Nazi documents found in archives of Argentina's Supreme Court

Argentina has discovered hundreds of documents and membership cards from Nazi organisations in boxes stored in the archives of the Supreme Court.

The files relate to a case opened in 1941, according to reporting by the Clarín newspaper, and were stashed in champagne crates. 

The material was identified as propaganda from Adolf Hitler’s regime, intended to spread Nazi ideology in Argentina. 

The discovery was made as judicial staff relocated files for the creation of a future Supreme Court museum. The boxes were in the basement of the Palace of Justice in the capital, where paper records from old cases are stored.

Seven crates containing postcards, photographs, Nazi propaganda, notebooks and party membership documents were found by staff in the process of moving non-digitised archive material, the court said Monday of the "discovery of global significance."

The contents have been secured for classification, documentation and preservation by order of the Supreme Court. 

A staffer who peeped into one of the crates found material "intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina," said a court statement.

According to Clarín, initial inspections also uncovered photographs and hundreds of membership booklets from the so-called “Unión Alemana de Gremios,” featuring swastikas on the cover.

Some documents are in very poor condition, while others have been well preserved, according to images published by Clarín.

The formal opening of the boxes took place in the presence of Supreme Court Chief Justice Horacio Rosatti, the chief rabbi of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Eliahu Hamra and officials of the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, including Director Jonathan Karszenbaum, researcher Marcia Ras and other legal officials and experts.

Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, but was also the preferred destination for several top Nazis who fled Germany after the wartime genocide of six million European Jews.  

"Given the historical relevance of the find and the potential crucial information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust, the President of the Supreme Court, Horacio Rosatti, ordered an exhaustive survey of all the material found," the court said. 

"The main objective is to... determine if the material contains crucial information about the Holocaust and if any clues found can shed light on aspects still unknown, such as the route of Nazi money at a global level," it added.

The crates, sent from the German diplomatic mission in Japan to its Embassy in Buenos Aires, arrived in Argentina on June 20, 1941 via a Japanese cargo ship named Nan-a-Maru

German diplomats in Argentina claimed they contained personal effects, but the shipment was held up by customs officials, which flagged it and notified then-foreign minister Enrique Ruiz Guiñazú.

The Comisión Especial Investigadora de las Actividades Anti-Argentina del Congreso (“Special Congressional Commission for the Investigation of Anti-Argentine Activities”) – which was later dissolved – requested judicial intervention to examine whether the boxes contained material that could jeopardise the nation’s policy of neutrality during World War II. 

The commission reviewed part of its contents. In August 1941, investigators found membership booklets, as well as postcards and photos containing Nazi propaganda. The German Embassy attempted to reclaim the shipment, but a federal judge ordered its seizure.

The files were transferred to the Supreme Court in September 1941, given that the case involved a foreign state. The boxes remained in judicial custody for more than 80 years until their discovery.

Rosatti has ordered the preservation of the materials and the creation of an inventory to assess whether the documents contain new information on the Holocaust or Nazi financing networks. 

After World War II, Argentina became a haven for Nazis – thousands of whom are believed to have fled there, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group.

They included top war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann – considered a key architect of Hitler's plan to exterminate Europe's Jews. He was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960 and sent to Israel where he was tried and executed.

Nazi doctor Josef Mengele also hid in Argentina before fleeing to Paraguay and later Brazil, where he died.

Argentina's Jewish population was the target of a bombing in 1994 of the AMIA community centre that killed 85 people and injured 300, just two years after the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires claimed 29 lives.

On April 1, earlier this year, President Javier Milei’s government declassified Nazi-related files to assist the Wiesenthal Center’s Holocaust investigations. 

– TIMES/AFP/NA