Himmler’s diaries, which have been laying in a Russian archive for the past seven decades, offer a rare glimpse into a truly dark and evil mind.
By: Lea Speyer//The Algemeiner
In a series of recently recovered diaries, notorious Nazi officer Heinrich Himmler recounted nearly fainting when the brains of a Jew shot to death splattered on his coat, the UK’s Daily Mail reported on Monday.
According to the report, the diaries – amounting to more than 1,000 pages and chronicling the years 1938, 1943 and 1944 – were found in the Russian Military Archive in Podolsk, filed under “dnewnik,” Russian for diary. The documents, said the Daily Mail – detailing Himmler’s personal life and outlining the implementation of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” for the Jews — had fallen into the hands of the Red Army at the end of WWII and were not seen until now.
In one entry, Himmler wrote about the decision to receive a massage from his doctor, right before giving the order to send 10 Poles to their death. In another, written during a visit to the concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany, he said, “Took a snack at the cafe in the SS-Casino.”
Himmler also hailed the “effectiveness” of using diesel engines to kill Jews, after witnessing a special exhibition at Sobibor, where 400 people were killed in his honor.
Himmler,with his daughter Gudrun. (AP)
Personal entries included references to his daughter, Gudren, whom he called Puppi. Gudren, according to the report, is “a diehard Nazi who is still alive, living in a suburb of Munich, where she aides former Nazis with a charity she called ‘Stille Hilfe’ – Silent Help.”
A diary entry written three days before the Allied invasion of Normandy — on June 3, 1944 — detailed the wedding of SS Major General Hermann Fegelein to Gretl Braun, the sister of Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, at Hitler’s holiday retreat in Bavaria. Fegelein was shot and killed for desertion the following month.
Director Professor Nikolaus Katzer of the German Historical Society (DHI) in Moscow was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying the diaries are “of shudderingly outstanding historical significance.”
A member of the DHI team who has been examining the diaries told the newspaper, “The archive documents are the key to fully understanding Himmler and his cruel works.”
After WWII, Himmler went into hiding and was hunted by Allied forces. He was eventually caught and taken into British custody. During a routine medical examination by an army doctor, Himmler bit down on a cyanide pill he had hidden in his mouth and died within 15 minutes. His body is buried in an unknown and unmarked grave near Lüneburg, Germany.