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Personal life of Nazi Heinrich Himmler revealed in private letters

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ANI London

The personal life of Nazi Heinrich Himmler has been revealed following the discovery of his private love letters, journals and papers that remained hidden for over half a century.

They shed a terrifying new light on the twisted mind of a monster who sent six million people to their deaths in concentration camps including Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen Belsen, the Mirror reported.

While orchestrating genocide, Himmler was writing home to his wife Margarete and daughter Gudrun, astonishingly describing his day like a dad away on humdrum business.

Some notes also revealed that he was cheating on his wife with his secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who was 12 years, his junior and had two children by him.

 

While at Munich University, his secret hatred began to emerge. In diary entries he raged about pubs "crawling with Jews" and agonized over being attracted to "slutty but stunning Jewish girls".

After soldiers found Himmler's private papers, some were confiscated by the US intelligence service as war crimes evidence. Most of the letters, photos and diaries ended up in private hands.

They were lost for decades until they were rediscovered in a bank vault, in Tel Aviv, Israel. The owner, a private collector, then sold them to the father of the Israeli film maker Vanessa Lapa. They have been authenticated by a number of experts.

Lapa has used them as the basis for her movie Der Anstandige, which means The Decent One, a reference to Margarete's description of Himmler in one of her letters and of his own written vow to live by the German virtues of "decency and goodness.

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First Published: Apr 19 2015 | 11:44 AM IST

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