Hitler's bust among 75 Nazi artefacts found in collector's home in Argentina

Investigators believe artefacts brought to the country by high-ranking Nazis after end of second world war

Inside a concealed room in a house in Argentina authorities believe they have uncovered the biggest collection of Nazi artefacts in the nation's history, which include a bust relief of Adolf Hitler, magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with swastikas, as well as, a medical device used to measure head size, according to The Guardian.

Some 75 objects were ascertained in a collector’s home in Béccar, a suburb north of Buenos Aires, and authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during the second world war.

“Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces,” Argentine security minister Patricia Bullrich told The Associated Press on Monday, saying that many pieces were accompanied by old photographs. “This is a way to commercialise them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Fuhrer. There are photos of him with the objects.”



Among the disturbing items were toys that Bullrich said would have been used to indoctrinate youth and a statue of the Nazi Eagle above a swastika.

Police are trying to determine how the artefacts had entered the country and came to be in the room hidden behind a library in the house, she said. The raid that found them was carried out on June 8.

The best explanation brought forward by investigators and members of Argentina’s Jewish community is that they were brought to Argentina by a high-ranking Nazi or Nazis after the second world war, when the South American country became a refuge for fleeing war criminals, including some of the best known.



As leading members of Hitler’s Third Reich were put on trial for war crimes, Josef Mengele fled to Argentina and lived in Buenos Aires for a decade. He, however, moved to Paraguay after Israeli Mossad agents caught Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann, who was also living in Buenos Aires. Mengele later died in Brazil in 1979 while swimming in a beach in the town of Bertioga.

While police in Argentina did not name any high-ranking Nazis to whom the objects might have originally belonged, Bullrich noted there were medical devices.

“There are objects to measure heads that was the logic of the Aryan race,” she said.