A landmark ruling confirms that Nazi documents discovered at the Court were on a Japanese ship.

A court ruling dated September 16, 1941, confirmed that the 12 boxes containing 7,000 Nazi documents found in the Supreme Court archives came from the Japanese ship "Nan-A-Marú" and not from a raid on a Nazi union center in Argentina.

A few days after Clarín published the world premiere of the discovery of these membership cards for the Nazi Party of Argentina and the German Union of Trade Unions (UAG), among other documents, a controversy erupted among historians over how these documents ended up in the basement of the Palace of Justice, where they had been stored for 84 years. The Clarín story was published in the New York Times and El País of Spain, among other newspapers.

A series of inquiries conducted by this newspaper revealed a ruling by then-judge Miguel Luciano Jantus, dated September 16, 1941, addressed to the president of the Special Commission Investigating Anti-Argentine Activities, Radical Representative Raúl Damonte Taborda. Jantus is the same judge who investigated the sinking of the German warship Graf Spee during the Battle of the Río de la Plata in World War II.

The note says about “the request for seizure of some packages that arrived on the Japanese-flagged steamer Nam-A-Marú , it has been resolved that the matter affects and concerns the German embassy , ​​to whom these items are consigned, according to information from the Capital Customs.”

Thus, regarding Damonte's request to send the packages to the special congressional committee, Judge Jantus emphasized that "the ruling on this request corresponds originally and exclusively to the Supreme Court, pursuant to the provision contained in Article 101 of the National Constitution."

For these reasons, Judge Jantus decided to " refer these proceedings to the Supreme Court of Justice , to whose order and disposition the retained packages must be placed, and they must be delivered for such official purposes to the General Directorate of Post and Telegraph and to the Customs of the Capital."

The ruling proves that the packages were on the Japanese ship and contradicts the other version according to which the 7,000 documents had been seized during a raid on the UAG .

The red notebooks with the swastika surrounded by a gear are written in German, while the brown ones, more simply made, are in Spanish. They are membership forms for the UAG and the local Nazi party. There are also black and white photos of Hitler skiing or greeting children, as part of the Nazis' international propaganda campaign. However, nine of the 12 boxes found remain to be reviewed.

Holocaust historian Marcia Ras is one of those who initially speculates that the crates were raided, and it's unclear whether they ended up on the ship. Nor is it known whether the Japanese vessel was leaving or entering the port of Buenos Aires. When contacted by Clarín , Ras clarified that she only saw part of the documents from three of the 12 wooden crates of Crillón champagne where they were stored. Her suspicion is based on report number 5 of that special congressional commission.

Regarding the magnitude of the discovery, Ras recalled that according to historical research, the UAG had "8,500 members" in Argentina and the Nazi Party had "2,100 members in 1936 and 1,510 in 1941."

The historian explained that the problem in determining the origin of the boxes is that the "Nazi state disappeared" after Germany surrendered to the Allies in 1945 and was divided into two parts. Therefore, Judge Jantus's case left the German embassy's defense unavailable to pursue the claim.

Furthermore, the case file Judge Janus must have written on which to base his ruling disappeared from the courts . Meanwhile, in 1943, the United Officers' Group (GOU), which included Perón and had an Axis-leaning sympathies, overthrew Ramón Castillo (successor to President Roberto Ortiz) and brought about changes in the judiciary. Argentina had declared itself neutral in World War II and only declared war on Germany a few months before the Soviet Army captured Berlin.

“The origin of the seized material is in limbo ,” the historian added for now.

Ras assumes that the UAG members, whose names will be known when the Court finishes digitizing and inventorying the documents, "were mostly technicians and workers , according to the notebooks I was able to read. They earned a thousand pesos a month. The leader of the organization, who earned 10,000 pesos, is different; an ambassador at the time earned 4,000 ." Given this date, among other factors, Ras rules out for now the possibility that the funds raised were used, after the end of World War II, to finance the arrival of Nazi war criminals, such as Josep Mengele, to Argentina.

The historian referred to the minutes of the Congressional investigative commission of November 30, 1941 , which maintains that from the beginning, "there was an impression contrary to the actions carried out in the country by organizations such as the Federation of German Charity and Cultural Circles and the German Union of Trade Unions, which are nothing more than instruments of National Socialist penetration and creations of the Nazi regime to circumvent resolutions" of President Roberto Ortiz's government. The minutes are from after the Jantus ruling.

“As for the German Labor Front (or German Union of Trade Unions), its nature is also authentically established by the statement of the "secretary" Carlos Fleischer, interim head of the entity, and by the attached documentation, which results from these records: That the appointment of the president of the Labor Front "is made from Germany by Ruberg" , who is the head of the "sections of the Labor Front abroad"; and that the Labor Front is under the supervision, surveillance, and control of the National Socialist Party.”

It then states that "members' contributions are determined by the general leader of the group." The UAG headquarters were located in this capital, at 1250 Alsina Street , and published an official publication: "El Alemán en la Argentina." Its officials were the following: "Director: Erwin Schriefer. Treasurer: Hans Schulz. Secretary: Karl Fleischer. Assistant Secretary: Kurt Lange," it states.

Furthermore, according to the verifications carried out by the Central Bank, "it is conclusively evident that the German Trade Union is an extension of the German Labor Front" of Nazi Germany .

Indeed, "the accounts that this entity registers in the German Bank of South America (Head Office), account number 4,063, with address at 1250 Alsina Street, present this characteristic: on August 16, 1939, exactly three months after the decree of the Executive Power on foreign organizations was issued , the current account of Die Deutsche Arbeitsfront Auslands-Organisation Landesgruppe Argentinien was cancelled ." And the money was transferred to another bank.

The commission's conclusions are that "the spread of ideologies incompatible with the democratic and liberal principles of the national Constitution deprives German workers and employers of the benefits of freedom of association and imposes rigidly exclusive conditions regarding nationality and religion."

"Their disregard for the country's laws and their resistance to adapting to national customs and interests go so far as to commit the crime of prohibiting their associates, who have resided there for many years, from taking Argentine citizenship, punishing them with expulsion from the aforementioned organization, which is equivalent to losing their occupation and falling prey to persecution directed from the Reich through its agents based among us," the commission added, according to the document accessed by Clarín .

Therefore, deputies Juan Antonio Solari, Guillermo R. O'Reilly, José Aguirre Cámara and Manuel Cossio asked the Ortiz government to dissolve the UGA .

Now, the president of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, has ordered the digitization and inventory of all the documents before historians from the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum begin their investigation and determination of their scope . Meanwhile, PRO deputy Gerardo Milman presented a bill to reopen the special investigative commission on Nazism in Argentina.

Meanwhile, the executive director of the Holocaust Museum, Jonathan Karszenbaum, told Clarín that it is estimated that the Court will take "two or three months" to complete the digitization of the documentation. He also emphasized the importance of these documents. He announced that he will present Rosatti with "a research plan" and propose two or three historians specializing in Nazism to compare this data with other data already held by the institution and reach sound conclusions about this historic discovery.