USHMM

The Long Search for Alfred Rosenberg’s Stolen Papers and Diaries

A Brief Memoir by David Irving

Eton, England, Tuesday, 24 December 2013

THE INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR REAL HISTORY Photo courtesy of Walter Frentz Hanged at Nuremberg. Diarist Alfred Rosenberg, National Socialist intellectual and ideologue, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. A 1938 signed portrait for his chief aide Werner Koeppen, given to David Irving shortly before Koeppen’s death. Kempner fled Germany under a cloud after Göring sacked him from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in 1933. He returned in enemy uniform in 1945 and joined the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (far right above).

E HAVE ALWAYS known that the act of Jewish revenge against the Germans. WGerman-born lawyer Robert M When Jackson was overruled, he kept aloof W Kempner, assistant prosecutor at the from Kempner and his crew. International Military Tribunal (IMT) in He was right to do so. Many witnesses com- plained later about Kempner’s methods of sup- Nuremberg, was one of the less scrupu- pressing unfavourable testimony. He secretly lous attachments to the fine American threatened Friedrich Gaus, Ribbentrop’s legal prosecution team assembled by the Hon. expert, with being turned over to the Russians Justice Robert H Jackson, U.S. Chief of as a reprisal for having conjured forth the dev- Counsel at that event. astating evidence of the secret Nazi-Soviet Pact In my book Nuremberg. The Last Battle, first of 1939. Hermann Göring’s defence witness serialised in Germany by Welt am Sonntag in Field Marshal Erhard Milch refused to change the 1960s, published by Heyne Taschenbuch- his testimony, despite Kempner’s secret threat verlag in Munich, I quoted Jackson’s unem- to have him indicted and put on trial too: “We barrassed statement that he had not wanted can fabricate a case against any defendant we people like Kempner anywhere near his trial choose,” bragged Kempner, whom Göring had team, lest people come to view the trial as an expelled from the Ministry of the Interior in A court document on Hitler and the Holocaust just vanished—and Robert Kempner’s hand was on it the 1930s. Kempner had fled to the United vately that they and Krausnick had deduced States, and returned in U.S. Army uniform to that Kempner had stolen the private diaries Nuremberg in 1945. of Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg from the His immediate German superior before the prosecution document room at the Nuremberg war, Dr Wilhelm Stuckart, boasted to fellow Palace of Justice. The evidence was strong. prisoners that he would be acquitted by the Kempner had quoted in a book a few new tribunal despite being targeted by Kempner, lines from the diaries, which were not in the as he had safely hidden away an incriminating edition published by Professor Hans-Günther prewar document about Kempner as his life- Seraphim. Kempner had denied it when they insurance, and he was blackmailing him with questioned him. its contents. Sure enough, Stuckart, who had This prompted me to begin my own hunt attended the notorious Wannsee Conference, which eventually ran on for over forty-five was released on grounds of ill-health when the years. It started in the late 1960s when I sent trial ended. my then young research assistant Dr Elke The Germans have a saying, “He could not Fröhlich to ask him, inter alia, what evidence jump over his own shadow.” Robert Kempner I might have missed for Hitler’s involve- could not forget his own Jewishness. At one ment in the Final Solution (as said, the term stage he passed a note to Justice Jackson, dur- “Holo­caust” only later found currency). To ing the cross examination of Milch, suggesting Dr Fröhlich too Kempner roundly denied any – “Why not ask him about his Jewish father? knowledge of the missing Rosenberg Diary. —R.M.W.K.” I found the note among Jackson’s At that time he maintained a law office in papers, which his son allowed me to use. Frankfurt, and I went to see him there. I was At that time I was on good terms with the primarily concerned to find what had hap- world-famous Institut für Zeitgeschichte, the pened to the Schlegelberger Document, in Institute of Contemporary History in Munich. which Franz Schlegelberger, the acting Minis- Its director Professor Helmuth Krausnick but- ter of Justice, recorded in the spring of 1942, tonholed me in the institute’s lobby one day three months after the Wannsee Conference in 1971, saying: “Herr Irving, you are English. which made Kempner’s name in historiogra- Help us! We keep hearing this word Holocaust phy, that Dr Lammers had just told him Hit- being used now – what does it mean?” ler had “repeatedly” told him “he wanted any His archives chief at the IfZ, Dr Anton Final Solution postponed till after the war.” Hoch, got on with me particularly well because That extraordinary, and very pertinent, one- of unique materials I had found and was do- page document had been present in the photo- nating to their archives, like