U.S. Gen. George Patton, presented the papers to the Huntington Library; they had been kept in a vault since 1945

June 28, 1999
Web posted at: 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 GMT)

In this story: 'The death warrant of my relatives' Papers in storage for decades RELATED STORIES, SITES

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Four pages of Nazi documents that outlined the foundation for the Holocaust go on display for the first time beginning Tuesday at a Jewish cultural museum in Los Angeles. The papers -- decrees signed by Adolf Hitler in 1935 -- made discrimination against Jews part of Germany's national policy.

The original manuscripts of the Nuremberg Laws, as the documents are called, had been stored in a vault at the Huntington Library, in suburban San Marino, for the past 54 years. Gen. George Patton donated the papers to the library's collection in 1945, just after the Allied victory marking the end of World War II.

The manuscripts -- typewritten in German on plain white paper, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with swastikas stamped in red wax -- set out laws barring marriage between "Aryan" Germans and Jews, defining citizenship in the German Reich, and forbidding cohabitation and other relations with Jews.

The policy was drafted at a meeting of German leaders in September 1935 and signed by Hitler.

'The death warrant of my relatives'

"When I first viewed the papers, I felt I was holding in my hands the death warrant of my relatives and a text whose consequences led to the death of one-third of world Jewry," said Uri Herscher, of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where the manuscripts will be shown. "Afterwards, however, I felt a sense of victory. What Hitler thought would be the Final Solution is now in the hands of the persecuted."

"Though he wanted to put an end to our story, we have the last word," said Herscher, the center's president and founder, who lost 18 family members in the Holocaust.

The Nazi campaign of extermination eventually claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.

Papers in storage for decades

The location of the Nuremberg papers remained a mystery to Holocaust scholars and was known only to a few Huntington Library staff members, according to Huntington spokeswoman Catherine Babcock. The artifacts have been in storage since Patton brought them to the United States in 1945, along with an unedited copy of Hitler's book of Aryan supremacy, "Mein Kampf."

The Huntington preserved the papers but never exhibited them because they bore no relation to the library's repository of Anglo-American art, Babcock said. The Huntington also had a long-standing policy of not lending its material, officials said.

The library plans to make an exception to that rule by lending the papers to the Skirball Center to be shown indefinitely.

"The Huntington Library found it reasonable to put on view the papers where they could be seen in full context because they had nothing to do with our collection of art," Babcock told CNN.

Patton originally donated the Nuremberg papers to the library on behalf of its primary benefactor, railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington. Patton and Huntington were friends and next-door neighbors.

Created three years ago, the Skirball Center is an education center of Jewish-American History.

Correspondent Jim Hill and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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