>>4102462

The modern settlement of Bariloche developed from a shop established by Carlos Wiederhold.

The German immigrant had first settled in the area of Lake Llanquihue in Chile. Wiederhold

crossed the Andes and established a little shop called La Alemana (The German). A

small settlement developed around the shop, and its former site is the city center. By 1895

the settlement was primarily made up of German-speaking immigrants: Austrians,

Germans, and Slovenians, as well as Italians from the city of Belluno, and Chileans. A local

legend says that the name came from a letter erroneously addressed to Wiederhold as

San Carlos instead of Don Carlos. Most of the commerce in Bariloche related to goods

imported and exported at the seaport of Puerto Montt in Chile. In 1896 Perito Moreno wrote

that it took three days to reach Puerto Montt from Bariloche, but traveling to Viedma on the

Atlantic coast of Argentina took "one month or more".

In the 1930s the centre of the city was redesigned to have the appearance of a

traditional European central alpine town (it was called "Little Switzerland.") Many buildings

were made of wood and stone. In 1909 there were 1,250 inhabitants; a telegraph, post

office, and a road connected the city with Neuquén. Commerce continued to depend on

Chile until the arrival of the railroad in 1934, which connected the city with Argentine markets.

>>4103966

>>4103987

STANDING amid the sunflowers beside his log chalet in the Argentine mountains Jorge Priebke

happily reminisces about the Third Reich’s most evil men. Pointing to the next street, the

old man revealed in a heavy German accent:

“That’s the Hotel Campana where Dr Mengele

stayed for a time. “Eichmann passed through here too. I worked with him for a year at the

Mercedes Benz factory up in Buenos Aires but never met him here in Bariloche. “He was very quiet.”

The men so casually dropped into conversation by Priebke are Auschwitz concentration

camp’s grotesque “Angel of Death” Dr Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, coldly efficient

architect of the Holocaust.

Grey-haired Priebke’s Heidi-style cabin shrouded by the snow-tipped Andes is

in the Bavarian-style ski resort of San Carlos de Bariloche, some 600 miles south of Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

Built by German immigrants in the late 19th Century, today Bariloche’s fondue restaurants

and lonely mountain trails are a haven for backpackers and hikers from all over the globe.

Yet in the years after the Second World War this charming mountain getaway gained infamy

as a haven for fleeing Nazi war criminals.

Sensational claims have recently re-surfaced

that Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler escaped his fate in his Berlin bunker and lived out his old age

here in the wilds of Patagonia. Controversial book Grey Wolf, The Escape Of Adolf Hitler,

by British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan, describes how Hitler and wife Eva Braun

even had two daughters who were still alive around a decade ago.