the original man- statted Justice Ministry file that passed across uscript by Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge. Kempner’s desk at the Nuremberg prosecution Dr Hoch, and the leading historian Dr offices in1947 , because he signed off the Staff Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, revealed to me pri- Evidence Analysis sheet (SEA) attached to the and others Irving made during a conversation they had. Lawyer Warned of Holocaust “I am sure if he shows up at the National Archives (prob- Revision ably a Mr. Wolfe is in charge of the division concerned) some- by PAULINE JELINEK one will be able (to) watch in the proper way what this ‘schol- Associated Press Writer ar’ is doing,” Kempner wrote Hoover. “Maybe this research is only a pretext for some other ac- WASHINGTON (AP) – A former Nuremberg tivities,” he wrote. “Mr. Wolfe” is Robert Wolfe, for decades the archives ex- prosecutor warned the FBI in 1969 that he feared pert on World War II records. The now-retired Wolfe told The Holocaust revisionist author David Irving planned Associated Press on Tuesday that he does not recall that the to tamper with transcripts or tapes of the Nazi war letter resulted in special security for Irving visits. crimes trial in U.S. archives. “They may have contacted us to alert us, but I knew who he The British historian visited the National Archives numer- was anyway,” said Wolfe. “And we watch everybody.” ous times. The agency’s retired expert on World War II records Wolfe said Irving visited the archives many times, adding said Tuesday he knows of no evidence that Irving mishandled that “he’s a good researcher – his bias is what throws him off.” records he examined. He said Irving usually was treated as other researchers were; A letter that the late Robert M.W. Kempner, who prose- that is, he was given access to public materials. cuted Nazi war crimes suspects in the postwar Nuremberg “But Irving’s reputation went with him – though I’ve seen trials, wrote to then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was among worse deniers than him,” said Wolfe. “He was treated with the documents released by the FBI and the National Archives and same regime as others, perhaps a touch more alertness.” Records Administration. Irving, who has written some 30 books, disputes that mil- Irving, who has outraged death camp survivors and most lions of Jews were systematically slaughtered in gas chambers historians by questioning the scope of the Holocaust, lost a at Nazi concentration camps. He argues that it would have British libel suit in April. The judge branded him “an active been logistically impossible and claims more people died in Holocaust denier” and “anti-Semitic and racist.” Allied bombing raids than in concentration camps. Irving’s office in England said Tuesday he was traveling in He also has tried to cast doubt on other pieces of evidence the United States and does not return phone calls. He also did from the Holocaust, including the diary of Anne Frank, and not immediately answer an e-mail seeking comment. contends that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the plan to In the March 1969 letter, released in a wide-ranging gov- eliminate the Jews until 1943. ernment declassification program, Kempner (right, in U.S. Army uniform, at Nuremberg trial) wrote that Irving had told him he planned to visit the Washington archives to research © Copyright 2000 The Associated Press his contention that the official record of the Nuremberg trials On the Net: National Archives and Record was falsified. Administration: http://www.nara.gov Kempner said he was suspicious because of that accusation AP-NY-11-14-00 1655EST

file; the SEA listing was the first clue I had that seems compelling: that he ripped the one-page such a powerful document had existed, and it photostatic copy up, as it was hardly helpful to triggered a separate and ultimately successful the prosecution. search by me for the Schlegelberger Document. We had a cordial discussion, but I got no sat- This one page had vanished however from the isfactory answer from him on that issue either. short (five-page) court file of negative photo- static copies (4025-PS) by the time Kempner presented the file as an exhibit at the trials. OBERT KEMPNER was born in 1899, and In the light of later events, the conclusion Rdied in 1993. He obviously suspected even German-born Dr Robert M W Kempner, U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, 1945–47 then that I was a dangerous opponent, and not the National Archives to that end. easily fobbed off. Seven years after his death, The New York newspaper Newsday pub- the National Archives released from FBI files lished the Associated Press story in November an unusual letter he had written to the federal 2000. agency back in March 1969, shortly after my visit to him, in which he might seem to display OBERT WOLFE, head of a captured a latent fear that I was going to uncover the Rdocuments section at the U.S. National tampering with and faking of Nuremberg trial Archives, was always