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Argentinian police are investigating whether an unprecedented find of Nazi artefacts including personal effects used by Adolf Hitler were brought into the country by infamous Holocaust physician Josef Mengele.
In a room at the end of a secret passage concealed behind a false bookcase, police in Buenos Aires stumbled upon the secret collection of 75 original Nazi objects.
Among them were a bust of Hitler, medals, a sculpture of a swastika-emblazoned eagle, a sinister device to measure the size of heads, and a magnifying glass that was used by Hitler.
Argentina’s security minister, Patricia Bullrich, confirmed that the objects were “originals”.
She said that some pieces, including the elegantly encased magnifying glass, came with photographs showing Hitler using them.
“This is a way to commercialize them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Führer. There are photos of him with the objects.”
Investigators are now looking at how the secret stash ended up in the home of an antique dealer, who was originally being investigated for trading illicit artefacts from China and Ancient Egypt.
"There are no precedents for a find like this. Pieces are stolen or are imitations. But this is original and we have to get to the bottom of it," said Nestor Roncaglia, head of Argentina's federal police.
The dealer, who has not been named by police, is being questioned by a federal judge to find out where and how he got hold of the disturbing collection, which included Nazi toys that would have been used to indoctrinate children.
The main hypothesis among investigators is that the objects were taken to Argentina by a high-ranking Nazi after World War II, when the South American country became a key refuge for fleeing war criminals.
Mengele, who known as the "Angel of Death" for his role in selecting victims at Auschwitz and performing horrific experiments on Jews and other prisoners, arrived in Argentina in 1949.
During his time in Buenos Aires he lived in the district of Olivos, where two commercial properties belonging to the art dealer caught in possession of the Nazi trove were also searched on Tuesday.
While police in Argentina did not name any high-ranking Nazis to whom the objects might have originally belonged, Ms Bullrich noted there were medical devices among the macabre collection.
"There are objects to measure heads, which was part of the logic of the Aryan race idea," she said.
Other high-profile Nazis that fled to Argentina were Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann and former SS commander, Erich Priebke, who spent 50 years living peacefully in the Andean mountain resort town of Bariloche.
Both Eichmann and Mengele lived in the Buenos Aires area for around a decade. Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents near his home in the San Fernando district in 1960 before being put on trial in Israel.
Mengele moved to Paraguay in 1958 after being questioned by the police in Buenos Aires about accusations that he was practicing as a doctor and performing abortions without a license.
He eventually drowned while swimming at a beach in Brazil in 1979. Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the DAIA, a political umbrella for Argentina's Jewish institutes, called the find "unheard of" in Argentina.
"Finding 75 original pieces is historic and could offer irrefutable proof of the presence of top leaders who escaped from Nazi Germany," Mr Cohen said.