Post date: Dec 17, 2013 9:23:4 PM
The long-lost diary kept by a top aide to Adolf Hitler is handed over to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 17, 2013) (REUTERS) - The long-lost diary kept by a top aide to Adolf Hitler as he oversaw the genocide against Jews and others during World War Two, a key piece of evidence during the Nuremberg trials, was handed over on Tuesday (December 17) to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents found and seized Alfred Rosenberg's 400-page diary in Wilmington, Delaware this year, ending a nearly 70-year hunt for the diary which disappeared after the Nuremberg trials in 1946.On display at the museum, the pages of the hand-written diary are yellowed with age.
"Here is the leading Nazi who put pen to paper and you see his handwriting," said Jurgen Matthaus, historian at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
Rosenberg was privy to much of the planning for the Nazi state, the mass murder of the Jewish people and other ethnic groups as well as planning of conduct of World War Two.
"The persecution of Jews was going through a massive transformation from massive persecution to annihilation. The very area that he was in charge of is the area where the Holocaust as we know it, meaning the systematic murder of all Jewish men, women and children, happened first," Matthaus said.
Rosenberg was a defendant at the Nurembreg Trials in Germany, from 1945 to 1946. He was found guilty on all four counts of the indictment for conspiracy to commit aggressive warfare, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Rosenberg was hanged on October 16, 1946.
After the surrender of Germany in 1945, Allied forces took ownership of all documents created by the defeated German government. To prepare for war crimes trials, U.S. government agencies selected relevant documents as potential evidence, including the Rosenberg diary.
One of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, Robert Kempner, removed various documents including the Rosenberg diary from U.S. government facilities in Nuremberg and smuggled them back to the United States.
After Kempner's death in 1993, heirs to his estate agreed to forfeit his possessions to the U.S.Holocaust Museum, but the diary was not among them.
The museum began searching for it and eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents found and seized the diary.
"There was a question about where the document was, who had it and what title these folks thought they had to it. So in this case, working with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the district ofDelaware, once the information came in, we sent our agents out to gather the facts and ultimately the document was found," Daniel Ragsdale, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director said after signing the document over to the museum.
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations special agents focus heavily on criminal investigations that involve the illegal importation and distribution of cultural property.
In the diary, Rosenberg revealed very little personal information, hardly mentioning his wife and daughter, but the document does give some insight into his personality, Matthau said.
"You get a better understanding of his psyche, of his way of thinking, which is the thinking of a very dogmatic person who is not really open to reality, and has a closed-in mind that really assumes that certain basic beliefs are true, will always be true, will never change, no matter what happens."