FILM FOOTAGE
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151 sources from 53 different archives in 13 countries.
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Nearly 1000 shots.
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Most of the footage was privately shot, never seen before.
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Some of the main Film Archives are: Bundesfilmarchiv Berlin, National Archive Maryland, Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at USHMM Washington, Yad Vashem Archives, Landesfilmarchiv Baden-Württemberg (Germany).
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Some of the Private Archives: Saeculum (Berlin), Agentur Karl Höffkes (Gescher in Germany), La Camera Stylo (Hamburg), Charles H. Horton Collection, American Field Service (New York), British Pathé (London).
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Some of the National Archives: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Poland, Russia.
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Archives of Cities, Villages, Museums, Memorials: eg. City Archive Munich, Archive Landeck (Germany), Beit Hatfutsot, Mémoire audiovisuelle de Haute-Normandie (Rouen), Library of Congress (Washington).
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Private Heritages: e.g. Ernst Hirsch (Dresden), Anthony Brook (San Fransisco), Family Gill (Mainz in Germany).
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Some of the footage was never watched by their owners prior to the research for the movie (e.g. Wilhelmsgymnasium Munich).
THE HIMMLER PRIVATE COLLECTION
In 2006 Realworks Ltd. acquired a collection of personal documents and photographs that were once the private property of one of the most powerful man and horrific criminal of the Third Reich: Heinrich Himmler.
There are several theories about how the documents found their way from Himmler’s safe in his family residence in Gmund in 1945 to Tel Aviv more than 60 years later. The most probable way is the following:
Close to the end of World War II, Himmler was in hiding in Northern Germany while his wife and daughter were on their escape to Italy. American soldiers entered the Himmler house in Gmund and took the collection of written documents and pictures from Heinrich Himmler’s safe, but they didn’t hand them to the US authorities, as they should have done. Over the past five decades those documents changed hands, until they came into our possession. After an authentication process involving the top experts from the German National Archive, these documents now rest in a safe in Tel-Aviv.
THE BOOK
"Himmler private. Letters of a mass murderer" gives us an in-depth introduction of the collection: It tells the story of its discovery and reveals the items of the collection itself. The correspondence between Heinrich and Marga Himmler is thereby the centre of the Edition and is printed in parts, combined with the authors comment and interpretation. We witness the developing of the relationship between Heinrich Himmler with his wife Marga from the time they meet, when he loves her "with every part of my being that does not belong to the love for the fatherland", during parenthood, until the last letter in April 1945, shortly before his death, when he writes to his wife and daughter that "times are incredibly hard but still it is my faith, that everything will turn out good."
THE COLLECTION INCLUDES
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273 letters from Heinrich Himmler to his wife between 1927-1945. Last letter 2 weeks before he committed suicide.
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Gudrun Himmler’s Babyjournal written by Marga and Heinrich 1929-1935.
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Gudrun Himmler's Poesie Album 1941-1945 with poems from Marga, Heinrich and other family members and SS.
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Marga’s Party membership Booklet 1929.
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House-hold expenses of Marga and Heinrich 1941-1944.
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Marga Diary 1909-1916.
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Expense booklet from Marga when she was a child (expenses of her father’s farm) and from Marga when she owned her clinic.
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1 Letter from Gudrun to her mother 1942 when Marga was serving at the Red Cross.
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Marga’s Diary 1937-1944 from 1938-1945 on negatives (The original diary is at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC).
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Gudrun Himmler’s Private Diary 1941-1945. between the ages 12-16. drawings and pictures glued inside.
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109 still pictures, some of them including Himmler's comments and/or signature on the backside.
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Marga’s cook book/ recipes book in her handwriting and receipts she cut from newspapers.
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School Report of Gerhard, their adopted son 1942.
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Christmas Presents Diary from Heinrich and Marga.
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Small blue album with 35 family still pictures from 1941 taken by Marga and Heinrich in their house in Gmund.
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Hitler Youth Document of the adopted son.
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2 Postcards from Heinrich to Gudrun 1937 and 1941.
Katrin Himmler is a political scientist and a writer. She is a great-niece of Heinrich Himmler and already presented a critical review of her family history in her book “Die Brüder Himmler. Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte” (“The Himmler Brothers. A German Family History” – Frankfurt 2005, with an epilogue by Michael Wildt). In 2008, she published the article “Herrenmenschenpaare” in Dachauer Symosien zur Zeitgeschichte/ 8, Göttingen 2008.
Michael Wildt is a professor for German history of the 20th century at Humboldt University in Berlin. In recent years he has published numerous surveys on National Socialism, among them “Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes”, Hamburg 2002, and was co-editor of “Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmler 1941/42”, Hamburg 1999.
