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Straits Times
31 minutes ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
A Nazi document trove raises questions for Argentina
A man holds Nazi-related material after crates containing them were discovered again in the Justice Palace in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in this handout picture released on May 11, 2025. Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Republica Argentina/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. BUENOS AIRES - The Supreme Court official had a secret to share when he called Eliahu Hamra, the rabbi of Argentina's main Jewish community center, one night around the turn of the year. The court had found a dozen boxes of Nazi documents in its basement archive containing photos of Hitler as well as thousands of red Nazi labor organization membership booklets stamped with the swastika of the Third Reich. Silvio Robles, chief of staff to the court's president, wanted the rabbi's advice about how to handle the discovery, Hamra recalled. It was an uncomfortable subject for Argentina, home to Latin America's largest Jewish community, but also notorious for giving refuge to dozens of Nazi war criminals after World War Two. Hamra said he told Robles the court could face awkward questions about how the Nazi material came to be in its basement. "I warned him to take into account that this could leave a stain on them," Hamra said in an interview with Reuters. The conversation with the rabbi was an important early step in a coordinated effort between the Supreme Court and Jewish community leaders to bring the trove of documents to light. The find surfaced at a time when Argentina is demonstrating new readiness to look back at its complicated history with Nazis in the war era. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Business MAS records net profit of $19.7 billion, fuelled by investment gains Business Singapore financial sector growth doubles in 2024, assets managed cross $6 trillion in a first: MAS Singapore $3b money laundering case: MinLaw acts against 4 law firms and 1 lawyer over seized properties Singapore Man charged with attempted murder of woman at Kallang Wave Mall Singapore Ex-cleaner jailed over safety lapses linked to guard's death near 1-Altitude rooftop bar Singapore Real estate firm PropNex donates $6 million to Community Chest for 25th anniversary Singapore Sengkang-Punggol LRT gets 15.8 per cent capacity boost with new trains Singapore 'Nobody deserves to be alone': Why Mummy and Acha have fostered over 20 children in the past 22 years President Javier Milei, who has shown a personal interest in Judaism and strong support for Israel, in April opened up access to Nazi documents, uploading hundreds of de-classified documents online. "The Argentine government is committed to bringing these issues to light," said Emiliano Díaz, a spokesperson for Milei's government. Argentina remained neutral during the conflict until March 1945 when it declared war on Germany. After the Allied victory, many Holocaust survivors emigrated to Argentina. So did Nazi war criminals Adolf Eichmann, the chief organizer of the massacre of Jews during the Holocaust, and Josef Mengele, an Auschwitz death camp doctor who performed experiments on prisoners, granted entry by the Juan Perón government. Even decades later, this history made the Supreme Court tread carefully around the discovery. It declined to answer written questions from Reuters on the finding or to allow the news agency to see the booklets. The court has said it discovered the boxes during preparations for a new Supreme Court museum. But the Nazi documents had been seen sporadically in the court's archives since the 1970s, according to interviews with three judiciary employees and a private attorney with direct knowledge of the matter. Reuters could not determine why the trove of documents was not made public until now. "Nazis in Argentina set in motion many feelings," said Argentine historian Germán Friedmann. 'DON'T TOUCH' The basement archives housed in the large stone building of Argentina's Supreme Court contain hundreds of thousands of legal case files. It's easy to imagine that something could get lost. The Nazi materials were rediscovered in a room storing broken furniture, according to two judiciary officials. Robles, alerted to the find, then reached out to Hamra, the rabbi. And on May 9, Hamra, Jonathan Karszenbaum, the director of the local Holocaust museum and himself the grandson of survivors, and Horacio Rosatti, the president of the court, gathered in a judge's chamber to watch workers pry open the wooden crates. "I couldn't register even my own sensations because of the strangeness of the moment," said Karszenbaum. The court announced the find two days later. It later said the discovery included 5,000 membership booklets from the German Labor Front and the German Association of Trade Unions, both Nazi labor organizations. But some people who worked in the archives have long known about the boxes of Nazi material. One archive employee said he saw the boxes in the same storage room about a decade ago, and caught a glimpse of booklets with German names in a partially opened box. In the early 1970s, Alberto Garay, now an attorney and constitutional law expert in Buenos Aires, was visiting a friend who worked at the archives. He spotted a pile of red notebooks, imprinted with swastikas and bundled together with string, on the floor, he said. "I was surprised and said, 'what do you have here?'" Garay recalled. "He said, 'don't touch'". A SHIP AND A RAID According to the Supreme Court, the material arrived in Argentina in 1941 aboard a Japanese vessel, part of a shipment of 83 packages from the German embassy in Tokyo. The cargo was impounded by customs agents because of concerns it could damage Argentina's war neutrality, the court said. But for local historian Julio Mutti, whose work focuses on Nazis in Argentina, that sounded implausible. In a May 15 article, Mutti suggested the court had conflated two events that occurred a month apart: the arrival of the Japanese ship and a