a good and respected records on the prosecution’s behalf; the letter friend of mine. might even have been an attempt to pre-empt I saw the story too late to correct it before any closer scrutiny by me of the trial records in publication, but I filed a detailed reply: website at http://www.fpp. David Irving replies to co.uk/books/Nuremberg. Associated Press story, It has a colour photo of Kempner in court (right). “Lawyer Warned of I crossed swords with Holocaust Revisionism” Kemp­ner on several occa- Tuesday, November 14, 2000 sions and for a variety of reasons, but I am still sur- HERE is what I know, in random sequence. prised to see that he tried I shall limit my remarks in view of the fact to set the FBI onto me. that Kempner is now dead and unable to re- Not a nice thing to do to spond. Dr Robert M W Kempner (top right, an historian! (Incidentally: at Nuremberg war crimes trial) was an official I admired J Edgar Hoover of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, and greatly as a figure in history, have worked in his being Jewish deeply opposed to the rise of the papers at the Roosevelt Library, have used FBI Nazis in Berlin. After they came to power he research files for my upcoming biography of fled abroad in 1933, returning to Germany in Churchill, etc; and in general I regard the FBI U.S. Army uniform in 1945. He became an as the “good guys”, and any time they want to assistant prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, they are at liberty to come and burrow through and a chief prosecutor in the subsequent pro- all my files. A knock on the door will suffice.) ceedings. As said, I crossed swords with Kempner on U.S. Chief of Counsel Justice Robert H Jack- several occasions. son (one of my heroes) refused to give him a The first occasion was in about 1967 when leading position, as he said (Columbia Uni- I was researching the biography of Field Mar- versity Oral Interviews) he did not want a shal Erhard Milch, Göring’s deputy, which high Jewish “revenge” profile in the prosecu- was published by Little Brown Inc. in 1967 (?) tion team. Members of Jackson’s team had a as “The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe.” Milch low opinion of Kempner’s ability, and I quoted gave me his unpublished diaries, and I found 1945/46 documents stating their such remarks in them matters about Kempner, about which about him in my two books on the Nurem- I approached him. One was the allegation that berg trials, “Die letzte Schlacht” (published Kempner had been blackmailed by a fellow as a newspaper series in German national Prussian ministry official, State Secretary Wil- newspaper Welt am Sonntag, then as a book helm Stuckart, by then (1947) on trial for his by Heyne Verlag, Munich); and “Nuremberg: life at Nuremberg; Stuckart told Milch (diary) The Last Battle”, which I published under my that he had done so successfully, and was satis- own imprint Focal Point in London in 1997. fied that he would get acquitted. He had some The latter book you can download free at my kind of political dirt on Kempner, a document which he was threatening to release. tounded to see that there were indeed serious Lo and behold, when the time came and all divergences, and from that time I never made around him were being sentenced to death, use of those transcripts. Stuckart, who was one of those who actually I refer to this in my Nuremberg volume. attended the infamous Wannsee Conference Two more reasons for Kempner to have his of January 20, 1942, was sentenced to “time knife into me: Dr Hans-Adolf Jacobsen of the served on account of his poor health”! Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich (now He walked out of the Nuremberg jailhouse dead) told me there were good grounds to that same day. I asked Kempner – by the 1960s believe that Kempner, while at Nuremberg in a successful Frankfurt attorney – about the 1946/1947, had stolen the handwritten diaries Milch diary entry, and he could not, or would of Hitler’s chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, not, respond substantively to my queries. most of which are now missing. Kempner Milch lost no love over Kempner, who passed quoted some previously unpublished extracts a note across the courtroom to Jackson during of them in a book he wrote, which seems to Milch’s cross examination during the Nurem- substantiate this claim. berg trial, March 1946, saying, “Ask him if it Furthermore, I believed that Kempner, at the is true he had a Jewish father.” Milch père was same time (1946/1947), caused to vanish from indeed Jewish, but that is another story). That photocopies of Reich Ministry of Justice files note is in Robert H Jackson’s official files at the held at the Nuremberg courthouse the copy National Archives in Pennsylvania Avenue. of the famous Schlegelberger Document – for Next item, which is closer to your question. which, see my website, http://www.fpp.co.uk/ Milch’s 1946 diary also alleged that the pub- Himmler/Schlegelberger/index.html. lished transcripts of the Nuremberg trials, This 1942 document states