Hitler in Colombia?

Of course not.

But, like Elvis and those Little Green Men, Hitler stories appear everywhere, because they sell.

In this case, one of the CIA documents released a few days ago in the Kennedy papers

Hitler in Tunja? Or a guy wearing a weird moustache?

declassification, was a second-hand story from an old Nazi alleging that Hitler had escaped the collapsing Third Reich and taken refuge in Tunja, Colombia in 1954. It was accompanied by a photo showing two seated men, one of them sporting a Hitler toothbrush moustache.

And Abel Basti, an Argentinean journalist, is to publish a book claiming that Hitler visited Boyaca before continuing on to Argentina.

Hitler's suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945 as the Soviets overran the devastated city is well documented by many witnesses. But, just imagine for a minute that a megalomaniac war criminal like Hitler HAD escaped to South America. Is it conceivable that he could have kept quiet? Of course not. And Nazi hunters would have followed his trail, and most likely captured him, as they did Adolf Eichmann and others.

The CIA document does not prove that Hitler lived in Colombia, but rather that people like to tell Hitler stories.

A cartoon in El Tiempo ridicules the idea of Hitler in Colombia.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours