Hitler Papers, Held Since ’45 by Huntington, to Go on Display

The Huntington Library will announce Monday that since 1945 it has held in a vault the original manuscript of the Nuremberg laws, which helped lay the groundwork for the Nazi Holocaust and are signed by Adolf Hitler. Though the text has been widely published, the documents’ whereabouts had been known only to library officials since the end of World War II.

The three laws, passed in September 1935, were drafted over two nights at a meeting of the Reichstag held at the annual Nazi Party rally. One defines citizenship in the German Reich, another prohibits marriage, cohabitation and other relations between Aryans and Jews, and the third mandates loyalty to the Nazi flag.

The laws, typed in German on four pages of nondescript white paper, have been stored in San Marino since Gen. George S. Patton Jr.--next-door neighbor of library founder Henry E. Huntington--donated them to the institution.

Patton was given the documents by Maj. Gen. J.A. Van Fleet, whose troops had seized them two months earlier in the town of Eichstatt, 40 miles south of Nuremberg. After the war, experts explain, soldiers commonly took possession of historical and material goods from liberated territories.

In addition to bearing Hitler’s signature, each document is signed by three officers of the Reich.

Robert Skotheim, president of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, said the institution never displayed the documents because they do not fit into the library’s focus, which is British and American history from the late medieval period through the 19th century.

Holocaust scholars responded to the announcement with surprise.

“There’s always a bit of shock when you unearth material like this,” said Michael Berenbaum, director from 1993 to 1997 of the research institute at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington. “Each time I look at original material I am struck by how ordinary it is, and how lethal the consequences.”

Huntington officials will also announce that they are lending the material to Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center for exhibition for an indefinite period, beginning Tuesday. The Skirball, which focuses on the American Jewish experience, will install the documents in its core exhibit, “Visions and Values,” in a gallery that visitors see before reaching a memorial to Holocaust victims.

“It took the creation of the Skirball Cultural Center [three years ago] to make me realize that these documents shouldn’t be hidden,” said Skotheim, who has been director of the Huntington since 1988. “Walking through their exhibits, I understood how these papers could add emotional resonance and human interest to the section dealing with the Holocaust. Though I’m not a Jew, I consider that event the definitive experience of our lifetime.”

Deluxe ‘Mein Kampf’ Edition to Go on View

In addition, the Skirball will display a deluxe limited edition of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” that Patton inscribed and donated to the Huntington in April 1945. In a letter to the library, also to be exhibited, Patton said he believed that 100 copies were made of the edition, published by a man named Max Amann. (“He is the No. 3 bad man in Germany,” Patton wrote. “I have him in jail. We’ll stretch him pretty quick!”)

Though that gift was made public at the time, just a handful of Huntington staff and board members knew that Patton gave the library the Nuremberg documents two months later. Those are believed to be the first and only copies of them to contain the Fuehrer’s signature, which is rare. Later edicts further defined who was considered a Jew.

“Once deportation set in, these laws determined who would live and who would die,” said Saul Friedlander, a UCLA history professor and Nazi-era specialist. “Uncovering them is like finding an original copy of the U.S. Constitution--but, unfortunately, a very evil one signed by the man who instigated it. There’s a strange, emotional power that comes with the original--some of the terror and horror is attached.”

Skirball President Uri D. Herscher said his reaction when he first saw the documents, in March, was “revulsion.” Herscher lost 18 members of his family in the Holocaust, and his parents emigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1935, just after the Nuremberg laws were enacted.

“I felt like I was viewing the first draft of the death warrant that led to the demise of one-third of world Jewry,” Herscher said. “And when I picked up ‘Mein Kampf,’ I involuntarily dropped it on the floor. It was like holding pure evil, and I left to wash my hands. Afterwards, however, I felt a sense of victory. What Hitler thought would be the Final Solution is now in the hands of the persecuted. Though he wanted to put an end to our story, we have the last word.”

The matchmaker between the two institutions was Robert F. Erburu, chairman of the Huntington board and retired chairman of Times Mirror Co., parent company of The Times. Also a founding trustee of the Skirball, he set in motion a series of meetings that led to the long-term loan.

Skotheim and Herscher met soon after the Skirball opened and subsequently toured each other’s institutions. This February, Loren Rothschild, a board member of the Skirball and chairman of the board of overseers of the Huntington’s library committee, informed Herscher that the Huntington owned some Nazi-related documents that he might find of interest. The loan was clinched a few weeks later.

Friedlander questioned the Huntington’s delay in getting the materials out. “I wonder why they didn’t give them away or lend them out years ago. . . . They have such importance for the community of victims and give more completeness to events that recede with time.”

Huntington officials make no apologies. Skotheim’s predecessor, Robert Middlekauff, who served from 1983 to 1988, said: “We didn’t feel like we were suppressing any revelations [because the text had been published], and since the world was--and still is--coming to terms with the Holocaust and wholesale genocide, finding an appropriate venue was a stretch. Besides, we were more focused on our areas of interest--not German history.

“Getting the material into another museum wasn’t a priority at the time,” continued Middlekauff, who teaches early American history at UC Berkeley.

Herscher is giving the Huntington the benefit of the doubt: “We Jews are super-sensitive about anything relating to our people and the Holocaust. It’s easy to suspect a conspiracy or a special agenda. Quite simply, I believe that these documents were just not part of their day-to-day thinking. From the outset, it boiled down to relationships--and was a matter of time, place and circumstance. Patton gave the documents to his close friends, the Huntingtons, during the brief window of time he was home.”

Six months later, Patton was killed in a car accident.

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Hitler’s Papers at Huntington

The Huntington Library in San Marino will reveal Monday that it owns the original Nuremberg papers that set out the laws defining the ethnic purity of German people that served as a blueprint for the Holocaust. Below are U.S. Army translations of excerpts of the law for the safeguarding of German blood and honor, written Sept. 15, 1935. The top signature on the page at right is that of Adolf Hitler:

Certain in the knowledge that the purity of the German blood is the fundamental necessity for the continuation of the German people, and endowed with unflinching will to secure the German nation for all times [to] come, the Reichstag has unanimously decided the following law which is herewith made public:

Paragraph 1

(1) Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or German-related blood are forbidden. Marriages which have been performed in spite of this law, even if they have been performed in a foreign country, are void....

Paragraph 2

Extramarital sexual intercourse between Jews and citizens of German or German-related blood are forbidden.

Paragraph 3

Jews are not allowed to employ female citizens of German or German-related blood under 45 years in their household.

Paragraph 4

(1) Jews are forbidden to raise the Reich and National Flag and they cannot show the National colors.

(2) However, they are allowed to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this disposition is under the state’s protection.

Paragraph 5

(1) Whoever acts against Paragraph 1 will be punished with forced labor.

(2) The man who acts against Paragraph 2 will be punished with prison or forced labor.

(3) Whoever acts against Paragraph 3 or 4 will be punished with prison not exceeding one year and with a fine or with one of these punishments.