Argentina’s Supreme Court Unearths Dozens of Nazi-Era Boxes in Basement Archive

In a startling revelation, Argentina’s Supreme Court announced that dozens of boxes containing Nazi-era artifacts, long believed to be lost, were recently found in its basement archive.

According to court officials, a total of 83 boxes, originally dispatched from the German embassy in Tokyo, arrived in Argentina aboard the Japanese vessel Nan-a-Maru in June 1941. The court’s statement detailed that this information was reconstructed from available historical records.

At the time, the arrival of such a large consignment raised red flags among Argentine authorities, who were concerned it might compromise the nation’s stance of neutrality during World War II.

Although German diplomats claimed the cargo contained only personal belongings, Argentine customs officials decided to open and inspect five of the boxes.

What they discovered was troubling: the boxes held propaganda items, personal notebooks linked to the Nazi Party, postcards, and photographs. A federal judge promptly seized the contents and passed the matter to the Supreme Court.

It is unclear what steps the Supreme Court took following the seizure or the specific reasons behind the shipment’s arrival in Argentina.

More than 80 years later, court employees stumbled upon the boxes while organizing materials for a future museum dedicated to the court’s history.

“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 reported.

The boxes have now been relocated to a secure area. The Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires has been invited to collaborate on cataloging and preserving the collection.

Experts will also analyze the contents for clues that could shed new light on lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust, including global financial networks that may have supported the Nazi regime.

Argentina remained officially neutral until 1944, when it severed ties with Axis nations and declared war on Germany and Japan in 1945.

Between 1933 and 1954, some 40,000 Jews fled persecution in Europe and resettled in Argentina, which now has the largest Jewish population in Latin America.