were making it difficult for Jews to get visas. "This is my regret," De la Rua said a news conference in a hotel near the White House. "A commission has been created to open all Nazi files and find the truth, and its work will continue."

The Argentine leader also said investigators again will probe the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and an attack two years later on a Jewish community center in the Argentine capital. The embassy bombing killed 29 people, and 86 died in the attack on the center. "We plan to find out the truth and want justice to be done," de la Rua said.

After the Clinton meeting, De la Rua toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for 45 minutes and met museum director Sara Bloomfield in the glass-ceilinged Hall of Witness. Bloomfield led him through several exhibits including a replica of a boxcar, such as the Nazis used to transport Jews to concentration camps, and an area devoted to ghetto uprisings.

"It is very impressive. It is bigger than the one we have in Buenos Aires," said Fernando de la Rua. "It is most important to preserve the memory of this tragedy so we can avoid it happening again."

Search the Web.

Hitler's Willing Executioners
Ordinary Germans & the Holocaust
by Daniel Goldhagen
Goldhagen reaches conclusions that are both uncompromising and savage, rejecting as inadequate the conventional historical explanations for how an entire country could allow the Holocaust to happen, and gives the first detailed, broad-ranging account of the actual killers of the Jews.