Argentina's top court finds 83 boxes of Nazi materials in its basement

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: May 11, 2025 10:28 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

Dozens of boxes of Nazi worldly confiscated by Argentine authorities during the Second World War were precocious rediscovered successful the Supreme Court's basement, the tribunal said connected Sunday.

The 83 boxes were sent by the Germany embassy successful Tokyo to Argentina in June 1941 aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru, according to the past that the tribunal was capable to portion together, it said successful a statement.

At the time, the ample shipment drew the attraction of authorities, who feared its contents could affect Argentina's neutrality successful the war.

Despite claims at the time from German diplomatic representatives that the boxes held idiosyncratic items, Argentine customs authorities searched 5 boxes astatine random.

They recovered postcards, photographs and propaganda worldly from the Nazi regime, arsenic good arsenic thousands of notebooks belonging to the Nazi party. A national justice confiscated the materials, and referred the matter to the Supreme Court.

It was not instantly wide wherefore the items were sent to Argentina or what, if any, enactment the Supreme Court took astatine the time.

Eighty-four years later, tribunal staffers came crossed the boxes arsenic they prepared for a Supreme Court museum.

"Upon opening 1 of the boxes, we identified worldly intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina during the Second World War," the tribunal said.

The tribunal has present transferred the boxes to a country equipped with other information measures, and invited the Holocaust Museum successful Buenos Aires to enactment successful their preservation and inventory.

Experts volition besides analyse them for immoderate clues astir still-unknown aspects of the Holocaust, specified arsenic planetary financing networks utilized by the Nazis.

Argentina remained neutral successful the Second World War until 1944, erstwhile it broke relations with Axis powers. The South American state declared warfare connected Germany and Japan the pursuing year.

From 1933 to 1954, according to the Holocaust Museum, 40,000 Jews entered Argentina as they fled Nazi persecution successful Europe. Argentina is location to the largest colonisation of Jews successful Latin America.