51.

In early May 1945, Michel was the first member of the Allied forces to discover an enormous cache of documents at the Josef Wirth paper mill in the village of Freimann, outside Munich. The documents had been brought there by the Gestapo to be shredded and pulped. They included the Master Card file of the Nazi Party, which consisted of over 20 million cards, organized alphabetically and by Gau (district), of the ten million members of the Nazi Party worldwide. (The membership of the Nazi party peaked at about 10 million members in the later years of the regime, and two copies of each card were kept.)

This card file and other documents found at the paper mill later became the heart of the Berlin Document Center, which was kept under military guard and run by the U.S. State Department until 1994, when the collections were turned over to the Germans. The documents Michel found at the paper mill also included files from high-level Nazi courts.

Michel put the paper mill off limits and surrounded it with guards. He then brought the existence of the documents to the attention of the officer in charge of U.S. Military Government Public Safety, U.S. Seventh Army, in Munich. Michel insisted that it was now up to Public Safety of the Military Government to take over the security and disposition of the documents in the paper mill. Michel has set out in his sworn Declaration his recollection of what happened:

"I reported my discovery of these documents to a Captain or Major named Baer, who was the responsible Public Safety officer of the Office of Military Government of the U.S., or OMGUS. OMGUS was in the earliest stage of being established in the Munich area, which had just been overtaken by the Allied forces. Baer was the appropriate official to follow up on the discovery of these documents, which would involve replacing the military guard I had posted at the mill with military guards supervised by the Public Safety department, and reporting the discovery to higher authorities.

In the ensuing weeks, I grew concerned that Baer had not followed up properly on the discovery. To put pressure on him to act, I took what was for me the unprecedented step of leaking information to the press. I informed certain members of the press of the existence of the documents. I thought at the time that the information I had leaked led to published accounts of the discovery, or that at least members of the press had spoken to Baer about them. I spoke to Baer again after this and he reassured me that the documents in the mill had received the proper attention."

Official Army reports found in the National Archives corroborate Michel's story in detail. One report states that 45th Division CIC discovered the documents in May 1945 - precisely when Michel Thomas, a member of 45th Division CIC, stated he had found the documents

The document states: "An estimated 68,000 kilos of Party records and documents of Reichsleitung SA were discovered by agents of the 45th CIC Det in a paper mill at Freimann (X-8763). Included among the papers were all Party membership cards with identification photos, documents relating to the Party, SA courts, and SA administration."

The 30-volume history of the CIC also confirms the find, stating at page 3659:

"CIC Agent Uncovers Nazi Party Documents

Although the Germans had attempted to destroy records documents of the deeds and personalities of the Nazi regime, both nationally and locally, they had not always succeeded in finishing their work before the Americans entered a town. In the village of Freimann, Agent Francesco S. Quaranta was advised that 68,000 kilos of party documents had been left for the Reichsleitung SA in a paper mill by Gestapo guards.

When Agent Quaranta went to the mill on 20 May, he discovered that the owner had been ordered to accomplish immediate and total destruction of the documents as the American forces neared Freimann, but had not carried out the command. The entire second floor of the mill was covered with papers that included all the Party membership cards of Germany with identification photos on the back, documents of the highest Party court, and highest SA court, and many other papers that concerned high level Gestapo figures and actions. Agent Quaranta, aware of the extreme importance of these documents to the Occupation, posted temporary guards around the mill, designated the area as "Off Limits" and hastily prepared a report for the AC of S G2 so that immediate action could be taken to remove the papers to a safe repository."

The Footnote (108) to the above extract states: Rpt. from 45th CIC Det to AC of S, G2, Seventh Army, Subj: "Discovery of Party Documents in Freimann, dated 20 May 45 (UNCLASSIFIED) (Box 45121, Kansas City Records Center). Note: These papers were later transferred to Berlin where they formed the backbone of the Berlin Document Center.

Francesco Quaranta's widow, Jane Quaranta, who now lives in California, stated in an interview in December 2001 that her husband did not speak or read German, and had never mentioned to her that he discovered any cache of important documents that included the Nazi Party Master file. Walter Wimer, who was Michel Thomas's colleague in the 45th Div. CIC, recalls that only about six of the approximately 20 Agents in the 45th CIC spoke German, and he and Michel Thomas were two of them.

There is also powerful independent opinion to support Michel's version of events from Robert Wolfe, the pre-eminent expert alive in the U.S. on captured German war documents. Wolfe, who was senior archivist for thirty-five years at the National Archives for captured German and European war crimes records, and post-war occupation records, unreservedly accepts Michel's account after an examination of the evidence. A Purple Heart veteran, combat infantry officer from the war, and press censor and military government official during the post-war occupation, Wolfe wrote the preface to the "Guide to the Collections of the Berlin Document Center". Wolfe has written a letter stating that in his opinion Michel is the original discoverer of this crucial collection of documents, and offering his critique of the "spiteful niggling" in Rivenburg's article.

In addition to U.S. Army official reports, the report in the official history of CIC, the evidence of Jane Quaranta and the independent expert opinion of Robert Wolfe, Michel kept some of the documents from the paper mill as souvenirs.

These include: (1) a Nazi propaganda recording on a plastic disc; (2) a lithograph and anti-Jewish description of the public execution of "Jud Suss," a Court Jew in Stuttgart in 1738; (3) an album of watercolors given by Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to Hitler's adjutant, Julius Schaub, commemorating the SS campaign in Greece; (4) a letter written by Himmler to a Dr. Ludwig Dittmar on Jan. 10, 1945 (A copy of this letter, or Abschrift, was found in the Reichstatthalter in Bayern section of the BDC's microfilmed records in the National Archives. According to Robert Wolfe, this copy is provably from the documents that were originally recovered from the paper mill.); and (5) a court case filed by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering against Julius Streicher, the editor of the infamous anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper, Der Sturmer.

Had Rivenburg shown an interest in the evidence of Michel's discovery of the Master file, Michel would have been happy to show him these items he took from the paper mill. Had he further researched the subject, as Thomas's investigator did, he would have found that one of these souvenirs, the Ludwig Dittmar letter, was provably from the same collection of documents that were discovered in the paper mill, as described by Robert Wolfe in his detailed letter setting forth his view of the evidence.

Finally, there was a report in the Los Angeles Times - Rivenburg's own newspaper - on 11th March 1979 that offered a time line consistent with Michel's account of his discovery of the documents. The article, under the by-line of Harry Trimborn, states that the owner of the paper mill preserved the Nazi files "until they were discovered April 30, 1945 by an American GI."