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The Independent
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Crates of Nazi documents discovered in basement of Argentinian court
The Argentine Supreme Court has discovered a trove of Nazi-era documentation within its own archives, a judicial authority has revealed. The discovery, which includes propaganda designed to disseminate Adolf Hitler 's ideology in Argentina, was made during preparations for a museum showcasing the court's historical documents. The court official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the find as comprising postcards, photographs, and other propaganda materials from the Nazi regime. Some of these materials, the official explained, were "intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina, in the midst of World War II." The unearthed boxes are suspected to be linked to a shipment of 83 packages that arrived in Buenos Aires on June 20, 1941, aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru. The packages were sent from the German Embassy in Tokyo. At the time, the German diplomatic mission in Argentina claimed the boxes contained personal belongings and requested their release. However, Argentine customs officials retained the shipment. Supreme Court President Horacio Rosatti has now ordered the preservation and thorough analysis of the discovered Nazi materials. The crates have been moved to a secure office in the building. Court officials have alerted the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum of the find. Photos show experts, wearing masks and gloves, sifting through the documents, which include membership booklets with swastikas on the covers and a raft of black-and-white photos. Following the end of World War II, Argentina, under Juan Perón's leadership, became a haven for numerous high-ranking Nazis. Among those who moved there were Adolf Eichmann, who managed the mass deportation of Jewish people to ghettos and extermination camps, and Josef Mengele, who performed deadly experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. Eichmann was arrested by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in 1960 and put on trial for war crimes. He was executed in 1962. Mengele was never captured, despite the West German government requesting his extradition from Argentina. He drowned in 1979 off the coast of Bertioga. In 2000, Argentinian President Fernando de la Rúa issued a formal apology for the country's role in sheltering Nazi war criminals.
The Independent
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Crates of Nazi documents discovered in court basement
The Argentine Supreme Court has discovered a trove of Nazi-era documentation within its own archives, a judicial authority has revealed. The discovery, which includes propaganda designed to disseminate Adolf Hitler 's ideology in Argentina, was made during preparations for a museum showcasing the court's historical documents. The court official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the find as comprising postcards, photographs, and other propaganda materials from the Nazi regime. Some of these materials, the official explained, were "intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina, in the midst of World War II." The unearthed boxes are suspected to be linked to a shipment of 83 packages that arrived in Buenos Aires on June 20, 1941, aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru. The packages were sent from the German Embassy in Tokyo. At the time, the German diplomatic mission in Argentina claimed the boxes contained personal belongings and requested their release. However, Argentine customs officials retained the shipment. Supreme Court President Horacio Rosatti has now ordered the preservation and thorough analysis of the discovered Nazi materials. The crates have been moved to a secure office in the building. Court officials have alerted the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum of the find. Photos show experts, wearing masks and gloves, sifting through the documents, which include membership booklets with swastikas on the covers and a raft of black-and-white photos. Following the end of World War II, Argentina, under Juan Perón's leadership, became a haven for numerous high-ranking Nazis. Among those who moved there were Adolf Eichmann, who managed the mass deportation of Jewish people to ghettos and extermination camps, and Josef Mengele, who performed deadly experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. Eichmann was arrested by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in 1960 and put on trial for war crimes. He was executed in 1962. Mengele was never captured, despite the West German government requesting his extradition from Argentina. He drowned in 1979 off the coast of Bertioga. In 2000, Argentinian President Fernando de la Rúa issued a formal apology for the country's role in sheltering Nazi war criminals.
