Volunteer at Holocaust Archive Arrested for Theft of Documents

A volunteer at one of the world's largest private Holocaust archives has been arrested for stealing documents to sell online. According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, Mansal Denton, 20, began volunteering at The Mazal Holocaust Library in Texas in June 2009 where he was assigned to scan documents to put on the non-profit's website.

Among the items believed to have been taken were a handwritten letter by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, a diary kept by Himmler's daughter and documents related to the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.

After his home was searched Wednesday by district attorney's office investigators, the Texas Rangers and Hill Country Village police, Denton was charged with second-degree felony theft between $100,000 and $200,000. But the investigation continues and that rough estimate of the property value could rise, said Adriana Biggs, chief of the district attorney's white collar crimes division. "The theft at issue is not a theft of money or property that can be replaced. This is a theft of history," district attorney's office investigator Jesse De Los Santos wrote in an affidavit requesting the search warrant. "These documents appear to be unique, original, authentic and priceless."


Library owner Harry Mazal, 73, a retired Mexico City businessman whose father was an anti-Nazi organizer during World War II, is believed to have spent upward of $1 million amassing the collection over several decades. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The collection is open to scholars, but Mazal has expressed a desire to make it available to everybody online.


Mazal told investigators he began noticing missing documents last January and eventually came to suspect Denton, according to the district attorney's office. Despite only working a few hours at a time, Denton would always bring a large duffel bag or backpack that he said contained his lunch, then claim to eat lunch while studying documents in an upstairs room, Mazal told authorities. He took several trips to Europe during his 18-month tenure as a volunteer, according to court documents. He was scheduled to take a trip to Poland today, Biggs said.

In December, Mazal conducted a Google search for "Nuremberg Organization" and found some of the documents that had gone missing listed for sale by Denton, he reported. Last week, he set up a surveillance camera in the library as Denton volunteered and recorded him taking documents, the affidavit states. Confronted by police officers outside the library, Denton admitted to having sold many documents to a man in Florida but claimed other items had been returned to the library.