that Hitler has the famous 46 printed blue volumes, did not “repeatedly stated that he wants the Final So- match the actual things said in court. “Yes” be- lution of the Jewish problem postponed until came “No,” and answers by Milch that embar- the war is over.” rassed the prosecutors (he referred to Britain’s You will understand why Kempner, a U.S. violation of Norway’s neutrality in 1940), and prosecutor at Nuremberg, thought such an item to the bombing of Dresden, were quite simply might be unhelpful for the proscution, and I chopped out of the transcript. tackled him on the document’s strange disap- This was a serious allegation, as histori- pearance. He himself initialled the [SEA] list ans have relied heavily on those transcripts. in which the copy figured in Nuremberg 1945. I therefore went to Washington in 1967 or After that the copy vanished! (The original 1968 and listened for two or three days to the [document] is now in the German government wire recordings of the trials and compared archives. It was the negative photocopy that them to the printed and the mimeographed vanished from the Nuremberg file, and only transcripts. I still have in London reel-to-reel the other pages of that file survived). Kempner copy-tapes of the principal days. I was as- clearly did not like my line of questioning. Enter the local salvage collector, Walt Martin

EMPNER had died in 1993. He had The USHMM had done a very shoddy job. Kwilled his papers to the new U.S. Holo- Martin and his brother had two days ago caust Memorial Museum, and their archivist found in the boxes documents — he estimates Dr Alfred Mayer had paid an evidently all- 300,000 pages — in fifteen boxes, including too cursory visit to the late attorney’s chaotic 647 pages of Rosenberg Diary “in five sec- household to review and take what they had tions,” from 1939-1945. From my questioning inherited. On June 27, 2001 I received an un- he seemed unsure where the number came expected phone call on my voicemail from a from. He has dispersed all these papers widely stranger, an American salvage dealer living in in different locations for security reasons. Lexington Street in the Philadelphia suburb of There are a lot of spy pictures of documents Eddystone: he had found Alfred Rosenberg’s (what does that mean?) and all Kempner’s papers in Kempner’s abandoned villa. notes, and evidently many Nuremberg docu- ments too, as he read out to me some that were headed e.g. 891-PS and 1927-PS (I warned I TOO HAVE ALWAYS kept a detailed diary, him that those are virtually worthless, being for personal as much as legal reasons: in plentiful copies in other public archives); he also enthused about “records of telephone con- June 27, 2001 (Wednesday) versations of Hitler,” but from the description London (England) they sounded as if they are the well-known Off to Ascot to see Prince Fahd with Michele American translations of the Führer confer- Lady Renouf. ... During the day there had been ences (Lagebesprechungen). two calls from a Mr Martin at 610 872 1249, There are also around 100 original letters saying “I have the papers you are looking for.” that J Edgar Hoover wrote to Kempner 1943 I tried phoning back, but there was no an- onwards. I gathered that the pages are type- swer. At 11:20 PM he phoned until 11:56 p.m. script; but there are original documents too He said he had found my name and phone signed by Keitel, Mussert, and others (Martin number from the Internet [see http://www.fpp. professes to know no German). For $1,500 co.uk/History/General/Kempner1.html] track- Martin had bought the legal right to clean out ing down Dr Robert M W Kempner. the premises. When they arrived there they He and his brother run a waste business, found filing cabinets, paintings including a cleaning out old people’s homes and sell- $35,000 German painting which the USHMM ing the antiques. He is an antique dealer on a museum had overlooked, $100,000 of valuable small scale. A firm had subcontracted the job oriental rugs, a priceless library of books (the of cleaning out the Robert Kempner home at bookcase alone had since fetched $2,000), and Lansdowne in Pennsylvania, five miles from bundles of papers in boxes with lids, stacked where he lives, after it had first been cleaned out on the sun porch, “right where they said they by the Holocaust Museum’s Dr Henry Mayer; were.” together with Kempner’s two sons the USHMM Martin and his brother had found that the had been left the initial rights to its contents. museum officials had overlooked the meat of the Kempner collection. (The boxes had evi- He asked me to keep closely in touch; he dently merely had the lid lifted and then closed emailed that evening: again. The bundles had quite obviously not Der Inhalt Ihres Schreibens klingt sensa- been disturbed. Beneath some of the bundles tionell. Für das Bundesarchiv sind natürlich were found collections of old coins, U.S. and die Rosenberg-Tagebücher der wichtigste Teil. other, which would not have been left if the Wenn Sie feststellen könnten, ob es sich dabei bundles had been taken