Epoch Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
83 Boxes of Nazi Papers Found Under Argentina's Top Court
In a chance discovery, Argentina's top court has found dozens of boxes of Nazi material confiscated by authorities during World War II. '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 Supreme Court Museum said in a statement on May 12. The discovery came to light while archives were being relocated in preparation for a new Supreme Court Museum. Among the documents found were postcards, photographs, propaganda material for the German regime, and thousands of notebooks belonging to the National Socialist German Workers' Party Organization Abroad and the German Trade Union. The current President of the Supreme Court, Horacio Rosatti, has ordered an exhaustive review of all the material found after its initial preservation. The court was able to piece together some of its history, it said. Related Stories 4/9/2025 2/5/2025 The 83 boxes were sent by the German embassy in Tokyo to Argentina in June 1941 aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru. The embassy had then declared their contents as personal belongings and asked that they be cleared without inspection. Instead, Argentina's Customs and Ports Division halted the shipment and warned the foreign minister at the time that the volume and nature of the materials might jeopardize the country's neutrality during WWII. In response, the Special Investigative Commission on Anti-Argentine Activities, created by the Chamber of Deputies and active from 1941 to 1943, stepped in. Its president demanded a full report on the Tokyo shipment. On Aug. 8, 1941, customs officials and Foreign Ministry representatives randomly opened five boxes and found postcards, photographs, and propaganda material from the Nazi regime. When German diplomats asked for the crates to be returned so they could resend them to Tokyo, the commission went to court to stop them, arguing that the examined materials contained anti-democratic propaganda harmful to Argentina's Allied nations. They also pointed out that the embassy had already smuggled in a radio-telegraph transmitter under diplomatic cover. A federal judge then ordered the entire shipment to be seized on Sept. 13, 1941, and three days later sent the case to the Supreme Court. Eight decades later, during the museum-preparation move, those same crates were rediscovered gathering dust in the basement. The court has now transferred the boxes to a room equipped with extra security measures and invited the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires to participate in their preservation and inventory. Nazi Operations in Argentina Earlier this year, the Argentinian government, under the Javier Milei administration, made available to all citizens a series of declassified documents that include information on Nazi operations in Argentina. From 1933 to 1954, according to the Holocaust Museum, According to The 'Most of them would end up living their lives there, sometimes without even changing their names. Others, like Adolf Eichmann or Klaus Barbie, were eventually caught by the Mossad or Nazi hunters,' it said. In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal center, named after the Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, released a list of some 12,000 names of Nazis in Argentina, many of whom had Swiss bank accounts. In a statement on its website, the center In At least 14 of those accounts remained open into the 21st century, some even as recently as 2020. As a result of the committee's investigation, Credit Suisse said it pledged to further investigate its potential role in supporting Ratline activities.
Newsweek
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Argentina Discovers Trove of Nazi Archives in Old Champagne Boxes
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Workers inside Argentina's Supreme Court uncovered a trove of Nazi propaganda hidden inside of old champagne boxes. The workers were moving archival material out of the courthouse basement when they opened up the old boxes. Instead of champagne, they found crates of books and other material with swastikas on them. Archivists ended up finding more than 80 boxes carrying Nazi material dating back to 1941. The crates were taken to the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum. Newsweek reached out to the museum via email for comment. Archivists opening champagne cases filled with Nazi propaganda in Argentina. Archivists opening champagne cases filled with Nazi propaganda in Argentina. Supreme Court of Argentina Why It Matters The court described the finding as a "discovery of global significance" due to the documents' ability to illuminate events leading up to the Holocaust. The documents may also help historians to uncover new information on the global spread of Nazism and Nazi trade routes. What To Know Following a review of the documents ordered by the Supreme Court president, Horacio Rosatti, historians determined that they had been held inside the courthouse since 1941. The documents arrived in Argentina on June 20, 1941, aboard a ship sent by the German embassy in Tokyo. Despite German diplomats in Argentina asking for the ship, the Nan-a-Maru, to skip customs because it contained "personal effects for its members," the ship was halted and inspected. Some of the 80 boxes containing Nazi propaganda in the courthouse basement. Some of the 80 boxes containing Nazi propaganda in the courthouse basement. Supreme Court of Argentina Once impounded, customs officials opened five boxes