The Supreme Court official had a secret to share when he called Eliahu Hamra, the rabbi of Argentina's main Jewish community center, one night around the turn of the year.
The court had found a dozen boxes of Nazi documents in its basement archive containing photos of Hitler as well as thousands of red Nazi labor organization membership booklets stamped with the swastika of the Third Reich. Silvio Robles, chief of staff to the court's president, wanted the rabbi's advice about how to handle the discovery, Hamra recalled.
It was an uncomfortable subject for Argentina, home to Latin America's largest Jewish community, but also notorious for giving refuge to dozens of Nazi war criminals after World War II. Hamra said he told Robles the court could face awkward questions about how the Nazi material came to be in its basement.
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