Facebook is a great way to meet and interact with people from different countries. I have had the opportunity to become friends with Maria Silvia, an author from Argentina.I was asking her questions this morning about her country, trying to learn something unusual about her country to share. She explained that Argentina was a safe haven for the Nazis. I asked if it was alright that I wrote about this, her response was "its history."
The Eden Hotel in La Falda, Cordoba built in 1898, is now haunted by the past of being a safe haven for the Nazis and their supporters. The Eden Hotel was purchased in 1912 by Ida and Walter Eichhorn, who were close friends of Adolf Hitler, actively supported nazism financially and also firmly believed in it. Ida Eichhorn stated that all her friends would find safe refuge in her hotel. Historians says that it was not unusual for the Eichhorns to transmit Hilter's speeches through speakers inside and outside the premises.
Argentina declared war on Germany in 1945, local authorities seized the Eden Hotel, calling it enemy property. It is estimated that the Eichhorns contributed more than 30,000 Deutschmarks (roughly 1 million US dollars today) to Hilter and the Nazi party. The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigations, or FBI, released a secret memo that was declassified in the 1990’s, penned by J. Edgar Hoover. The document connects the Eichhorns to the founding of the Nazi party, Hitler’s rise, and their close friendship.
It also suggests that if Hitler somehow did survive, he would surely find refuge in a place far-flung from Europe and his allied enemies. In all the world, the memo singled out one place: La Falda, Argentina, this also follows along with semi-believable theories suggest that the hotel was Adolf Hitler's final resting place.
The Eden Hotel is now an empty shell of a reminder of General Juan Domingo Peron's own fascist sympathies and also his open door policy for the hundred's of Nazis who fled to Argentina after the war. It is currently being managed by the local municipality, which offers tours and is trying to restore it as a museum.
The city that was born from this resort has begun to restore it, providing a complete history, even the darkest days of the Nazi roots. The city is not memorializing their history byt using it as a symbol of what can befall decadence and evil.
