A window into the Nazi soul

US officials unveiled the 400-page diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a top aide to Adolf Hitler, who oversaw the genocide against Jews and others during World War II.

The diary disappeared after the Nuremberg trials in 1946, sparking a nearly 70-year hunt that ended on April 5 in the upstate New York town of Lewiston, at the home of an academic named Herbert Richardson.

The diary pages, handwritten in German and not yet completely translated into English by scholars, offers a broader look at the Third Reich’s policies and practices, as well as an unvarnished account of a Nazi leader’s thoughts, authorities said at a news conference on Thursday.

“These 400 pages are a window into the dark soul of one of the great wrongs in human history,” said John Morton, director of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which investigates cases of missing cultural property. “It’s significant because, as time marches on, there are fewer living witnesses of what happened during the Holocaust. We still don’t know the full extent.”

Pages of the diary, which will eventually be turned over to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, 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 noted Rosenberg did not elaborate in the entry.

“What Hitler described was so great, he couldn’t put it down,” Mayer told reporters.

US officials have long suspected that a prosecutor, Robert Kempner, smuggled the diary back to the US after the Nuremberg trial.

Born in Germany, Kempner fled to America in the 1930s to escape the Nazis, only to return for post-war trials.

He is credited with helping reveal the existence of the Wannsee Protocol, the 1942 conference during which Nazi officials met to coordinate the extermination of the Jews, which they termed “The Final Solution”.