raid on underground Nazi organizations. Argentina was home to about 250,000 German-speakers at the outbreak of World War Two. When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, more than 10,000 people filled a Buenos Aires stadium to celebrate, causing alarm among locals. In 1939, Argentina's president dissolved the local branch of the Nazi party. Two years later, in 1941, Argentina's congress created a commission to investigate Nazi activities in the country. When the Nan A Maru docked in Buenos Aires, the commission asked the foreign ministry to intervene, according to a Reuters review of reports in La Prensa, a popular Argentine daily at the time. Inspectors opened five packages, finding propaganda, La Prensa reported. Searches of the remaining 78 packages revealed mostly children's books, magazines and envelopes with war photographs. There was no mention of membership booklets. Reuters was unable to determine what happened to the impounded cargo. Around this time, the commission was also investigating whether the banned Nazi party and the German Labor Front were continuing to operate underground. On July 23 – a month after the arrival of the Japanese ship – the authorities raided the offices of the German Association of Trade Unions and the Federation of German Beneficence and Cultural Clubs, fronts for the banned Nazi labor organization and party, seizing thousands of red membership booklets, according to La Prensa. The booklets were stored in the Supreme Court, La Prensa reported. Mutti, who learned about the raids through archival research in 2016, had searched for the notebooks in the court building, eventually concluding they had been incinerated to make space in the archive. When news broke of the discovery of the red booklets in the basement, "I immediately realized where they came from," he said. In June, the Supreme Court said it was digitizing and cataloguing the materials, and released photos of workers in masks and hairnets poring over the find. For now, it's unclear what the rediscovered booklets will reveal. Four historians told Reuters it's unlikely the notebooks will yield information not already uncovered by the wartime commission. Holger Meding, a historian at the University of Cologne, didn't expect the booklets would radically change historians' understanding of Nazi activities in Argentina. But, he said, "for historians, every piece of the mosaic is important." REUTERS
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Israel's new 'humanitarian city' in Gaza: leaks and rows, but no real plan
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, as a destroyed building stands in the background, in Gaza City, July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa JERUSALEM - An Israeli scheme to move hundreds of thousands of already uprooted Palestinians to a so-called "humanitarian city" in Gaza has led politicians to spar with the defence establishment, but officials say a practical plan has yet to be crafted. Even without a clear blueprint, opposition critics have denounced the proposal, with some likening the suggested site to a "concentration camp", which could lead to ethnic cleansing in the coastal enclave devastated by 21 months of conflict. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration has defended the project, saying it would offer civilians a safe haven while further weakening Hamas militants' grip on Gaza, but it remains unclear whether it is a concrete government policy. The idea was floated by Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month and Netanyahu convened minister and defence officials to discuss it late on Sunday. The military had been asked to put together a detailed proposition, but Netanyahu dismissed it as far too costly and complicated, two Israeli officials who were present said, and ordered them to come up with something cheaper and faster. An Israeli military source said it was a complex initiative that required intricate logistics for infrastructure such as sewage, sanitation, medical services, water and food supplies. Planning was in a very initial phase only, the source said, and the goal was to help Palestinians who do not want to live under Hamas rule. Hamas did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Some commentators have suggested the real aim of floating the plan was to increase pressure on Hamas during ongoing ceasefire talks, while also appeasing right-wingers in the cabinet who oppose any truce. Netanyahu's office and the Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. THE PLAN Katz outlined the plan on July 7 at a briefing with Israeli military correspondents. It followed a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump, which was publicly embraced by Netanyahu but widely criticised abroad, for Gazans to move to third countries while the battered enclave was rebuilt. Almost all of Gaza's population of more than 2 million people has already been uprooted during the conflict, which was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel. Katz said last week that around 600,000 people would be moved to the new encampment, to be built in southern Gaza abutting the Egyptian border where Israeli forces have gained control and which, like much of Gaza, now lies in ruins. The new zone, in Rafah, would be free of any Hamas presence and run by international forces, not Israeli ones, Katz was quoted by both Israel public broadcaster Kan and Army Radio's military correspondents as saying at the July 7 briefing. He was also quoted as saying that the people who chose to move there would not be free to leave. Katz's spokesman declined to comment. Zeev Elkin, an Israeli minister who sits on Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Kan the plan aimed to weaken Hamas' power in Gaza. "The more you separate Hamas from the population, the more Hamas will lose. As long as Hamas controls the food, the water and the money, it can go on recruiting militants," Elkin said. Asked about concerns the relocations there would be forced and whether the new zone was meant to serve as transit camps with the ultimate aim of expelling Palestinians from Gaza, the military official who spoke with Reuters said: "that is not our policy." When asked about the plan, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: "As we've said multiple times, we firmly stand against any plan that involves forced displacements of civilians in Gaza or forces (them) to make impossible choices." 