The Unidad de Tareas (Task Unit) was responsible for thousands of instances of forced disappearance, torture, and murder during this time.

[2] Each year about 10,000 youths signed up to enter as regular students, of whom around half were admitted and given scholarships for courses of study such as electronics, aeronautics, management, marine engineering (mecánico naval), radio operation, meteorology, and oceanography.

Almost 5,000 people were abducted and held in the original ESMA campus in its active participation in the Dirty War between 1976-1983; all except 150 were killed during or after interrogation and torture.

The prisoners were taken to the basement, sedated, and then killed, some by shooting, others in death flights: they were flown over the Atlantic Ocean or the Río de la Plata and pushed out of the aircraft.

The ESMA was used as a detention center from the very start of the 1976 dictatorship: on 24 March, the day of the coup d'état, several people kidnapped by the Armed Forces were taken there.

[10] Among the Task Unit's ranks were Jorge Eduardo Acosta, Alfredo Astiz, Ricardo Miguel Cavallo and Adolfo Scilingo, who became notorious as torturers.

Massera had reportedly been present when the unit was set up, gave an opening speech to the officers, and personally participated in the first illegal detentions.

During the beginning stages of the Dirty War, Argentinians living in Buenos Aires were unaware that the building that once housed a school had been transformed into a center for punishing "subversion".

[12] These photos would allow victims to be recorded, providing an accurate count today as to the five thousand people who died due to the treatment within this camp.

These officers were committed to torturing the dissidents, contributing twenty four hours, seven days a week of fear for the victims who never knew when the next hit would happen.

[13] Another group targeted included the people who potentially supported a different government, opposing the current junta and military dictatorship of Argentina.

[11] If there was any suspicion that Argentinians were meeting secretly and consistently to resist General Jorge Rafael Videla and his regime, the government would kidnap these people and place them in detention centers such as the ESMA.

Upon being kidnapped, for example, many kidnappers would interrogate the prisoners about why they were opposing the Argentinian dictatorship and spreading a new political ideology, disregarding the fact of whether or not this was actually the case.

A few victims that survived and escaped the ESMA have made it a priority to share their experiences of the torture and human rights infractions they faced while living in this center.

The main goal of the ESMA officers was to inflict as much pain as was possible, testing every victim's capability of surviving amidst deathly circumstances.

[12] Just within the basement floor of the interrogation methods, victims were subjugated to electric shocks, humiliating treatments, and removal of genitalia and other organs of the human body.

Ana María Martí survived these horrid conditions, but she witnessed many other of her fellow victims suffer and die at the hands of the officers.

She remarked that prisoners would begin to know when someone was about to be taken to the killing chambers; in order to prepare, the ESMA would properly feed and take care of the victims to bulk them up.

[14]: 212  One day Susana Reyes defied an authority after a nasty remark about her body which led to her being tied up and brutally beaten with a baton.

For example, as seen in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, these officers would attempt scientific experiments to show how well the human body could handle the loss of limbs, the removal of organs, and the fluctuation of hot and cold temperatures.

Part of the military's psychological torment and disciplining of women was to force them to adhere to beauty standards by giving them make-up, perfume, and wax.

[14]: 178–179 A major trial, nicknamed "the ESMA mega-trial", of 63 people accused of crimes against humanity (lesa humanidad) during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, including those involved in death flights, was reaching its close in July 2015.

The trial was still in progress as of April 2016[update], and was being covered in a dedicated blog, Causa ESMA, with links to video reports of significant court sentences and similar events;[18] many items are selected from the Argentine Infojus Noticias (National Agency of judicial news) Web site, Nacionales section.

[20][21] A federal court sentenced eight sailors and police officers and a civilian in the trial of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the military dictatorship at the ESMA on February 19, 2021.

[23] Argentines feel obligated to use the museum to share the stories of those that lost their lives during the Dirty War and to show the horrors that occurred within the walls of ESMA.