Stolen Archives

Here is a translation of the following article published in october 2002, which deals with the restitution of Kuwaiti archives by Iraqi authorities : http://www.albawaba.com/news/iraq-returns-looted-archives-kuwait

" Cinq camions transportant des archives koweitiennes volées ont quitté Bagdad ce vendredi matin à destination du Koweit, a indiqué le ministre iraquien des Affaires Etangères , selon l'Associated Press.

Le convoi sera transmis à la frontière koweitienne, conformément à l'engagement pris en juillet par l'Irak de restituer les archives nationales pillées au Koweit lors de son occupation de sept mois de l'émirat entre 1990 et 1991.  

Le ministre des Affaires Etrangères a expliqué jeudi que les archives à restituer appartiennent au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères koweitien, au Ministère de l'Intérieur, à la sécurité nationale ainsi qu'à d'autres agences du Koweit.  

Ghassan Khalil, fonctionnaire du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, a raconté aux journalistes vendredi que "nous avons déployé de grands efforts pour rassembler les archives et nous les remettrons au Koweit sous la supervision des Nations Unies... Aujourd'hui nous nous engageons dans la livraison effective des documents aux autorités koweitiennes."

Khalil a indiqué que la remise aurait lieu ce weekend dans le no man's land situé entre les frontières de l'irak et du Koweit.

Depuis des années, le Koweit dit que durant son occupation, les irakiens ont volé des archives provenant du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, du Cabinet du Premier Ministre ainsi que d'autres ministères, aussi bien que de précieuses oeuvres de ses musées nationaux d'art islamique. Il convient de noter que les cinq camions qui ont quitté Bagdad ne transportaient que des documents.  

La restitution des archives est l'une des conditions à l'allègement des sanctions imposées à l'Irak par le Conseil de Sécurité ds Nations Unies après l'invasion du Koweit."

Patricia Grimsted Kennedy is an American historian whose studies are focused on the stealing and restitution of cultural materials which occured during and after the Second World War. She is also a leading authority on the archives from the former USSR : she is the one who revealed that the USSR had secretly kept archives stolen by the Nazis from European occupied countries, archives which were captured by the Soviet Army after Germany's surrender in 1945.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/spring/spoils-of-war-1.html

In her article Spoils of War Returned: U.S. Restitution of Nazi-Looted Cultural Treasures to the USSR, 1945 - 1959, Patricia Kennedy Grimsted evokes the restitution policies of looted cultural materials developped by the United States towards the USSR, and especially those concerning archive  materials. According to documentation available at the US National Archives, nineteen restitutions to the USSR were done between 1945 and 1959. Among those restitutions,  three of them were devoted to archives and documentation.

The first one, returned in september 1945, consisted of about a thousand packages containing archives which were looted by the Germans in 1943 in Novgorod and kept in Berlin. The second transfer included records stolen from Ukraine and Latvia, that were found in may 1945 by US Army stored in a castle and a monastery near Trpísty in Bohemia. These archives were given back to thier rightfully owners in october of the same year. The third transfer consisted of scientific materials, including documentation, taken from Smolensk and restituted to Soviet authorities in December 1945.

Ironically, as points out Mrs Grimsted, while the Unisted States returned a wide part of the cultural materials stolen by the Nazis to their country of origin, the USSR took millions of cultural treasures from German museums and castles (many of them coming from Western countries) in the name of what it called the "compensatory restitution".

The author also writes about the materials that were not returned by the US. Among them were documents seen as documents of interest by US intelligence agencies, namely documents which could have a strategical importance. Indeed at the time, roots of what would be later the Colrd War were appearing : the United States decided to keep archives which could constitute an advantage regarding military and security issues, and which could bring data on the communist system (orgalization, personnel, activities...). An instance of such archives is the archives of the Smolensk Communist Party Archive, which are partly held in the US National Archives. These archives are now a symbol of the international politics of restitution engaged by the states : the US hold of Smolensk archives were indeed used by the Russian Duma as a justification of their keeping their own captured archives.

http://journaldunarchiviste.fr/2013/06/24/la-memoire-spoliee-fonds-de-moscou/

I decided to translate this French article into English about Moscow archives for I couldn't find any similar article originally written in this language, and for it is a subject I particularly wanted to talk about.

" Following the recent reissue of Sophie Coeuré's book La mémoire spoliée. Les archives des Français, butin de guerre nazi puis soviétique, took place a lecture  about the archives collection commonly known as the " Moscow archives " on last thursday June 11th at the National Archives of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. This event, reuniting historians and archivists, was an opportunity to recall the content and the story of these archives, and to present the valorisation works in progress.

