European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 18, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Magazine r   Simon director of the document Center it i Erton took through Tome Nail files. The Center House 400 tons of documents from tie the 7?. Documenting nazi history byjoe Mapother stall writer footsteps Echo along Barren underground corridors in the Berlin document Center As Iho living tend to he personnel files of the dead such As Heinrich Himmler. Or Josef Mengele and Adolf Hiller. Included in he 400 ions of nazi Era documents Are nearly Complete membership files of Adoll Hitler s National socialist parly a Large collection of is records and documents o the infamous people s court Hitler s last will and testament was part of the collection Imil it was removed Lor safekeeping. A photocopy remains. Although most of the major figures of the third Reich Are dead there Are Many names catalogued that belong to the living. The investigation of John Demjan Juk now on trial in Israel for concentration Camp atrocities wound its Way through the document Center. Israeli authorities were provided Wilh records showing what Demjan Juk s unit was up to As wet As when and where said document Center director Daniel Simon. The Center was taken Over by the United slates alter world War ii. Today it is run by the . State department Pancal records of Josef Meng a who achieved notoriety or macabre pseudo medical experiments on concentration Camp inmates at Auschwitz were instrumental in identifying his exhumed copse iwo years ago in Sao Paulo braid. Between �5 million and 30 million records Are stored in what used to to he Centra phone tap Center Lor the Gestapo in Berlin. Roughly 4.000 inquiries Are received at the document Center each month testimony to Iho continuing inner Cal in the third Reich. To guard against misuse of the collection the stale department releases material Only to government agencies and researchers who can prove their Scholastic intent Simon said. What researchers Lind ranges from historical trivia to documented proof of the perverseness of the third Reich. Heinrich Himmler s personnel me bears out his reputation As a meticulous Man. Me carefully logged his personal expenses Lowers for his wife was a frequent entry right up until the closing Days of the War. The last entry is March 19, 1945, Lor a Long distance Caff. There is room in the die for entries up to 1953. Among the More bizarre document collections Are the marriage applications of the 55. Proot of racial purity had to be provided for the prospective Bride and Groom. Family Trees had to be traced Back 200 years. Medical examinations to assure the couple s physiology conformed to the third Reich ideals of what an aryan Man and woman should look like were also part of the rigmarole there would be no marriage in an applicant s Skull did not conform to what an aryan Skull should look like. The marriage packages 20 pages in the Case of Sengele. Had to be submitted to the s3 for approval. Ii makes me wonder Why there weren t Mote bachelors in Germany in those Days Simon said Asho contemplated the Batch of paperwork before him. Hitler s will dated the Day before he committed suicide asks that his body and thai of his new Bride the former Eva Braun to burned. It also named adm Karl Doenitz his successor. But perhaps More in resling is the insight into Hitler s perception of his role in history offered by the request that his private collection of paintings be housed in a museum to be built in Lin Austria near where he was born in Brunau. Hiller apparently was thinking about his place in Tulare decades even while he was counting out his own history by the hour. The will is dated 4 am april 29. Thirty nine people tend to the records which were collected by the . Army at the end of world War ii to Aid in the Denali fiction program in postwar Germany the archivists work in a Fonod compound in a quiet residential Street in the posh suburban District of Dehlendorf. Al War s end the army moved various caches of captured documents into the Lormor Gestapo Headquarters and operated the facility until the state department look Over in 1953. As Lime went by Simon said. Iho function of the Center took on More of a political aspect than a military  the political nature of the Center was demonstrated recently when the Luxor Over austrian president Kurt Waldheim s nazi past surfaced. The Center was flooded with requests for the Waldheim files Simon said. However since Waldheim is alive and is not lacing War crimes charges the information was available Only to government agencies Simon said. Negotiations Are under Way Between the  and . Governments on turning Over the Cril Clion Simon said. Meanwhile Elfors Are being made to microfilm the remainder of the collection. 11 we have no methods of preservation and some of these records Are very old deteriorating last regardless of who will have them us or the germans the Lime will come when they have to be microfilmed for historical  Simon said we be microfilmed everything we consider to be of True political  saturday april 18, 1987 the stars and stripes Page 13