out.) tatsächlich um die Original-Tagebücher handelt, Martin said that he had talked to Henry wäre das sehr interessant. Bevor man von hier Mayer already, who was very interested; and aus weitere Schritte plant, müßte diese Frage when he said how much did he want for them, zweifelsfrei geklärt sein. Martin had said off the top of his head “three Ich hoffe, von Ihnen weitere Informationen million,” and Henry Mayer had said ‘that could in dieser Angelegenheit zu erhalten. Natürlich be arranged.” (I warned that this might be just wäre ich auch bereit, mit dem Antiquitätenhän- a ploy, as (a) the papers are not worth that, and dler direkt in Kontakt zu treten. (b) Henry Mayer would probably try to assert a legal title to the documents, notwithstanding My reply: that the Holocaust Museum had sold-on the clean-out rights to subcontractors after they Ich werde den Mann [Walter Martin] weiter gave up the search.) verhören; auch die Uni Boston ist (über mich) I said that in my view these papers, if they an der Sammlung interessiert. Hauptsache were originals, belonged in either a U.S. uni- ist, die Sachen scheinen schon gerettet zu sein, versity archive, or one of the German govern- werde also nicht verschrottet. Wir haben ja ment archives, and he agrees. immer vermutet, daß der Kempner die Sachen He prefers to sell them to such an institu- enteignet hatte. Ich halte Sie auf dem Laufenden tion, rather than for a fortune to a body which auf alle Fälle. may conceal them, as he put it. He would be At 11:25 p.m. Walt Martin phoned from happy to give me first look at them, he added. Pennsylvania; willing and eager to leave things Ho-ho. in my hands. Says his brother had found a book labelled “Rosenberg letters” in hand- Mayer had totally missed the many footlock- writing with pages torn out. He will fax half a ers of valuable historic documents stored on dozen pages to me to evaluate. I said once he the patio. Legally, they now formed part of the has done so I will decide whether to make a unwanted residue, a residue which Martin paid flying visit to him. Bed after that, around 11:30 $1,500 to salvage. p.m. I was excited by the discovery: I saw it as the reward for my own Internet notoriety, the in- direct product of an ongoing high-horsepower July 1, 2001 (Sunday) smear-campaign by my opponents. Der betr. Herr (er heißt Walter Martin) hat On June 29, two days after Martin’s first call, mir indessen einige Blätter durchgefaxt. Noch I wrote to Dr Wilhelm Lenz, a chief archivist at keine Tagebuchblätter Rosenbergs; er sagt mir, the German Federal Archives in Berlin, advis- die vorhandenen Seiten sind aus den Jahren ing them that there was a good chance that we 1939-1941 und weiter bis 1945. 1939 bis 1941 had found the Rosenberg Diaries. ist ja bekannt und schon von Hans Günter Sera- phim vor etlichen Jahren veröffentlicht worden. ist vieles an Originalunterlagen aus der Kriegs­ Martin sagte mir heute am Telefon, sämtliche zeit dabei. PS-Dokumente (aus dem IMT) sind von lfd. Nummern 1 bis 941 einschl. vorhanden; auch 8:40-46 pm Walt Martin phones again, says, eine Akte Fall Grün. Ich habe ihm aufgeklärt, “I screwed up with what I sent, I have now letztere ist im original im Nationalarchiv Wash- pages marked in handwriting 1934 or 1939 ington, habe ich ja vor Jahren auf Mikrofilm – the date is illegible – they are handwritten verfilmen lassen. Martin scheint nicht besonders photocopies, and they go right up to 1945. intelligent zu sein (ist Müllhändler). Interes- Pages 1 to 693 of a document identified as sant in dem, was er bisher durchgefaxt hat: das [Nuremberg document] PS-1749. ganze schriftlich geführte Kriegstagebuch OKW Page 363-383 starts handwriting “das Prob- WiRüAmt Arbeitsstab Oldenburg (d.h. Bar- lem...” then it skips a few, then it goes to p.614, barossa) 24.2.-23.6.1941. Akten aus dem Amt then pages 614-693, and the copies end on Ausl./Abwehr. Denkschriften Rosenbergs. Ich “19.8.45”. schicke Ihnen morgen früh die durchgefaxten He then changes the subject, do I know Seiten als Fotokopien, können Sie behalten. a man called McCoy, a coffee smuggler; Wegen der ebenfalls angeblich vorhandenen Kempner spent a lot of time in 1952 trying to Tagebücher lasse ich selbstverständlich nicht get charges against McCoy quashed because he locker, werde u.U. in 1-2 Wochen mal selber was really an agent. rüberfliegen, zu sehen, was da ist. It is difficult trying to nail Martin down, but I say to send me a few handwritten pages from 1944 and 1945, and then we [are] maybe in July 2, 2001 (Monday): business. Vielen Dank für Ihre Mitteilungen vom ver- The above is incoherent, but that is how the gangenen Freitag und Sonntag. Die Fax-Kopien conversation was... It does seem however that habe ich noch nicht gesehen. they have 693 pages of something in handwrit- Wegen der Rosenberg-Tagebücher stellt ing by Rosenberg going from 1934 or 1939 to sich die Frage, ob der Antiquitätenhändler August 1945. tatsächlich Kopien von Originalen unters- I copy the above to the Bundesarchiv and cheiden kann. ask them to check the content of PS-1749.

