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The paper said two U.S. Army soldiers found the trove right at the end of the war in May 1945, inside a safe in Himmler’s home in Bavaria.

Decades later, in the 1980s, the papers surfaced in Israel in the hands of Holocaust survivor Chaim Rosenthal. Welt says it is not clear how he obtained the papers. Rosenthal kept them until 2007, when he sold the documents to Vanessa Lapa’s father, who then gave them to his daughter.

Lapa will debut a documentary she directed on the Himmler files at next month’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Almost 70 years after the end of the Third Reich, the documents provide an unprecedented glimpse into the private life of Himmler and evidence of his radical anti-Semitism.

Himmler’s hatred of Jews was shared by his wife. In their correspondence, they both often refer to Jews in derogatory terms and in a letter from June 21, 1928, Himmler writes to Marga: “Don’t be upset about those Jews, good, good wife, if only I could help you.”

Ten years later, Marga writes in a diary entry on Nov. 14, 1938, “Those Jews, when will that pack finally leave us so that we can enjoy our lives again,” according to Sunday’s Welt.

In the midst of World War II, when many Germans spent their nights at shelters hiding from the bomb raids of the Allied forces, the letters show the privileged life of the Nazis’ top families.

Welt quotes from letters saying that Himmler was sending his family chocolate and cheese while the rest of the population was barely surviving on allotted food stamps. In May 1942, Himmler brought his wife and daughter from the Netherlands “fruit, vegetables and 150 tulips … striped, jagged, two-colored, one colour — such that you can’t see here.”