Historia de un libro sobre los nazis de Bariloche: El pintor de la Suiza Argentina

Abstract

Thirty years after its publication, this autobiographical essay describes the role of the book El pintor de la Suiza argentina (“The painter of the argentine Switzerland”) (Sudamericana, 1991) in the arrest in Bariloche (Argentina), and the extradition to Italy, of former SS captain Erich Priebke, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998 for the Fosse Ardeatine massacre. As a counterpoint to the history of his paternal German Jewish family, including a grand-uncle killed in Auschwitz, the author analyses the narrative strategies of the book, focused on painter and former Belgian collaborationist Toon Maes (1911-1986). He also reflects on the tension between ethics and aesthetics that structures its literary form, and discusses the issue of impunity in post-dictatorial Argentina, and the end of the pact of silence that for decades protected the Nazis’ refuge in Bariloche.