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Uki Goni to discuss how Nazi War criminals escaped Europe via Dublin
May 25 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Free
**Apologies, this event is now at full capacity**
Thursday 25 May, Dublin Unitarian Church.
Doors open 6:10 pm. Event starts 6:30 pm. Reserve a spot here.
The large influx of fugitive Nazis and collaborators in post-WWII Argentina created an environment that normalised the presence of such heinous criminals in society and by doing so facilitated the crimes of Argentina’s own genocidal dictatorship in 1976-83.
During the research for his book ‘The Real Odessa’ on the escape of Nazi war criminals, author Uki Goñi was surprised to discover that some escaped first to Ireland from where they made their way to Argentina.
“If you’re a neighbour to Adolf Eichmann or Josef Mengele or just a random German that you knew did bad things during the war, what does this do to you? It means that once these things start happening in your own country, society has acquired the habit of coexisting with evil,” says Goñi.
A witness to the erasure of truth as a measurable reference, of the moral decay and the normalisation of violence that preceded Argentina’s 1976 military coup, Goñi sees alarming parallels with the extreme views and abusive behaviour in current political discourse. The author believes the dictatorship survival skills he acquired under Argentina’s military junta could prove useful in such an environment.
Event details: Doors open at 6:10 pm. Event starts at 6:30 pm. Books will be on sale and the author will be signing books afterwards.
Uki Goñi is best known for his book ‘The Real Odessa: How Nazi War Criminals Escaped Europe’, augmented edition, Granta Books, London, 2022, resulting in numerous appearances by the author in documentaries on the topic by the BBC, Discovery, NatGeo and PBS. As a journalist he has written a series of stories on human rights and the environment for the Guardian, op-eds for the New York Times and essays on authoritarianism and racism for the New York Review of Books. Born in the US to an Argentine family, he was raised in Dublin where he lived until the age of 21. He resides in Buenos Aires.