Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Diary of Nazi Leader To Be Displayed at U.S. Holocaust Museum

The diary of Nazi leader Alfred Rosenberg is set to go on display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will hand over the diary to the museum on Dec. 17 during a short ceremony. Following a 17-year search, the diary was recovered earlier this year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from a private individual.

It had been among the original Nazi-era documents in the possession of the German-Jewish researcher and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Kempner, who had received permission from the Office of the Chief of Counsel of War Crimes to retain an unknown number of unclassified documents “for purposes of writing, lecturing and study.”

In 1997, Kempner’s heirs informed the museum of their intention to donate a large number of the documents, but the diary went missing in the midst of a dispute over the estate. Kempner died in 1993 at the age of 93.

Rosenberg held a number of important German state and Nazi Party posts. He was senior editor of the Nazi Party newspaper and wrote for many other publications. Much of his writing featured anti-Semitic diatribes and also dealt with his fellow Nazi leaders.

His diary is said to include about 400 handwritten pages, all in German. The entries cover events and people from 1936 to 1944.

Rosenberg was hanged in 1946 after being found guilty at Nuremberg of war crimes.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.