The diaries of Josef Mengele, the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’, are expected to fetch over $60,000 at auction.

Known as the ‘Angel of Death’, he consigned arrivals to the gas chambers and carried out appalling medical experiments on Jews, most of whom died in agony without anaesthetic.

He escaped to Brazil at the end of the war and began his memoir in May 1960, musing on eugenics, art, religion, women’s rights and predictions for the future of mankind.

Auctioneer Alexander Autographs of Connecticut refused to identify the seller who acquired the diary after Mengele died in 1979 but said the source was ‘close’ to the Mengele family, and still lives in Germany.

Auction house president Bill Panagopulos said: ‘Make no mistake about it – I have no sympathy for these monsters. My father’s home town was wiped out by the Nazis in a reprisal action.

‘But it is of vital importance that such documents remain available as tangible evidence of the evil deeds of the past, as well as to provide further pieces of history’s puzzle.’

[Full story]

A lot of people don’t seem to realize that there are two versions of Anne Frank’s diary. There is the standard edition, which most people are familiar with, and a more recent “Definitive Edition” which has significantly more content. Removed from the first edition were passages where Anne talks badly about her mother and the other people she is hiding with, and a lot of stuff about Anne discovering her sexuality. Now a school in Virginia is refusing to teach the more “explicit” version.

Allen said that the more recent version will remain in the school library and that the earlier version will be used in classes. The 1955 play based on Frank’s experiences also has been a part of the eighth-grade curriculum for many years. The diary’s “universal theme, that there is good in everyone, resonates with these kids,” Allen said.

The decision was made in November and published in the Culpeper Star Exponent on Thursday.

Culpeper’s policy on “public complaints about learning resources” calls for complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate, Allen said. In this case, the policy was not followed. Allen said the parent registered the complaint orally, no review committee was created and a decision was made quickly by at least one school administrator. He said he is uncertain about the details because he was out of town.

“The person came in, and the decision was made that day . . . and that’s fine. We would like to have had it in writing. It just did not happen,” Allen said.

Hasty decisions to restrict access to some books do “a disservice to students,” said Angela Maycock, assistant director of the office for intellectual freedom at the American Library Association.

[Full story]

Some former German soldiers who were accused of involvement in the massacre of Italian POWs portrayed in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” could face prosecution after a diary was found in which boasts of the murders.

The find has raised hopes in Italy that there might finally be some justice for the 6,000 Italian officers and men who were slaughtered by German forces in a savage reprisal for a revolt on the idyllic Greek island of Cephalonia in Sept 1943.

Italian investigators are said to have stumbled across a dispatch allegedly written by a military chaplain, Father Luigi Ghilardini, soon after the massacre, in which he claimed that two German soldiers who had been taken prisoner bragged of their involvement in the mass killing.

“The soldiers … who had previously been prisoners of ours … boasted that they shot 170 unarmed soldiers who had surrendered”, the chaplain allegedly wrote.

His account was said to have been found in the Italian army’s archives in Rome by prosecutors who were investigating the alleged involvement in the slaughter of a German officer, Lt Otmar Muelhauser.

[Full story]

Coded plans for “The Great Escape” have been found in the diary of a British prisoner of war.

Ted Nestor was a prisoner of war (POW) at the camp where 77 Allied officers managed to dig a tunnel and escape.

His journal includes stories of camp life, cartoons and even a coded reference to the mass breakout.

Now, 20 years after his death, his daughter Sharon Cottam has visited Stalag Luft III in Poland and learned that her father was a war hero.

“My dad never talked about anything to do with the war when I was younger,” said Ms Cottam, from Stockport.

“But I remember as a child picking up dad’s diary and being fascinated by all these little drawings of planes and little stick figures and at that time, I didn’t realise the significance of what my dad had done in the war.”

[Full story]

A journal written by a British soldier in the trenches during WWI mentions an odd moment where the fighting stopped so the two sides could make fun of each other.

It details how the opposing trenches were sometimes so close that the two sides would call a temporary truce to exchange friendly insults across No Man’s Land.

In one ‘rather curious’ incident, a British soldier stood above the parapet to shout: ‘Come on over, Fritz’ in a comedy German accent. One of the enemy then called back – in a perfect English accent – ‘No blooming fear’.

Both sides then put their heads above the trench for half an hour to ‘laugh and shout’ at each other before ‘heads went down and the war went on the same as usual’.