Nuremberg Trial Flea Market Trove Headed for Chabad Center

Image by getty images

By JTA January 17, 2014

Documents from the Nuremberg Trials recently found in a flea market in Israel are to go on display at the Chabad Jewish Educational Center in Berlin.

According to an announcement from the Berlin Chabad center, the documents will be on display to the public next week as part of events marking the Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day. They will then be sold at auction in Jerusalem.

The documents, which contain incriminating evidence of Nazi crimes, were found last year by a collector in a flea market in Jaffa, the Chabad center said.

In its description of the lot, the Jerusalem-based Kedem auction house said they consist of English translations of Nazi documents; reports, protocols and memorandums distributed among the prosecutors; official documents connected to the trial; and hundreds of copies of documents from the time of the Nazi regime.

The documents include a stenographic report about a 1938 meeting regarding the so-called Jewish question, led by Hermann Goering, and a letter referring to the confiscation of art from Jewish owners on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday.

Other documents include a copy of a document titled “Instructions for the treatment of the Jewish question” and an activity report on Nazi mass shooting operations in the former Soviet Union.

The papers reportedly are part of a collection that belonged to Isaac Stone, who headed the Berlin Document Center and the U.S. Foreign Service Office in the 1940s.

Juliana Rangel, head of the library and documentation division of the United Nations International Court of Justice in The Hague, told JTA the documents “certainly have a historical interest,” but “do not add anything to the Archives as they were entrusted to the Court by the Four Powers.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

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

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO