Eighty-three boxes of Nazi material have been uncovered in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court.
On Monday May 12, the Supreme Court issued a statement in which it revealed that a “discovery of global significance” had taken place. The 83 boxes “containing material linked to Nazism” are thought to have entered Argentina in 1941, and the Supreme Court has suggested that they could contain “potentially crucial information” about “events related to the Holocaust.”
The boxes were uncovered by workers who were moving archival material from the Supreme Court’s basement, the BBC reported.
The Supreme Court declared: “Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during the height of World War II.”
It is thought that the German embassy in Tokyo sent the material to Argentina aboard the Japanese steamer “Nan-a-Maru”. The boxes are said to have arrived on June 20, 1941.
The documents within the boxes had been labeled “personal effects” by the German embassy in Buenos Aires. However, the Argentine authorities were reportedly suspicious of the contents, and alerted the Argentine foreign minister, concerned that the content within the boxes could threaten their neutral stance in the Second World War.
On August 8 of the same year, Argentine authorities opened five of the boxes at random, discovering postcards, photographs, and Nazi propaganda.
The German embassy in Buenos Aires reportedly asked for the material to be returned back to the German embassy in Tokyo, but an Argentine judge ordered in September 1941 that the content of the boxes be seized.
The Supreme Court then assumed responsibility for the documents. However, it appears that it did not reach a conclusion on the matter before 1944, when Argentina severed ties with the Axis powers and declared war on Germany and Japan.
Now, Horacio Rosatti, the current president of the Supreme Court, has arranged for the material to be moved to a “specially equipped room” on the fourth floor of the courthouse, with heightened security measures. An inventory will also be conducted in order to determine the nature of the documents and their content.
The Supreme Court says it will be investigating whether the material “contains crucial information about the Holocaust” and if it can “shed light on aspects still unknown” about the Nazi regime.
Judicial authorities and experts at Argentina’s Holocaust Museum are assisting with the assessment of the material.
Around 9,000 Nazi soldiers and collaborators are estimated to have fled to South America after the end of the Second World War in 1945. Around 5,000 of these were thought to have settled in Argentina.
The country was described by “Nazi hunter” Simon Wiesenthal as the “Cape of Last Hope” for the Nazis.
Featured image credit:
Image: Argentina’s Supreme Court
Photographer: Ted McGrath via Flickr
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/time-to-look/50050816942
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
