10 May 2007
A Dutch television documentary claims that the country’s national air carrier, KLM Airlines, helped Nazis escape to Argentina after the end of World War II. Documentary producers have told the Reuters news agency that they are in possession of documents proving the accusation. The documentary claims that KLM representatives repeatedly tried to convince Swiss border officials to allow passengers from Germany to enter the country without proper papers so that they could fly on to Argentina. From Zurich, KLM allegedly flew the Nazis to Uruguay and then on to Argentina. As evidence the program cited documents that it says came from American, Argentine, Dutch and Swiss archives. "The documents give the distinct impression that KLM was intensively involved in transporting Nazis," said Marc Dierikx, an aviation historian at the Institute for Netherlands History in The Hague.
KLM, now a private company that is part of Air France, said its own checks had not revealed any evidence to support the claim, but added that it would seek an independent investigation into the matter. "The checks we have done in our archive so far have not delivered any specific information about this sort of transportation. But that does not mean that it has not been done," KLM spokesman Bart Koster told Reuters.