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Long-lost diary of Nazi racial theorist and Hitler confidant recovered

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:54:38 +0000

In Washington today, US officials and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum representatives announced the seizure of a long-lost diary maintained by a close confidant of Adolf Hitler.

The recovery of this historical document was the result of an extensive investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The author of the so-called "Rosenberg Diary" was Alfred Rosenberg, a leading member of the Third Reich and of the Nazi Party during World War II.

Rosenberg was one of the intellectual authors behind key Nazi beliefs, including persecution of Jewish people, expansionist “lebensraum” (living space) ideology, the "master race" theory, and the rejection of modern art as "degenerate." He was tried at Nuremberg, sentenced to death, and hanged on October 16, 1946, after having been convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The diary will eventually be displayed in the Holocaust Museum. More photos, video from the press conference where the seizure was announced, video of Rosenberg speaking, and more of the story behind this important historic artifact are below.

Incidentally, yesterday, June 12, marks the birthday of another famous World War II diarist—Anne Frank.

Why is the Rosenberg diary significant? ICE Director John Morton said today, "As time marches on, there are fewer and fewer living victims and witnesses to the horrors of the Third Reich. 68 years have passed since the fall of Berlin, and soon there will be no more human testimony of what happened during the Holocaust, and just as important, how it happened. It is critical to locate and preserve all written records from this time period."

Reuters reports that the diary was discovered to be in the possession of Herbert Richardson, an 80 year-old Canadian academic who operates a publishing house in Lewiston, NY. From the Reuters account:

Pages of the diary, which will eventually be turned over to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., were shown to reporters, including one entry dated April 1941. Rosenberg describes walking alone after "an important meeting" with Hitler, who told him: "Your great hour has come."
Museum senior adviser Henry Mayer, who had been searching for the diary for 17 years, noted Rosenberg did not elaborate in the entry. "What Hitler described was so great, he couldn't put it down," Mayer told reporters.

Historians have long suspected that a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Robert Kempner, smuggled the diary back to the US after the trials ended.

Photo: At left, Rosenberg; at right, Hitler. Photograph from Dr. Wilfried Bahnmüller, National Geographic

From the Holocaust Museum's announcement today:

Alfred Rosenberg’s diary is one such artifact that has surfaced after more than a decade of Museum efforts to find it. The roughly 400 pages of loose-leaf paper cover the years 1936 through 1944, when Rosenberg was responsible for looting valuables in lands occupied by the Nazis and planning Nazi rule of conquered Soviet territories. The discovery of the diary will undoubtedly give scholars new insight into the politics of Nazi leaders and fulfills a Museum commitment to uncover evidence from perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Click to enlarge.

From the HSI press release today:

