Germany’s BND intelligence agency knew as early as 1952 that Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Buenos Aires, a report said.
The report in Germany’s Bild newspaper yesterday comes after the US released files in 2006 showing the CIA told the BND in 1958 that the Nazi leader who orchestrated the Holocaust “is reported to have lived in Argentina” since 1952.
Bild said it obtained a BND file from 1952 that indicated the agency believed he was in Argentina. The BND did not return calls seeking comment.
The BND – in its early years still called Organisation Gehlen - has 4,500 pages of classified files on Eichmann.
The agency says the files need to remain secret, but a freelance reporter sued last year to have them released. They are now being reviewed in secret by three judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.
Bild said it had also filed a lawsuit to have the files released.
Israeli agents abducted Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann, who helped organised the extermination of Europe’s Jews as the head of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs office during the Second World War, was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death and hanged in 1962.
Vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, Elan Steinberg, said it was “disturbing to learn that the German BND and CIA knew of the whereabouts of the ‘architect of the Holocaust’ almost a decade before” he was brought to justice.
The BND has previously refused to comment on the case. According to court files, however, it says that releasing the documents would jeopardise the work of an informant and could harm future co-operation with an unnamed country whose intelligence agency is the source for much of the information in the files.
It is unclear what information the files contain, but historians and media have speculated they could shed light on how Eichmann managed to escape and build a new life in Argentina, or reveal details about his capture by Israeli agents.
Mr Steinberg said it raised the question whether the “BND files will reveal assistance and aid given to these Nazis to escape and evade justice”.
Bild said the 1952 BND file says Eichmann “is not in Egypt, but lives under the false name of Clemens in Argentina. The address of E. is known to the editor-in-chief of German newspaper The Way which is published in Argentina”.
The 1958 CIA document, released five years ago, also said Eichmann is reported to be living in Buenos Aires under the alias of Clemens - both his correct whereabouts and only a slightly different alias, which was actually Ricardo Klement.