Argentina: Nazi documents discovered in Supreme Court archives

Dozens of reddish notebooks bearing the Nazi swastika drawn in black and encircled by a black gear were discovered by chance in 12 wooden boxes gathering dust in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice.

The discovery, made while reviewing materials in the Palacio de Tribunales in Buenos Aires for a museum about the country's highest court, made headlines around the world and rattled a nation that, in recent months, has been reexamining its past ties to Nazism through journalistic investigations and official actions.

The boxes were opened Friday in a private ceremony attended by several prominent figures, including the president of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, and the Chief Rabbi of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), Eliahu Hamra. “A finding that reinforces our commitment to collective memory and the fight against anti-Semitic hatred,” Hamra later wrote, sharing an image of the opening.

Although their exact contents are not yet known, judicial sources cited by the local newspaper Clarín confirmed confirmed that the boxes contained Nazi Party membership cards from Argentina, passport-like notebooks, black-and-white photographs, and documents bearing Adolf Hitler’s signature. According to Argentine media, the materials also included propaganda intended to spread Nazi ideology throughout the country.

The boxes are believed to have arrived in 1941 from the German Embassy in Tokyo, intended for the German diplomatic mission in Buenos Aires. They were held at customs, prompting a congressional commission to request judicial intervention to determine whether their contents could compromise Argentina’s neutrality during World War II.

They remained in the basement of the Supreme Court for more than 80 years—until last Friday.

Files declassified by the government

The discovery comes just two weeks after the Argentine government published thousands of declassified documents about Nazism in Argentina online.

Although the information was already public, it could previously only be accessed at the General Archive of the Nation. Making it available on an open access website reignited debate about Argentina's ties to Nazism, particularly regarding the arrival of some Nazi leaders who fled there after the war.

One of them was Josef Mengele, infamously known as the "Angel of Death" for selecting prisoners at Birkenau who were physically fit to work, while condemning those deemed unfit to death. His notoriety grew due to reports of cruel and often deadly human experiments. After fleeing Germany, he passed through Buenos Aires, and his grave was later discovered in São Paulo, Brazil.

According to documents, Mengele entered Argentina under the pseudonym Gregor Helmut. Later, he attempted to correct his identity by presenting his real birth certificate. In addition to files from neighbors who were familiar with the German scientist, there are newspaper clippings detailing his search and anonymous complaints. In the 1950s, he fled to Paraguay.

The files also contain information on Erich Priebke, a former SS officer, Walter Kutschmann, a Gestapo commissar, and Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Eichmann, who was captured by Israeli security forces in 1960 while hiding in Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement, was the only person ever sentenced to death in Israeli history. He was executed by hanging two years later.

The "ratline"

Earlier this month, the Argentine Ministry of Defense shared information with the Simon Wiesenthal Center about the financing of Nazi officials' escapes, a network of escape routes known as the "ratline."

The organization, renowned for its Holocaust research, submitted its petition along with a letter from U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

As part of his efforts to "bring to light the wrongs and injustices of this very dark chapter in history," Grassley requested Chairman Javier Milei provide information about hidden accounts at Credit Suisse that may have been used to finance the escape of Nazis from Germany to other countries.

Argentine Defense Minister Luis Petri explained that the files requested by the senator and the center pertained to military manufacturing records that were "conspicuously" secret. He stated that these files could "shed light" on how Nazi funds were moved and how European banks helped conceal them—funds used not only for their emigration but also for their later subsistence.

"We decided to provide all the information that was requested, because it seems to us that it is transcendental so that the traces of the Shoah, of the Holocaust, remain in the collective memory," he said in conversation with DNews.

Petri estimated that between 1945 and 1955, when the country was under military rule with Juan Domingo Perón serving as Labor Minister and Vice President, around 5,000 Nazis may have passed through Argentina. "At the time, Argentina became a haven for Nazis," he said.