This collection comes from the " Occupation " time, when German authorities took possession of a lot of records in the countries they had invaded, mostly in order to use them for the administrative and military management of the invaded countries - but also aiming an ideologised historical reuse. In France, it resulted in the seizure of a very important amount of public records - the majority of which coming from Home Office and War Department - but private archives too, either belonging to politicians, jewish or socialist intellectuals, associations, political parties, unions or masonic lodges. Preserved in different locations of the Reich (Czechoslovakia, Poland), these archives were retrieved by USSR at the end of the war. They were then preserved and listed by Soviet authorities during the following fifty years, frequently scattering them across the various administrations which could need to use them (Foreign Office, KGB...). Eventually, the end of USSR allowed the redescovery of these documents, mostly thanks to historian Patricia Grimsted, who found them and reported their existence when she did.

 In order to give these archives back to France, a long and complex work on diplomatic relations had to be committed. This was marked by several pacts, one of which was signed between both countries on April 7th 1992. A first part of the archives was returned back in 1994, about half of them found their way to France in lorries, and were filed at the National Archives Center in Fontainebleau, before Duma stopped the transfers.

After the resumption of the negociations, the rest of the archives was sent home in 2000, while at the same time France was giving Russia back three Russian archives collections it was holding. During these restitutions, the case of the private archives proved to be tricky, Russian authorities claiming a power from the archives rightful owners or from their heirs. French Government took in charge the centralisation of the restitution requests and the searching of the rightful owners or of their heirs. It was sometimes quite difficult to find them, and the operation even occasionally brought out some litigations, several people or institutions asserting to be the rightful heirs and claiming the archives.

Although most of the archives were given back to France, some clues tend to suggest that a various number of documents are still scattered all over Russian Federation (even in some Siberian libraries) and have to be located and brought back. Besides, the director of the National Archives of Russian Federation stated, during a several days visit in France at the end of 2012, that he wished he wished to develop an extensive archival cooperation between the two countries. It seems then possible to hope the reopening of restitution negociations within this broader project.

Once back in France, the different archives collections that were forming these " Moscow archives " were entrusted to the private rightful owners or to the public archives services responsible to their management. These ones then created searching guides presenting these new archives, in order to allow readers to consult these historically rich documents in good conditions. Thus, the Historical Defense Department Service got back more than three kilometers of documents which were produced by the War Department, documents which were integrated in their classification framework. Meanwhile, the General Security collection was entrusted to the Interior Justice Department and is about six kilometers. It is composed of folders and nominative supervising files, and documents generated by the various services of the General Security, all of them described in a methodical research guide allowing to understand the story of historical contingencies of the structure of the collection."   

N. Hermant.

http://cphpost.dk/news/nazi-sympathisers-try-to-rewrite-history-by-stealing-it.3149.html

In 2012, in the last days of October, Danish authorities arrested and put in custody two men suspected of the theft of Danish public archives from the World War II era. Indeed earlier in that month, members of the staff from Rigsarkivet, the Danish National Archives,  warned the police that documents have been missing. After a strict investigation, it was brought out that documents had been regularily and systematically stolen from the the Danish National Archives over the past ten years. Among the stolen documents were police reports, court documents but also personnal accounts and belongings. Most of those documents were related to a Danish soldier, Kaj Buchardt, who joined the German Army, the Wehrmacht, during the war and so fought alongside German soldiers, in particular against Russian forces in the East Front. It was reported that the two arrested men, who are known to be Nazi-sympathisers,  are also understood to have been personal acquaitance of Buchardt. The thefts were precisely organised : the documents, selected beforehand, were taken piece by piece, in order to not attract attention on the crime. There is apparently evidence that the thieves were planning to sell the robbed archives to one single person, giving the impression that they were acting on someone else's behalf. But the fact that the documents involved were all about the same individual could disclose an other motive to the crime : were the documents stolen in order to make them disappear from public knowledge ? May be the thieves wanted to hide the actions their friend had done during the war, and intended to destroy these archives. It seems they were trying to hide the fact that the soldier forsook the army to fight with the enemy, then that he joined it back at the end of the war.

This story shows that by stealing archives, some people intend more than getting money from their selling, they also want to change a part of History. Indeed, archives are the witnesses, and at the end the only one, of the past and the memory of humanity. Stealing archives to make them disappear is a way to change History, to delete the evidence that something happened, to erase its reality from the collective memory. That subject unfortunately leads us to think about the most terrible archives theft that could have been done in history : the wipeout of the documents which belonged to European Jews during the Seconde World War by the Nazis. As Hitler and his subordonates were killing Jews by millions, and so to speak making them disappear physically, they were also making them disapper virtually by stealing and destroying any document, in German administration or Jews personnal documents, that were mentioning their existence. It is quite horrible to think that archives, which represent and symbolise what humanity is and has done, can also be user by human beings as a kind of weapon to rewrite History at their convenience.

