Documents related to SS officials found in house near Auschwitz camp

23 March 2010

Food coupons and other documents relating to Nazi officials at the Auschwitz death camp have been found in the attic of a nearby house, where they had lain unseen for decades. Some sugar coupons bear the names of Horst Fischer and Fritz Klein, doctors who were executed for their crimes after the war, Adam Cyra, a historian at the Auschwitz Museum who is looking through the documents, was quoted by the news agency AP as saying.

"The sensational value of this discovery is in the fact that these original documents, bearing the names of main murderers from Auschwitz, were found so many years after the war," Cyra said. He expressed his belief that a June 1943 coupon for a small amount of sugar probably was assigned to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who was infamous for his sadistic experiments on Auschwitz inmates. Doctors and pharmacists at the camp conducted pseudo-medical experiments and helped select Jews arriving at the camp for either labor or death. Mengele escaped after World War II and evaded capture for the rest of his life.

The documents, almost 300 in total, were found in the attic of a house being renovated in the town of Oswiecim, where the Nazis built the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and the homeowner has made them available to historians at the Auschwitz Museum. They believe the house was used by an SS officer during the war, but it is not clear which one.

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