Buenos Aires - Nazi propaganda has been discovered in old champagne crates in the cellar of Argentina 's Supreme Court.

Seven wooden boxes containing postcards, photos, Nazi propaganda, notebooks and party membership documents were found, the court announced on Monday. It described the find as a "discovery of worldwide significance".

An employee looking into one of the boxes reportedly found material "intended to consolidate and spread Adolf Hitler's ideology in Argentina". The remaining boxes were opened on Friday in the presence of the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community Center Amia and representatives of the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires.

"Given the historical importance of the find and the potentially important information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust", the president of the Supreme Court had "ordered a comprehensive investigation of all the material found", the court explained.

The main aim is to determine whether the material "contains important information about the Holocaust" and whether the documents found "can shed light on aspects that are still unknown", such as Nazi funds.

According to initial findings, the crates had been sent to the embassy in Buenos Aires by the German diplomatic mission in Japan. They arrived in Argentina on a Japanese cargo ship in June 1941.

German diplomats in Argentina stated that they contained personal effects, but the shipment was detained by customs and became the subject of an investigation by a special commission for "anti-Argentine activities". A judge ordered the confiscation and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which took possession of the boxes.

Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America. However, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, thousands of Nazis are also said to have fled to the country after the Second World War and the Holocaust, when six million Jews were murdered in Europe.

The Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, organizer of the Holocaust, also fled to Argentina. He was captured there by the Israeli secret service in 1960 and brought to Israel, where he was put on trial and eventually hanged.

The Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele also hid in Argentina before fleeing to Paraguay and later to Brazil, where he died.