I reply: July 3, 2001 (Tuesday) Eben, aus der Veröffentlichung von Hans- The Bundesarchiv reports: Günter Seraphim [Das politische Tagebuch Im Bundesarchiv (All. Proz.) befindet sich Alfred Rosenbergs aus den Jahren 1934/1935 nur 1 Seite unter der angegebenen PS-Nummer. und 1939/1940. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, Das Staatsarchiv Nürnberg verfügt über eine 1956] dürfte aber ersichtlich sein, was schon komplette Kopie (Negativ, d.h. weiße Schrift auf bekannt ist und was nicht. Er rief mich heute schwarzem Grund) des Original-Tagebuchs, das (Montag) wieder an, ich stellte die Sache auf aus handschriftlichen und maschinenschrift­ eine etwas längere Bank, werde ihn etwa mitte lichen Teilen besteht. August aufsuchen. Inzwischen muß er Seiten Der Gesamtumfang (25 Teile) besteht aus der Tagebücher heraussuchen. Eins steht fest: es 1082 Seiten. In einer Findbuchübersicht ist der Umfang der Teile I–VII mit 693 Seiten angege- Ukraine, Vermerk über Besprechung beim Führer ben, was später aber gestrichen zu sein scheint. im September 1941, u.a.) und einige Einzeldoku- Diese Auskunft stammt von einem Kollegen aus mente (Durchschriften). dem Staatsarchiv Nürnberg. Aus dem OKW waren vorhanden zwei wesentliche Originalstücke – Kriegstagebuch AFTER several further exchanges of informa- Sonderstab Oldenburg Jan-Juni 1941, Vorberei- tion with Martin, I went to Pennsylvania and tungen für Barbarossa, handschriftlich geführt; spent a day raking through these papers und eine Akte des Generalmajors Hansgeorg Thomas vom WiRüStab zum gleichen Thema, beide sehr wichtig (“present location: unknown”, September 18, 2001 heisst es im Special Evidence Analysis sheet über [I send] this email to Bente: “I am in Phila- diese Aktenstücke). Der Rest des Papiers ist delphia, Pennsylvania ... for the next two umfangmässig m.E. zu 90 Prozent Mist (Foto­ nights as well. I am going to see the gentleman kopien aus dem IMT-Bestand, Vervielfältigun- who has the Rosenberg papers today.” gen aus gleicher Quelle) und nicht uninteres- Phoned Walt Martin and arranged to visit santer Privatbriefwechsel (Handschreiben) mit him at 10:15 a.m., . . . and at 11 a.m. I started Familie, Freunden, Bekannten. reading his boxes of Robert M W Kempner “Meine Empfehlung: Der Hauptbestand papers, and dictating notes on them until 5:20 des Nachlasses wurde m.W. schon dem Holo- p.m. without a break. caustmuseum in Washington testamentarisch They are in shocking disarray, stuffed willy- vermacht. Die meisten Sachen gehören schon nilly into boxes, crates, and folders, but there deshalb nämlich im Interesse der Vollständigkeit is some good stuff among them, diluted by dorthin, das Bundesarchiv dürfte dann aber im- 90 percent duplicated Nuremberg files, pho- stande sein, beim Holocaustmuseum auf seine toprints from U.S. and Foreign Ministry Interessen als Rechtsinhaber der OKW- bzw. (Loesch!) microfilms, etc. Ostministeriumunterlagen zu pochen um auf No trace of the missing Rosenberg Diaries. diese Weisen wenigstens an Kopien zu heran- This email at6 :18 pm to the Bundesarchiv: zukommen. Mir werden demnächst Kopien des “Ich bin in Pennsylvanien und war heute bei Kriegstagebuchs Oldenburg geschickt.” dem Altpapiersammler, und hier ist mein Fund­ bericht: Gesamtumfang des von ihm erworbenen POSTED a full account of what I had found Nachlasses des U.S. Neben- bzw. Hauptanklägers Ion my website to help other researchers, in beim IMT-Prozess Dr Robert M W Kempner a file: Index to documents relating to Dr Robert etwa 1 cbm, bunt zusammengewürfelt und auch Kempner, at http://www.fpp.co.uk/Germany/ -gewürfeltes. Von den fehlenden Rosenberg- Kempner/index.html. Tagebuchseiten kein Spur. Ich habe ein langes Dr Lenz was subsequently instructed by the Verzeichnis etwa sieben Stunden lang diktiert. German Ministry of the Interior to have no Dabei war manches aus der Vorkriegszeit (u.a. further contact whatsoever with me. Prozess des Kaisers gegen Eugen Mendel wegen This raised eyebrows elsewhere because by Verunglimpfung); geklautes Originalgut aus dem its statute the Bundesarchiv is beholden to do Nachlaß Rosenberg war ein Leitzordner mit etwa