A trove of around 75 suspected Nazi artifacts, including a bust of Adolf Hitler, a device used to measure head size and a collection of magnifying glasses in swastika-decorated boxes, has been discovered in a home in Béccar, Argentina.
Authorities discovered the objects in a collector’s home after agents and Interpol officers raided the house on June 8, the Associated Press reports. The Nazi paraphernalia was hidden in a secret room accessed by a hidden passageway. The collector remains free but under investigation.
“Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces,” Argentine security minister Patricia Bullrich told the AP, adding that many of the pieces were accompanied by old photographs showing Hitler using them, including one of the magnifying glasses.
Authorities believe the items belonged to high-ranking Nazi officers in Germany during World War Two. They are now trying to understand how the pieces entered the South American country.
“This is unheard of in the Argentine Republic. Finding 75 original pieces is historic and could offer irrefutable proof of the presence of top leaders who escaped from Nazi Germany,” Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the DAIA, a political umbrella for Argentina’s Jewish institutes, told the AP.
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