The "Rosenberg Diary" was written by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the most notorious members of the Third Reich and of the Nazi Party during World War II. Rosenberg was privy to much of the planning for the Nazi racial state, mass murder of the Jewish people, planning and conduct of World War II and the occupation of Soviet territory. As such, his diary entries could provide historians with a potential wealth of previously unknown information regarding the history of this period.
The recovery of the diary was announced Thursday by ICE Director John Morton; U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly III, District of Delaware; and Henry Mayer, senior advisor on archives at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
"Thanks to the tireless investigative work of HSI special agents, and years of perseverance by both the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the long-lost Rosenberg Diary has been recovered, not in Germany but in the United States," said Director Morton. "This important record of the crimes of the Third Reich and the Holocaust is now preserved for all to see, study and learn from. The work of combating the international theft of cultural heritage is a key part of our work, and no matter how long these items may appear to be lost to history, that hard but important work will continue."
"This seizure is the result of the joint efforts of this office and Homeland Security Investigations," said U.S. Attorney Oberly. "The discovery and return of this long-lost, important historical document to the government of the United States is a significant achievement. Although it is a reminder of a dark time, the Rosenberg Diary is important to our understanding of history. Our hope is that it will provide valuable insight to historians."
"The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is thrilled to have recovered the diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a leading Nazi ideologue," said U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield. "As we build the collection of record on the Holocaust, having material that documents the actions of both perpetrators and victims is crucial to helping scholars understand how and why the Holocaust happened. The story of this diary demonstrates how much material remains to be collected and why rescuing this evidence is such an important museum priority."
Alfred Rosenberg
The Myth of the Twentieth Century, written by Rosenberg, articulated the philosophical underpinnings of national socialist ideology. Rosenberg served as head of the Nazi party's foreign affairs department and as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, which included the Baltic States, Ukraine and parts of Belorussia. As Reich Minister, Rosenberg played a significant role in the mass murder of the Jewish people in the Occupied Eastern Territories, as well as the deportation of civilians to forced labor camps to support the German war effort. Rosenberg also established and headed an organization, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce), the mission of which was to loot cultural property from all over Europe.
Rosenberg was a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials in Nuremberg, 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 Oct. 16, 1946.
Allied forces advancing through Germany seized documents, books, and other records of strategic or tactical importance. After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, governmental authority for Germany was placed into allied hands. This authority included ownership of all documents created by the defeated German government or captured by allied forces. To prepare for war crimes trials after the cessation of hostilities, agencies of the U.S. government examined and selected relevant documents as potential evidence.
Among the documents seized by allied forces was the Rosenberg Diary. On Aug. 10, 1945, the Records Subsection of the Documents Unit of the War Crimes Branch, U.S. Army, received from the Berlin Documents Control Center the "...private papers of Alfred Rosenberg, former Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories." Among these papers, according to the receipt prepared Aug. 15, 1945, were "handwritten diary notes" from the years 1934 to 1944. These included notes, dated 1941, "dealing in the early part of (Apr 41) with the conspiracy to dominate Russia and preparations for this occupation (conferences with HITLER and others)."
Robert M.W. Kempner
Dr. Robert M.W. Kempner was a German lawyer who fled Germany for the United States during the war. At the conclusion of the war, Kempner served as the deputy chief counsel and was the chief prosecutor in the "Ministries Case" at the Nuremberg Trials. In this role, Kempner had access to seized Nazi documents in his official capacity as an employee of the U.S. government. At the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials, Kempner returned to the United States and lived in Lansdowne, Pa. Contrary to law and proper procedure, Kempner removed various documents, including the Rosenberg Diary, from U.S. government facilities in Nuremberg and retained them until his death in 1993.
HSI investigation
In November 2012, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware and HSI special agents received information from an art security specialist, who was working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, regarding the search for Rosenberg Diary. The Rosenberg Diary was subsequently located and seized pursuant to a warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
HSI plays a leading role in criminal investigations that involve the illegal importation and distribution of cultural property, including the illicit trafficking of cultural property, especially objects that have been reported lost or stolen. The HSI Office of International Affairs, through its 75 attaché offices in 48 countries, works closely with foreign governments to conduct joint investigations, when possible.

Since 2007, HSI art and antiquities investigators have returned over 7,150 artifacts to 26 countries, including paintings from France, Germany, Poland and Austria, 15th to 18th century manuscripts from Italy and Peru, as well as cultural artifacts from China, Cambodia and Iraq.

Raw video from the press conference below.

More coverage around the web:

• Long-Lost Diary of Nazi Alfred Rosenberg Expected to Bring 'New Insight' Into Hitler's Inner Circle (ABC)
• Missing Nazi Diary Recovered (National Geographic)
• Long-lost diary of top Hitler aide offers window into Nazi soul (Reuters)

A wonderful radio program with old timey Yiddish Music from "rescued" 78s

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:31:54 +0000

My brother Carl, a crate-digger and amateur ethnomusicologist of sorts, hosts a radio program on WRIR, an indie radio station in Richmond, VA. The latest episode of his show is available here for download, and includes a batch of rare, wonderful Yiddish popular music from the '40s and '50s on 78 RPM vinyl, all of which he found at a thrift store in town. The show also features homages to Ravi Shankar and Dave Brubeck, legendary musicians who recently died. Go have a listen!

Holiday music: "Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between Christmas and the Festival of Lights"

David Pescovitz — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:29:43 +0000

In their continuing fight against bad holiday music, our friends at the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation have released Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between Christmas and the Festival of Lights. This new double-CD set explores "the relationship between (Hanukkah and Christmas) and their impact on acculturation and negotiations of personal, social, and communal identity within American culture." Yeah, that, and it features killer tracks like The Ramones' "Merry Christmas I Dont Wanna Fight Tonight," Woody Guthrie's "Hanukkah Dance," Bob Dylan's "Little Drummer Boy," and The Klezmatics' "Hanukah Tree."

