“It is one of those things that is easily said. ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated,’ every Party member will tell you, ‘perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.’
“Altogether we can say: We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have suffered no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.”
These two gruesome comments are from the diary of Heinrich Himmler, which has recently been revealed in a military archive, in Podolsk near Moscow in Russia. The arch-architect of the Nazi Death Camps was making notes after a speech to SS Group Leaders, in occupied Poland on the 4th October 1943. The bone-chilling notes clearly lay out the Nazi’s preoccupation with the extermination of the Jewish nation, along with all others that did not meet their view of Aryan purity, and horrifyingly indicate that the Nazi hierarchy felt no remorse at what they were doing.
(The “Reichsführer-SS” Himmler inspects volunteers in Neuhammer, Germany -today in Poland- 1944)
The notes then continue, as though nothing of any great importance had been said, to describe how he returned to Berlin on his private train. The release of these documents, following the disclosure of photographs and other personal documents belonging to Himmler and found in Israel, adds to the grim picture of this man and his psychotic outlook. These diaries, captured by the Russian forces at the end of WWII, have been lying forgotten in the archive for more than 70 years. They were the personal diary of Himmler for the years 1938, 1943 and 1944.
All the books make for stomach-churning reading, with the 1938 volume containing details of a “comradely” lunch held on the 9th March at the Dachau Concentration Camp. On the 10th March, he visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin in the company of Joseph Goebbels and on the 14th March he again enjoyed luncheon at Buchenwald concentration camp.
On the same day, he writes in his journal, “Tea and agreement to become godfather to his son,” after dining with Fritz Sauckel, a local Nazi leader who would be condemned to hang by the Nuremberg Court for organizing slave labour.
Himmler avoided being tried at Nuremberg as he committed suicide before being brought to trial. He had been captured by a British patrol on the 21st May 1945 after being stripped of his titles and being booted from the Nazi Part for taking part in secret talks with the Allies. Himmler is buried in an unmarked grave on Luneburg Heath.