all it can to secure the restitution of German 500 Blatt (Behandlung der Ostvölker 1941-3, historic documents. First page of War Diary of Göring’s Sonderstab Oldenburg, stolen by Kempner GLY AND UNSEEN wheels had begun to toric windfall. Umove. That was the figure mentioned – Mayer had On November 13, 2001, Bente told me: “A said, “I don’t see any problem there,” – but I Mr Martin called and said that the FBI came had warned Martin that this figure was unre- and seized all the German documents!” alistic, particularly as the Alfred Rosenberg The unfortunate Mr Martin was left empty- Diaries are seemingly still missing. handed. Soon after my visit in mid September, says Martin, a few weeks ago, he was visited again by a top Jewish archive official from the U.S. Saturday, December 1, 2001 Holocaust museum, and they agreed, after in- Two nights ago I phoned Walt Martin in specting what he had, on a handshake, to pay Philadelphia, as I had heard rumors that he him a purchase price of 150,000 dollars. had had problems with the Kempner collec- For a few days he heard no more but then, so tion since I visited him. Martin confirms on the phone to me, last week He has sent me copies of the main items, the story took an unexpected turn. including the long missing, handwritten He was visited by an agent from the Phila- 1941 war diary of the Nazi High Command’s delphia FBI – a gentleman whom he in fact Sonderstab Oldenburg (see previous page). knew. I had in the meantime written to various The agent declared the whole collection con- universities in Germany and the USA about fiscated, and removed it from his home. this priceless collection, the residue of the col- He seems to have been in cohorts with the lection of wartime Nazi documents which he USHMM, because the announced intention had rescued from a dumpster outside the late now was to turn these files – although they are Robert M W Kempner’s home. still legally Martin’s property – over to the U.S. I had concluded after discussion that it Holocaust Museum for no reward whatever. should properly go eventually to the U.S. Martin seems to be made of sterner stuff, Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) ar- and he has forced a hearing before a federal chives with the rest of the Kempner papers. judge next month, to confirm that he is legally The USHMM officials who had scavenged entitled to the papers, having purchased them through the Kempner home last year, in line after the USHMM missed out. with his testament, had overlooked these pa- He has wisely made several copies of his pers; the papers had legally been acquired by purchase receipt, in case it “goes missing”. Martin, an antique-dealer, who makes a living Phoning Martin, I fully expect him to curse from purchasing the secondary rights to clean the Jews for their underhand ways and wiles, out people’s homes, and sorting the wheat but he does not. from the chaff. He seems confident that in the long run he The USHMM had also visited him before I will win, though he reflects that now he is be- saw and inventoried these fifteen footlockers ing forced to pay for expensive lawyers – the full of files, in the person of a Dr Mayer, and kind of cash which his opponents of course there had been talk between them of paying can afford much more easily than he. Martin around two million dollars for his his- I know the feeling. January 17, 2002 (Thursday) sagte, tauchte plötzlich das FBI auf und bes- chlagnahmte die ganze Sammlung! Darüber This email goes to the Bundesarchiv: wird jetzt wohl vor den Gerichten verhandelt Was die Rosenberg Akten aus dem Kempner- werden. Nachlass in Philadelphia angeht, so habe ich das wichtigste Aktenstück (handschriftl. KTB ALT MARTIN spent a fortune fight- Sonderstab Oldenburg) kopieren lassen, es ist in Wing his claim in the U.S. law courts. In meinem Besitz. 2003 the judge handed down, perhaps fittingly, Das Holocaust-Museum hat sehr unehrlich a “Judgment of Solomon,” awarding half the gehandelt: nachdem es dem Händler einen documents to him and half to the USHMM – festen Betrag dafür angeboten hat, wie er mir with the museum being given the first pick.

Bucks County Courier Times, August 1999

Nuremberg lawyer’s lost papers in mid-1998, when publisher Herbert Richardson gained power of attorney for Margot Lipton, who recovered was Kempner’s legal secretary for more than 40 years. Richardson encouraged Lipton, now 85, to PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Letters and records mowe into an assisted living home and allow him detailing 60 years of Holocaust history including to move the half-century of files into a private home behind-the-scenes notes about the Nuremberg trials neighboring Richardson’s academic publishing have been recovered and given to the U.S. Holocaust company near Niagara Falls. Memorial Museum. Efforts to reach Richardson on Friday were Nearly 150,000 pages of personal and work-related unsuccessful; the phone at his office rang busy for most archives disappeared from the suburban Philadelphia of the day Lipton could not be reached for comment; house of Nuremberg trials prosecutor Robert M. W. she has refused to be interviewed by police. Kempner after he died six years ago. “He said his intentions were to memorialize The documents were found this summer ina and eulogize the memory of Robert Kempner,” private home in upstate New York. Police said a Lansdowne Det. Bob O’Donnell said. Richardson religious studies professor-turned-publisher convin- never said, though, what he intended to do with the ced Kempner’s long-time secretary to turn the papers papers, O’Donnell said. Kempner specified in his over to him – disobeying Kempner’s will that the will that his papers and letters be given to his two papers go to his two sons and to the museum. sons – Lucien who lives in Unterhaching, Germany, Holocaust experts expect the papers to offer and Adrien, who has since died – and that the papers invaluable insight because Kempner’s life intertwined he preserved at the Holocaust museum. so closely with the downfall of the Nazi regime: Local police were called in July [1999] when “He is probably not very well known to the general officials from the Holocaust museum arrived to take public, but among scholars he is a major figure in custody of the documents and could not find most Holocaust history” said chief archivist Henry Mayer of them. Inventory taken in 1997 found documents of the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. stored in the basement, the study, several other Delaware County police said the situation began rooms and the sunporch. EN MORE YEARS passed quite needlessly available online. (Germans using Google will Tbefore the actual Rosenberg Diary was find thatgoogle.de is banned from listing found. Its hiding place had been under police items their search engine finds on my websites, noses ever since 1999 and perhaps earlier. by foolish Berlin government decree.) Probably our own Internet file helped. The press has ignored this 1999 news­paper Early in August 1999, an enterprising jour- item in the current (late 2013) noise surround- nalist of a local Pennsylvania newspaper, the ing the “discovery” of the Rosenberg Diary, Bucks County Courier Times, had published a and it has suppressed too the ignoble role newspaper account of what seems to have been played by the American attorney who first the final stage of the Diary’s concealed passage stole it in Germany – a former German lawyer through the North-Eastern United States; it who, motivated perhaps by greed as much as was the concluding account of one of the most guilt, contrived to suppress its availability for important crimes against Real History. justified historical research since then. Kempner’s former legal secretary of forty years, the Jewess Margot Lipton, had filched Fourteen years would pass even then, the Diary, this priceless historical bauble, from after 1999, before officials of the FBI and the the estate of the elderly, and now deceased Homeland Security Investigations division of Jewish attorney, and passed it for whatever rea- ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs En- son to a new manfriend, the upstate New York forcement, dramatically raided the Richardson professor and writer Herbert Richardson. home in upstate New York and, amidst much Like a burglar who finds himself the proud if publicity, retrieved the stolen diary. unexpected owner of a Van Gogh, Richardson Six more months passed before the U.S. Ho- found there was nothing he could legally do locaust Museum received it and in December to realise the Diary’s actual value. It was “hot”. 2013 published page by page the expert tran- Unknown, unused, and inaccessible, the Diary scription which we offer here today. would remain in his possession until 2013. We due so with humble recognition and This disregarded news item revealing that acknowledgment of all rights both real and al- had lurked in the provincial media since Au- leged claimed by the Museum in this document. gust 1999 – unnoticed until we posted it on (The museum is in fact properly generous in our website. allowing access to its unique collections.) From that first face to face meeting with E PUT THIS story as a transcript on Robert M.W. Kempner, the Thief of Frank- Wthe Internet. The original Bucks County furt, in 1967 until today, forty-six years have Courier Times is apparently not otherwise passed. It has been a long inquiry.

Relevant further contacts: Walt Martin, the deprived Philadelphia salvage collector: [email protected] Margot Lipton: an attorney named as her temporary guardian in Niagara County Court is Di- ane Tiveron: [email protected].

We are indebted to Bjorn Hanssen for providing the unaltered continuous Diary transcript we post at http://www.fpp.co.uk/Rosenberg/Alfred-Rosenberg-Diary.pdf (0.8MB)