'MAINLY SPIN' Since Katz's briefing, Israeli media has been awash with leaks. Left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, on July 9 citing senior military officials, said the plan had met resistance from the military because of its legal and logistical challenges. On Sunday, Israel's N12 News said the military objected to the plan because it could scupper ceasefire talks in Doha, while the Ynet news site cited officials as saying it would cost 10 billion to 15 billion shekels ($3 billion to $4.5 billion). The report drew a rebuke from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said that some people in the defence establishment were trying to sabotage the plan by presenting inflated budgets. "Preparing a protected area for the population," Smotrich's office said, "is a simple logistical operation that costs only hundreds of millions – an amount that the Ministry of Finance is willing to transfer." After Sunday's discussions, hardline national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir dismissed the controversy as a smokescreen to distract from concessions Israel may be willing to make in the ceasefire talks with Hamas. Ben-Gvir, like Smotrich, wants Israel to press on with the war, Palestinians to leave Gaza and Jewish settlements that were dismantled there two decades ago to be rebuilt. "The debate surrounding the establishment of the humanitarian city is mainly spin aimed at concealing the deal that is brewing," Ben-Gvir posted on X. He said there was no way it could be built during the proposed 60-day ceasefire. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Monday the plan was dangerous and would not materialise. "Will the residents of this city be allowed to leave it? If not, how will they be prevented? Will it be surrounded by a fence? A regular fence? An electrical fence? How many soldiers will guard it? What will the soldiers do when children want to leave the city?" he said at Israel's parliament. REUTERS
Al Etihad
an hour ago
- Science
- Al Etihad
Astronauts from India, Poland, Hungary return with NASA veteran from space station
15 July 2025 13:53 LOS ANGELES (REUTERS)NASA retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson splashed down safely in the Pacific early on Tuesday after her fifth trip to the International Space Station (ISS), joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary returning from each countries' first-ever ISS mission.A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four-member team parachuted into the sea off the coast of California at around 9:30am GMT, following a fiery reentry through Earth's atmosphere that capped a 22-hour descent from return flight concluded the fourth ISS mission organised by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in collaboration with SpaceX, the private rocket venture of billionaire Elon Musk headquartered near Los mission finale and return flight was carried live by a joint SpaceX-Axiom Axiom-4 crew was led by Whitson, 65, who retired from NASA in 2018 after a pioneering career that included becoming the US space agency's first female chief astronaut, and the first woman ever to command an ISS out the Axiom-4 crew were Shubhanshu Shukla, 39, of India, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, 41, of Poland, and Tibor Kapu, 33, of are returning with a cargo of science samples from more than 60 microgravity experiments, conducted during their 18-day visit to the ISS and due for shipment to researchers back on Earth for final analysis. Crew Members For India, Poland and Hungary, the launch marked the first human spaceflight of each country in more than 40 years, and the first mission ever to send astronauts from their government's respective space programs to the participation of Shukla, an Indian air force pilot, is seen by India's space program as a precursor of sorts to the debut crewed mission of its Gaganyaan orbital spacecraft, planned for is a Polish astronaut assigned to the European Space Agency, while Kapu is part of his country's Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) programme. Axiom Mission The Ax-4 team arrived at the ISS on June 26, welcomed aboard by the station's latest rotating crew of seven occupants - three US astronauts, one Japanese crewmate, and three Russian cosmonauts. The two crews parted company again early on Monday when Crew Dragon Grace undocked to begin its voyage Axiom, a 9-year-old venture co-founded by NASA's former ISS program manager, the mission builds on its business of putting astronauts sponsored by private companies and foreign governments into low-Earth orbit. Axiom also is one of a handful of companies developing a commercial space station of its own intended to eventually replace the ISS, which NASA expects to retire around 2030.
The Star
an hour ago
- Business
- The Star
CoreWeave commits $6 billion to AI data center in Pennsylvania
FILE PHOTO: A screen displays the company logo for CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, during the company's IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
875 Palestinians killed near aid sites, says UN human rights office
FILE PHOTO: A general view shows destruction in North Gaza, as seen from Israel, May 27, 2025 REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo GENEVA - The U.N. rights office said on Tuesday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and convoys run by other relief groups, including the United Nations. The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys. The GHF uses private U.S. security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a U.N.-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation. The GHF has repeatedly denied incidents have occurred on its sites and accused the U.N. of misinformation, which it denies. REUTERS
