Boxes Full of Nazi Propaganda Discovered in the Basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court Workers found crates packed with swastika-covered notebooks, postcards and photographs while preparing to move the court’s archives to a new museum Notebooks decorated with swastikas were among the documents found in the wooden crates. Supreme Court of Argentina Boxes full of Nazi propaganda that were confiscated during World War II have been rediscovered in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court. Workers recently stumbled across the cache while preparing to move the court’s archives to a new museum, according to BBC News’ Vanessa Buschschlüter. They found wooden champagne crates that were packed with documents that had been “intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina,” according to a statement from the court. On May 9, officials formally opened the boxes during a ceremony led by Horacio Rosatti, president of Argentina’s Supreme Court. Also in attendance were Eliahu Hamra, the chief rabbi of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, and Jonathan Karszenbaum, the executive director of the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. “I was shocked because of the volume of this,” Karszenbaum tells the New York Times’ Claire Moses. Now, Rosatti has ordered a thorough investigation and detailed inventorying of the contents. Historians hope the documents will shed new light on the Nazis’ international financing network. Workers found the crates while preparing to move the court's archives to a new museum. Supreme Court of Argentina Officials think the boxes arrived in Argentina on June 20, 1941, aboard the Japanese steamship Nan-a-Maru. That year, the German embassy in Tokyo sent 83 packages to Argentina that supposedly contained the personal effects of members of the German diplomatic mission. But Argentine customs officials were suspicious. They wanted to inspect the boxes’ contents to ensure they did not undermine Argentina’s neutrality during World War II. When they randomly opened five containers, they found Nazi propaganda material—including postcards, photographs and notebooks decorated with swastikas. German diplomatic representatives wanted to send the boxes back to the German embassy in Tokyo. Instead, a federal judge ordered that the boxes be seized and brought the affair to Argentina’s Supreme Court. What happened to them after that isn’t clear. Karszenbaum hopes to get to the bottom of why the boxes were hidden away for so many years, per the Times. The boxes arrived on a Japanese steamship in 1941. Supreme Court of Argentina Argentina maintained neutrality until 1944, when it cut off its relationships with the Axis powers. In 1945, the nation declared war on Germany and Japan. Some 44,000 European Jews fled to Argentina between 1933 and 1943, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. After the war, thousands of Nazi officers and sympathizers escaped to Argentina in a bid to evade justice. They included prominent figures such as Adolf Eichmann, who orchestrated Hitler’s “final solution” to exterminate European Jews, and Josef Mengele, who was nicknamed the “angel of death” for conducting inhumane medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners. In 2000, President Fernando de la Rúa formally apologized for the refuge Argentina provided for Nazi war criminals. Today, Argentina is home to around 200,000 Jews, the largest Jewish population in Latin America. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.