‘Hitler diaries’ still mystify

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 12

‘Hitler diaries’ still mystify

By

NEAL ASCHERSON,

in Hamburg

They are reading a volume of the “Hitler Diaries” aloud in court. Konrad Kujau turns pink with pride. He rests his chin on two fingers, puts his head critically aslant and rolls his little black eyes up towards the ceiling. Sometimes he nods, almost reverently. Sometimes, as the performance continues, there is a dreamy smile. The composer is listening to his work.

He is a small, round, hot-eyed man who arrives in court each morning wearing a fisherman’s tweed hat. He has a brief moustache. He is restless, never at ease unless he is talking to somebody. In the trial pauses, when everyone drifts out into the corridor for a smoke, he can be seen telling comic stories in an undertone to the deputy judges, or signing Hitler autographs for policemen: their little boys collect them. You would not buy a guaranteed genuine Hepplewhite chair, only one leg missing, off somebody like Konrad Kujau. You would not, but somebody else did. The Hamburg trial of Konrad Kujau and Gerd Heidemann is full of mysteries and amazements. Nothing, though, is as amazing as the “diaries” themselves. What Kujau is listening to, hugging himself, goes more or less like this:

“Friday 13th. Ten thousand communists meet in Berlin Sports Palace, pledge will fight fascism to last drop of breath. Demonstration, many arrests. By Jove, we must stamp out these Reds. Admittedly, this is from one of the volumes Kujau produced late in the whole scam, when “Stern” magazine was offering more and more money in the hope that the mythical East German general would disgorge the precious diaries more rapidly. By his own account, he took only a few hours to write them. There are other

volumes with more meat. But in the world forgers’ stakes, these would hardly reach the quarterfinals. The trial has been going since August, and will last for months yet. The stuffy room in the law courts on the Sievekingplatz always has empty seats for press and public; at the back, school parties of earnest, mystified teenagers come to listen for an hour or so and then are shuffled out again. The German press now reports the trial only spasmodically. Between the main actors in the courtroom, a certain intimacy has built up. The chief judge, Dr Schroder, has a little silver beard, and smiles when one of the accused makes a point. Two of the accused, Gerd Heidemann, once the “ace bloodhound newsman” of “Stern,” and Kujau are in prison on remand. Kujau enjoyed a week’s liberty last month before the prosecutiion shut him up again on suspicion of possible flight. What this trial is about remains very much in dispute. For the prosecution, the court’s job is to find out who did the forgery (although Kujau has admitted it), who got the $3 million paid out by “Stern’s” publishers, and who either knew or had reasonable grounds to suspect that the diaries were fakes. For the West German press who, when a rival is in trouble, enjoy a cannibal orgy, this is simply the “Stern” trial. For “Stern” itself, to judge by the magazine’s vengeful coverage, this is the arraignment of those who let them down: not just Gerd Heidemann, but witnesses like Thomas Walde, the senior journalist who was in charge of its contemporary history department at the time. For most of the last few weeks, Thomas Walde has been on the witness stand. The Judge, the

prosecutor and the defence lawyers took turns to batter away at him on what they saw as the central questions: what efforts did he make to check up on the authenticity of the documents, why did “Stern” executives keep the existence of the diaries secret from the editors for over a year, from 1981 to 1982. Walde, a patient, deeply depressed man, turned out to have a bad memory about the crucial meetings on the eleventh floor of the “Stern” building or on board Karin 11, Goering’s old yacht, which had been bought and refurbished by Heidemann. Bizarre details have emerged. There was the scheme to found a chair of holocaust studies at Hamburg university, around the bequest of the new Hitler material. But the main questions remain without an answer. Why did Kujau let “Stern” have the diaries at all? He must have known that they were not good enough forgeries to stand up to the sort of analysis by professionals that they would receive. He had been turning out “diaries” and other fake Nazi papers for at least 13 years, but had always sold them to the little world of collectors, slightly furtive enthusiasts who were unwilling to come out into the open and submit their treasures to public tests. Did Kujau produce the diaries on his own? Some volumes, like the one read out in court, are just farcical cuttings jobs from contemporary newspaper headlines. But others are far more detailed, contain only the occasional minor howler of historical detail, and required elaborate research. Where was this done? If he did have helpers, who were they and what were they after? There is a suspiciously large cast of intermediaries. Most of them either have an SS background or are connected with HIAG, the association of SS veterans. Possibly this was a fund-raising opera-

tion for HIAG, which tries to assist thousands of •Waffen-SS survivors denied pensions in the post-war years. Somewhere forgers are still at work. In the corridors and canteen of. the courthouse one hears of, and can sometimes read, some very odd documents indeed, many of which have appeared since the trial opened. Whoever is at work, it can hardly be Kujau, now in prison. The new forgeries certainly blacken the name of men against whom “Stern” has a grudge and, as some were clearly produced in South America, must have cost

money. But even disaffected “Stern” journalists do not believe that their old employers are capable of such crimes.

Another possible source would be that shadowy nexus of Kujau’s contacts: the worse the behaviour of “Stern’s” ex-employees can be made to look, te less guilt will rest on Konrad Kujau. Nobody can offer more than a guess about the real background of this and of the original forgeries. The longer this good-natured, incurious trial drags on, the less likely it seems that anyone ever will. — Copyright, London Observer Service.