Argentina probes links with Hitler's henchmen

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If there was ever a bureaucratic version of a trip into the heart of darkness, it may lie with the discovery in Argentina of this 1949 immigration form filled in by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele to escape to South America after the Second World War.

The card surfaced as new President Nestor Kirchner, calling for an end to a "culture of impunity," earlier this year ordered the opening of thousands of secret immigration files, yellowed with age, that detailed one of Argentina's darkest episodes.

Kirchner's move came as the U.S. Congress and the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Argentina to come clean over how previous governments helped up to 300 war criminals find new identities in South America after the war.

Historians have long known Argentina, which only declared war on Germany in the dying weeks of the conflict, was the principal magnet in Latin America for fugitive Nazis.

<http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20031016-0500-argentina-nazis.html>