Under Hitler, Rosenberg led the Nazi party's foreign affairs department and served as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Missing for decades, the rediscovered diary of Alfred Rosenberg — a chief Nazi ideologue and one of Adolf Hitler's closest confidants — was officially turned over to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Tuesday (Dec. 17). And with its new acquisition, the museum has made the German-language diary available online for the first time.
Under Hitler, Rosenberg led the Nazi party's foreign affairs department and served as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Historians had long known that Rosenberg's diary existed; it was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials — in which major political and military leaders in Nazi Germany were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity — some of the papers were published and parts of the diary are even in the collection of the U.S. National Archives.
But the bulk of manuscript, which is more than 400 pages and covers 1936 through 1944, only resurfaced earlier this year. The papers have been authenticated by the museum, and historians hope that the papers might provide new insights on the politics of the Nazi leaders and the mass murder of the Jewish people.
The German-born American lawyer Robert Kempner, who served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials, brought the diary to the United States. According to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Kempner had received permission from the Office of the Chief of Counsel of War Crimes to keep unclassified documents "for purposes of writing, lecturing and study" after the trials ended and Rosenberg was hanged in 1946.
Kempner held the documents at his home in Lansdowne, Pa., until his death in 1993. In the years that followed, theHolocaust Memorial Museum hashed out a deal with Kempner's heirs to take ownership of the papers. But some of the documents, including Rosenberg's diary, appeared to be missing, according to the museum. >>more<< and please read the commentsthank you battleskin88
The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
World War II
Translation of speech excerpt in which Himmler defines "evacuation"of the Jews as "extermination," official translation from the war crimes trials of Nazi leaders, held at Nürnberg, Germany, 1945
This is the translation of a German transcript of the speech, made from a sound recording. National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records
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