AP - "In a hidden room in a house near Argentina’s capital, police believe they have found the biggest collection of Nazi artefacts in the country’s history, including a bust relief of Adolf Hitler, magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with swastikas and even a macabre medical device used to measure head size.

Some 75 objects were found in a collector’s home in Béccar, a suburb north of Buenos Aires, and authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during the second world war.

“Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces,” Argentine security minister Patricia Bullrich told The Associated Press on Monday, saying that many pieces were accompanied by old photographs. “This is a way to commercialise them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Fuhrer. There are photos of him with the objects.”

(…) Police are trying to determine how the artefacts entered Argentina and came to be in the room hidden behind a library in the house, she said.(...)”

AP. Hitler bust among Argentina's biggest haul of Nazi artefacts founds in secret room. The Guardian, London, 20-06-2017.

BOSTON — Two weeks ago, news of a “hidden Nazi memorabilia stash” discovered in Buenos Aires received continent-to-continent coverage. In recent days, however, experts in Nazi-era artifacts have called the collection “carnival-quality garbage,” and something akin to “fake liverwurst.” (…)

“The so-called horde is all fake,” said Darrell English, a decades-long collector of artifacts related to the Third Reich.

Having viewed photographs and video clips taken of the Buenos Aries trove, English said he is confident that many — if not most — of the items are forgeries. Not only did actual Nazis never touch them, said the Massachusetts-based antiquarian, but it appeared as if they had been forged within the past 20 years.

“The big stand-out was the cat statue with a Nazi swastika necklace and a big swastika on the base — a total joke,” said English, who founded the New England Holocaust Institute & Museum in 2013. Although the museum has since closed, English remains one of the region’s top collectors of Nazi-era artifacts, ranging from concentration camp uniforms to the negatives of historically important photographs.

“The hunting dagger was another big tip-off,” said English of the glimmering discovery in Buenos Aries. “Yes, Hermann Goering gave them out, but this one was over-the-top in both the style of the dagger and the big swastika to catch your eye — that’s the hook that the fake artist uses to capture people’s attention,” said English in an interview with The Times of Israel.

As someone intimately familiar with Nazi regalia, English took one look at — for instance –“a pseudo-Egyptian-Nazi cat sculpture,” and the object immediately “rang a big bell of fake,” he said. The collector had never seen such a motif before, blending Reich elements of style with one of the world’s supposed unter-cultures. (...)

In the assessment of Darrell English, the Buenos Aires stash was being stored by “a person who loves to pass off fakes and underground antiques to people who have more money than brains,” he said. In this scenario, the Nazi-themed objects were never intended to be seen as a collection, as they were when Interpol raided the collector’s home last month. The fake artifacts, said English, were intended to be sold off piecemeal. (…)

Recent years have seen an increase in Nazi-era forgeries flooding the market, said English. Some media outlets publish these “discoveries” as genuine without consulting experts, as was the case two weeks ago. Unfortunately, this de facto authentication lends credence to the next round of fake artifacts, said English, when unwitting buyers recall seeing photographs of “an item just like that” through a news source.

"I have been at this game for half a century now and have seen a lot,” said English. “To date it’s getting worse, because too many people want to believe everything without doing the homework.”

Quite amazingly, Bill Panagopulos, the owner of the notorious Maryland-based Alexander Historical Auctions, and as such responsible for the launching of numerous fake Nazi artefacts 9in 2017 "Hitler's telephone" and "Hitler's underpants", was interviewed too in this article – and ever more amizingly he stated that the items in question were “carnival-quality garbage”.

Top collector cries foul on Nazi memorabilia trove uncovered in Buenos Aires. The Times of Israel, Jerusalem, 05-07-2017.

"Mindlin speculated that the items may have been brought to Argentina by fugitive Nazis – a narrative that would fit perfectly with Argentina’s sad history as a bolthole for war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele, who escaped to South America after the fall of the Third Reich.”

But the historical value of the articles has been called too into question by the German art historian invited to assess them for the Argentinian authorities.

Stephen Klingen, from Munich’s Central Institute for Art History, concluded that the 83 objects on display are either outright fakes or original pieces from the 1930s which had swastikas and other Nazi symbols added later.

“You can display the objects as counterfeits, but you can not learn anything about the Nazi era from them,” Klingen told the Guardian in an email.

Despite his findings, the Museo del Holocausto plans to go ahead with the display of a selected number of the items, arguing that they still have educational value.

(…) Klingen said he was shocked by the Argentinian authorities’ handling of the objects: federal police chief Néstor Roncaglia and security minister Patricia Bullrich – who participated in the museum press conference on 2 October – received a report from him last year stating unequivocally they were almost all forgeries.

The eight-page report was accompanied by a 280-page addendum describing how he reached his conclusions for each piece.

The skull-measuring device was actually manufactured between 1890 and 1910, the report states, and has no association with the Nazi period. A plaque attached to its case reading “Amt für Rassenpolitk” (“Office for Racial Politics”) is fake – and no Nazi office existed under that name, Klingen said.

Klingen said that only a handful of historically insignificant objects might be genuine, including three toolboxes from a Mauser munitions factory, part of a grenade launcher, a sundial with a swastika, a Nazi-era newsreel and various Hitler busts. (…)

Asked if he considered that any of the artefacts were of sufficient historical significance to to be displayed at a museum about the Holocaust, Klingen replied: “No, absolutely not.”

Haul of Nazi artefacts on display in Argentina mostly fake, expert says. The Guardian, London, 01-11-2019.