Nazi ideologue diaries recovered by US

Albert Rosenberg: photo - wikicommons

Historians are hoping that the diary by Rosenberg, who was executed in 1946 after the standing in the Nuremberg trials, could add new insights into the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two.

"The documentation is of considerable importance for the study of the Nazi era, including the history of the Holocaust," the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has told the Reuters news agency.

“A cursory content analysis indicates that the material sheds new light on a number of important issues relating to the Third Reich's policy. The diary will be an important source of information to historians that compliments, and in part contradicts, already known documentation,” the museum says.

Rosenberg was one of the ministers in charge of the 'eastern territories' after Nazi Germany opened up an eastern front against the Soviet Union and which aimed to Germanize Poland and vast areas of Eastern Europe.

He was also responsible for the looting of thousands of art works by Polish Jews and others.

The recovery of the 400 pages of the diary, thought to have been lost, is expected to be announced this week at a news conference in Delaware held jointly by officials from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Justice and Holocaust museum, reports Reuters.

The diary is thought to include details of tensions within the Nazi German high-command over flight of Rudolf Hess to Britain in 1941, and the looting of art throughout Europe, according to the preliminary analysis. (pg)