Crates containing documents from Nazi Germany have been found in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court. The documents were sent by the German embassy in Tokyo and arrived in Argentina on June 20, 1941, inside 83 diplomatic pouches aboard a Japanese steamship. Argentine customs officials confiscated the pouches after finding Nazi documents (propaganda) material inside five randomly opened pouches.
The crates were rediscovered by workers clearing the building’s basement ahead of its archives being moved to a newly created museum. “Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during [World War Two],” the court said. The documents include membership booklets for Nazi-affiliated organizations, photographs, and postcards.
Historians hope the documents will provide insights into the Nazis’ financial networks and international ties. The Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum has been asked to help create an inventory of the contents. Argentina’s Supreme Court revealed that the documents had been declared as “personal effects” by the German embassy, but customs officials were suspicious due to the size of the shipment.
The German embassy in Buenos Aires requested the pouches be sent back to Tokyo, but an Argentine judge ordered their seizure in September 1941. Argentina’s Supreme Court was tasked with deciding what to do with them, but it appears no decision was made before 1944, when Argentina broke relations with the Axis powers. This explains how the crates ended up in the court’s basement for decades.
After World War Two, Argentina became a refuge for high-ranking Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. In 2000, President Fernando de la Rúa officially apologized for Argentina’s role in harboring Nazi war criminals. The discovery of these documents sheds new light on this dark period in history.