Around a dozen boxes containing Nazi materials, originally confiscated by Argentine authorities during World War II, were recently rediscovered in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court, the court confirmed on Sunday.
According to a statement, the boxes were part of a larger shipment of 83 crates sent by the German embassy in Tokyo to Argentina in June 1941. They arrived aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru. At the time, the shipment raised concern among authorities, who suspected its contents could compromise Argentina’s wartime neutrality.
Although German diplomats claimed the boxes contained personal belongings, Argentine customs officials searched five boxes at random. Inside, they discovered postcards, photographs, propaganda material from the Nazi regime, and thousands of notebooks belonging to the Nazi Party. A federal judge subsequently confiscated the items and referred the matter to the Supreme Court.
It remains unclear why these materials were sent to Argentina or what, if any, official action was taken by the court at the time.
Eighty-four years later, court staff stumbled upon the boxes while preparing for the opening of a Supreme Court museum.
“Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during the Second World War,” the court said.
The court has since moved the boxes to a secured location and has invited the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires to help with their preservation and cataloging. Experts will also study the artifacts for potential insights into lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust, including possible international financial networks used by the Nazis.
Argentina maintained neutrality during most of World War II but severed ties with the Axis powers in 1944 and declared war on Germany and Japan in 1945.
Between 1933 and 1954, around 40,000 Jews fled Nazi persecution in Europe and migrated to Argentina, which now hosts the largest Jewish population in Latin America.