Co-founded by my pal David Katznelson, the Idelsohn Society is a non-profit dedicated to the musicology and exquisitely-curated reissues of incredibly strange, offbeat, "space age," and fantastic vintage Jewish albums by the likes of Irving Fields, Gershon Kingsley, and The Barry Sisters. Like all Idelsohn Society releases, "Twas the Night Before Hanukkah" includes killer liner notes, such as essays Greil Marcus and renowned Washington University historian Jenna Weissman Joselit. "Twas the Night Before Hanukkah" is truly an instant interfaith classic. Check out these sample tracks:

And if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, Idelsohn Society is hosting a record release party and concert on the last night of Hanukkah, December 15, at the fabulous Brick and Mortar Music Hall. The concert, "Twas the Last Night of Hanukkah," will feature performances Sway Machinery featuring Jeremiah Lockwood, Luther Dickinson(North Mississippi All-Stars, Black Crowes), Thao, Rebecca Bortman, Ethan Miller (Howlin’ Rain, Comets on Fire), Lyn Burton (of the Burton Sisters), Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), members of Antibalas, and others.

Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between Christmas and the Festival of Lights

Cancer and the High Holy Days: Rethinking Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:11:05 +0000

Cancer survivor Lani Horn, who helped me through some painful times during my cancer treatment, writes in a piece for kveller.com about anger, justice, and the search for deeper meaning in the Jewish holy days. She talks about a moment of clarity during a workshop for survivors, where she witnessed much talk about "making meaning out of the cancer experience, deepening our gratitude for the ordinary, becoming more compassionate." Snip:

After losing my brother, two breasts, and almost three years of my life to illness and hospitals, I was over these platitudes. I stood up to speak. “This is all fine. I get it. But my problem is that I am mad at God.” I even talked about the Unetanah Tokef, which had been a grueling part of the High Holiday liturgy since Jeremy died. Who shall live and who shall die?
A surge went through the room. I had uttered the unspeakable. Afterwards people came up to thank me for my honesty. One was a hospice chaplain, himself a cancer survivor.
“Remember,” he said, “there is a such thing as holy anger. Think of the prophets. Anger can be a spiritual feeling.”
For the first time, I did not feel like my anger separated me from God. It was an honest description of my relationship.
Yes, I was angry. Who shall live and who shall die? Why him and not me? And why him at all?

Read the rest: Rethinking Who Shall Live & Who Shall Die (Raising Kvell)

(Image: Dad's Grave's Broken Headstone at the Jewish Cemetery in Mumbai, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from Avi Solomon's photostream.)

Crappy YouTube trailer leads to death of US diplomat and others in Mideast

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:36:09 +0000

Update: The whole thing sounds like a weird disinfo job. But, by whom and to what end? The AP has outed "Sam Bacile" as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian who claims the film supports the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims. On The Media notes that there's something fishy about the film dialogue. And Gawker has spoken to one of the actresses in the film, who says she had no idea what the film was really about.

The Associated Press identifies Sam Bacile as an Israeli filmmaker based in California who made an independently produced and financed anti-Muslim movie that's sort of "Birth of a Nation" meets "Bed Intruder." The YouTube trailer is embedded above, and it unapologetically attacks Islam’s prophet Muhammad. Bacile has no known prior history as a filmmaker.

His D-grade web trailer inspired (or, alternately, was used as cover for) attacks by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. J Christopher Stevens, America's ambassador to Libya, and three American members of his staff were killed today in resulting violence.

From the Associated Press:

Speaking by phone Tuesday from an undisclosed location, writer and director Sam Bacile remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that the 56-year-old intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion. Protesters angered over Bacile’s film opened fire on and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Libyan officials said Wednesday that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob firing machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.

Bacile is a real estate developer in California who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew. “Islam is a cancer, period,” he told the AP. The video above is a trailer for his two-hour movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” which cost $5 million to produce and was, according to the director, backed by funding from 100 Jewish donors. There's an English version and an Arabic-dubbed version of the trailer here. Bacile reports that the entire film has been shown "once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year."

Here is a list of other ambassadors who have died in the line of duty. Here is a Reuters slideshow of protesters outside the embassy in Libya.

Here, a longtime real-life and internet-space friend of Sean Smith, an officer in the U.S. Foreign Service stationed at the consulate writes about his life, legacy, and loss. Sean Smith was an EVE player and Something Awful forums moderator.

I’m clearly in shock as I write this as everything is buzzing around my head funnily and I feel kind of dead inside. I’m not sure if this is how I’m supposed to react to my friend being killed by a mob in a post-revolutionary Libya, but it’s pretty awful and Sean was a great guy and he was a goddamned master at this game we all play, even though a lot of people may not realize how significant an influence he had. It seems kind of trivial to praise a husband, father, and overall badass for his skills in an internet spaceship game but that's how most of us know him, so there you go.

Here's a thread at Something Awful that chronicles the live board reaction as news of Smith's death in the attack spread.

Below, via the Atlantic, a video of Ambassador Stevens at work

More: Boing Boing news archive for "Innocence of Muslims."

What do astronauts and the Holocaust have in common? "An Article of Hope"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:55:07 +0000

Filmmaker Dan Cohen is the guy behind "An Article of Hope," a feature film project seven years in the making. The documentary is done, but Dan's got a Kickstarter to raise funds to get it on television and into schools. Below, some words from Dan for Boing Boing readers about the film:

What could space shuttle Astronauts and the Holocaust possibly have in common? When I began my research into my documentary An Article of Hope, I thought I was making a film about a Holocaust story. But I soon unraveled a story that was much more than that. It is a story that crosses generations woven by the lives of three men, born at a different time, but brought together by a twist of fate.
At the center of the story were the Astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia. All from different backgrounds from around the world, magnificently diverse, yet threaded by a moment from the Holocaust, a horrific attempt to stamp out diversity.
Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon was a hero fighter pilot, a man who had the ability to rise to the moment. By the time he launched into space he was more than that, he was the representative of his country, his faith, and in his eyes perhaps, humanity. He searched for a symbol of this responsibility, and found a little Torah scroll given to a boy in a secret Bar Mitzvah in a Nazi concentration camp.

The boy survived to become a scientist – working on the mission. So Ramon wrapped around him the story of the scroll, demonstrating to the world what can happen when, in his words, “You go from the depths of hell, to the heights of space.”
In today’s fractious world, An Article of Hope is a story that needs to be told, a story about hope for the future. Our Kickstarter campaign will help us raise the underwriting we need to bring this story to millions across America on PBS. We are two-thirds of the way there. The campaign kicked off with a jolt, support from all over the world. We have just a bit more than a week to go to meet the goal of this 9-year project, to continue to tell the story of An Article of Hope.

And, why the Kickstarter if the documentary's done?

It took 7-years to make the documentary. We did it by raising a little money here, borrowing a little more money there, and a lot of love and un-reimbursed time from the director. Now the final challenge is to get it on television before millions. PBS is a non-profit network, which means we must bring underwriting to the agreement. With your help, the funds we raise here go toward final editing to conform the documentary to PBS technical requirements, broadcast rights and fees, promotion, web site, all of the things that would normally come from a traditional agreement, we must fund it all.

(Thanks, Miles O'Brien!)

Funny video series "Old Jews Telling Jokes" returns with all-new, even older elders telling even funnier jokes

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:01:36 +0000

Video director and wonderfully funny guy Eric Spiegelman tells Boing Boing,

The new season of Old Jews Telling Jokes begins today, featuring jokes we recorded in Boca Raton. We've been on hiatus for almost a year, and it's good to be back. The joke that begins our season, about a bull and an enema and a bridgekeeper, is one of the best I've heard. Also, a bit of trivia. We have a new logo for the show, and it was designed by Milton Glaser. I'm not going to lie, I feel like that's a pretty great honor.

Embedded above: I've selected a joke from the new season told by Irving ‘Brownie’ Brown, a gentleman who is 102 years old. Below, the bull enema joke, as told by Charlie Seibel.

For Passover fun in Israel, a safari of animals crafted from Coca-Cola trash

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:14:17 +0000

A monkey sculpture is pictured on a pick-up truck before it is placed in an exhibition at Hiriya recycling park, built on the site of a former garbage dump near Tel Aviv. The Coca-Cola Recycled Safari featuring animals made of recycled Coca Cola packages will be open to the public during the Passover holiday.

More images of other critter creations from the recycling project, below. (REUTERS/Nir Elia)

Menorah Mashups: djBC's seasonal copyright infringement with a little Klezmer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:59:43 +0000

djBC writes, "After four years of Christmas collections, and with a 18/mo little girl, I decided it was time to take a stab at a Hanukkah mashup/remix collection. The 8 tunes (8 days, 8 tunes, get it?) have a sort of klezmer/traditional Kewish music meets dub/house/pop/hip-hop sort of feel, and the two bonus tracks are for laughs. One high point is Brasilia's FAROFF with his House of Pain vs Amsterdam Klezmer Band mash, with mp3 and video."

I love the description: "Ingredients: Frank Yankovic and His Yanks, Gwen Stefani, House Of Pain, Frank Zappa, Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Pa Brapad, several iterations of The Dreidel Song, several iterations of Hava Nagila, South Park, a dash of Chingy, Adam Sandler, The Star Trek Theme, Van Halen, James Caan, Charlton Heston, Fonzie, Sarah Silverman, Trio, Three Weissmen, Craig and Co, Alan Sherman, Pudie Tadow, and two seconds of Black Eyed Peas."

Menorah Mashups

Previously: