Police in the city of San Antonio in the United States have recovered several unique documents from the Holocaust that had been stolen from a private collection owned by Harry Mazal. The alleged thief is a 20-year-old volunteer, Mansal Denton.
Denton had offered to scan books into electronic files in order to put them on the Mazal Holocaust Library website. The website aims to make the library's tens of thousands of historic documents available to anyone with Internet access.
While scanning the pages, Denton allegedly slipped documents into a duffel bag, which he later took home. He then put the documents up for sale. Many were sold before Henry Mazal realized they were missing.
Denton was caught when Mazal, who installed security cameras once he discovered that a theft had taken place, caught him on film.
The stolen documents came from two collections: the Nuremberg Trials, and Robert Kempner, the German Jewish lawyer who was exiled from Nazi Germany and later returned as assistant U.S. chief counsel at the post-war International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
Among the documents taken were a letter written by senior Nazi Heinrich Himmler and Himmler's daughter's diary.
Police said one irreplaceable document was retrieved, and Denton claimed that other papers had been returned to the library. However, the location of the large number of documents that were sold remains unknown.
Denton has been charged with second-degree felony theft. The value of the stolen documents is estimated to be between $100,000 and $200,000.
District attorney's office investigator Jesse De Los Santos noted that the financial value of the documents was not the main concern. “The theft at issue is not a theft of money or property that can be replaced. This is a theft of history,” he said. The stolen artifacts were, he added, “unique, original, authentic, and priceless.”