at random and found Nazi propaganda including postcards and photographs and "thousands of notebooks belonging to the National Socialist German Workers' Party Organization Abroad and the German Trade Union." Argentine officials then refused to return the boxes to Germany or Tokyo, saying they contained harmful anti-democratic material and that German officials had lied to them about the ship's contents. The materials passed through different agencies, eventually landing in the Supreme Court. The court was tasked with figuring out what to do with them, but it ended up storing the documents, forgotten, in the basement for over 80 years. Argentina remained neutral in World War II until 1944, when it declared war on Japan and Germany. Although the country took in 40,000 Jewish refugees between 1933 and the end of the war, Argentina is also known for housing high-ranking Nazi officials, including Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann and Auschwitz "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, during the post-war leadership of Juan Perón. Researchers and historians inspecting the Nazi material found in the courthouse. Researchers and historians inspecting the Nazi material found in the courthouse. Supreme Court of Argentina What People Are Saying Supreme Court of Argentina: "A discovery of global significance has taken place in the archives of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation: within the framework of the works for the creation of the Museum of the highest court and the transfer of documentation from its archive, judicial officials detected a series of boxes containing material linked to Nazism, which had entered the country in 1941." What Happens Next The boxes are all being moved to the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum. There, they will be further studied in the hopes of uncovering more information on the Holocaust and the still relatively unknown aspects of the regime's global money trail.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Boxes of Nazi Material Are Found After Decades in Basement of Argentina Court
Workers clearing out the basement of Argentina's Supreme Court made a startling discovery recently. They found boxes filled with swastika-stamped notebooks, propaganda material and other Nazi-era documents. The boxes had been stored there for more than eight decades, the court said, and were uncovered by accident because workers were going through archives for the creation of a Supreme Court Museum. Upon opening the boxes, they found 'material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina, during the height of World War II,' according to a statement from the court in Spanish. Last week, officials, researchers and members of the Argentine Jewish community held a ceremony to open more of the boxes. The court's president, Horacio Rosatti, ordered a full survey of the material given its historical significance and 'potentially crucial information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust,' the court said in its statement on Monday. Jonathan Karszenbaum, the executive director of the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, participated in the formal opening on Friday. 'I was shocked because of the volume of this,' he said, adding that he had not seen the contents of all of the boxes. The court has determined some details about the origin of the boxes. It said that the material had arrived in Argentina from the German Embassy in Tokyo on June 20, 1941, on the Japanese ship Nan-a-Maru, when Argentina was officially neutral in World War II, and Japan was allied with Hitler's Germany. The German diplomatic mission in Argentina at the time had designated the boxes as personal effects, the court said, hoping they would easily pass customs. But the boxes were held up by Argentine customs authorities and flagged to the country's foreign minister, Enrique Ruiz Guiñazú, over concerns that admitting the contents could jeopardize Argentina's neutrality, the court said. Argentine officials opened some of the boxes in August 1941, finding propaganda material and other items from the Nazi regime. They also included thousands of red notebooks stamped with swastikas and names and addresses that appeared to belong to members of the Nazi Party living outside Germany. German diplomats asked that the packages be returned, the court said, but a federal judge in Argentina ordered the seizure of the materials and referred the matter to the country's Supreme Court. That's where the documents seem to have languished, largely forgotten, until this month. The full significance of the documents was still becoming clear, Mr. Karszenbaum said. Researchers were planning to comb through the red notebooks in the coming weeks. While Argentina took in thousands of Nazis and Nazi war criminals after World War II, the boxes' journey reflects the country's efforts to discourage the spread of Nazi ideology and membership before and during the war. In May 1939, Argentina's prosecuting attorney declared that the local Nazi party's activities in Argentina constituted an 'affront against Argentine sovereignty' and were 'completely illicit and contrary to the Argentine Constitution.' Members of the Nazi Party in Germany were not allowed to become naturalized Argentine citizens. Mr. Karszenbaum said he hoped that the further investigation into the contents of the boxes would provide more information about Nazi activity in Argentina during the war, as well as the answer to another pressing question: 'Why this was hiding for so many years?'