N. Hermant

PERSONAL ORAL PRODUCTION

This blog is about stolen archives. We are two students working on that topic. For my part I have decided talk about stolen archives in the United States. There is a lot to say.

My first post is about the American laws that stand against theft of public records. They give a full definition of the words record and archive. They provide sentences for the crimes against records, like stealing, damaging, destroying. And the sentences are more severe for archivists, because they are supposed to keep records safe, and not dispose of them.

In my second post, I describe what kind of records are most likely to be stolen from the custody of archivists. Stolen records are often documents that were signed by famous political men, like the presidents of the United States, and also quite a lot of pardons. There are also a lot of thefts of documents that are about the Civil War, like letters and telegrams. And if paper records might be easy to steal, there are also artifacts stolen, belonging to presidents, without any distinction of size.

My third post is an article published in 2013, and it’s about the theft of Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff. They stole tens of thousands of historical documents and they were caught and put in jail. The FBI and the National Archives worked together to return those documents to their rightful owners. And I translated the article in French.

My fourth post is a transcription of a video posted on Youtube by the National Archives. An archivist and an auctioneer talk about the return of a priceless document written by Abraham Lincoln. They worked together to put it right in its original folder that he never should have left.

My fifth and last post is about Sandy Burger’s theft. He was a national security adviser and he stole classified documents because he feared an inquiry. And it is also about the reaction of the Archives officials, they were as much shocked by the theft as by the way the thief did it: he stuck the papers into dirt under a construction trailer and then destroyed them at home.

I chose this topic because no one should be allowed to make profit on the people memories. They are under the custody of archivists in order to keep enlightening generations to come on their past.

If you wish to hear me :

http://www.firedrive.com/file/42EFC03232F96EE3

N. CONEJERO (2710 words)

This video is about the outrageous theft and destruction of classified records from the National Archives and the reactions of officials. As if stealing records was not wrong enough, it was done by a public man, Sandy Burger, a former national security adviser. The officials declared they are quite shocked by this deception.

Even though the theft made a statement in which he declared to deeply regret his actions, it doesn’t put him away from a quite understandable investigation of the National Archives inspector-general. With the testimony of Burger, he wrote a report of this unfortunate event.

The stolen documents were about the administration’s reactions to a terrorist plot that may attack the United States in 2000, while Bill Clinton was president. He stole them because he feared the questions of the 9/11 Commission about the way the White House handled the threat of terrorism.

He gave an edifying statement about how he smuggled the records out of the National Archives building. He walked out with the documents stuffed in his pockets. He took advantage of the darkness, looked around and headed to the Department of Justice, across the street. Luckily for him, at that time, there was some construction going on near the Department of Justice. Instead of sneaking into the building with the documents on him, which might have been careless, he went through the security fence and placed them under a construction trailer. Then he went back to work like if nothing happened. When he went back home, he destroyed most of the documents by cutting them into pieces.

When he was interrogated, he first said he might have taken the documents by accident, or inadvertently. In the end, he faced no legal charge for what he did and was free to go.

Two things shocked the public servants: he indeed didn’t stand in trial. Yet the law makes clear that stealing and destroying public records is a criminal offense, even more serious when the theft is a public official or a state servant. Anyone else wouldn’t have gotten away with it and would have spent some time in prison.

But for them, the most outrageous part is that he stuck the classified papers under a trailer, in the dirt. Stealing is one thing, but acting the way he did is even worse for the Archives officials. And even if the law and the United States have forgiven him, the public servants haven’t, and he will be remembered as a thief who sticks papers in the dirt.

N. CONEJERO

TRANSCRIPTION:

This document is a letter to his Excellency, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, written in Hagerstown, Maryland, November 6, 1862. Signed by one, two, three surgeons, asking President Lincoln to appoint a chaplain. My name is Bill Panagopoulos. I am the president of Alexander Autographs, Inc. and Alexander Historical Auctions. I’m an auctioneer; I’ve been in the business for 25 years.

The battle of Antietam, known as the bloodiest day in American history, had been fought on September 17, 1862. Because of the heavy casualties, a number of hospitals were created, and including a number at Hagerstown, Maryland, nearby.

“There are at present upwards of 700 sick soldiers, many of them are in very critical conditions such as demands the ministration of the clergyman as well as of the physicians.” Lincoln writes “If the surgeon general concurs, I would like to appoint Rev. Mr. Edwards as hospital chaplain.”  Signed “A. Lincoln, November 12, 1862”. It’s a remarkable document, a lengthy endorsement like this by Lincoln on a letter with this content? Superb, you just don’t see them.

Commission Branch files, apparently at one point, were hit fairly hard by a thief interested in Lincoln documents, perhaps while these records were still in the custody of the War Department. This is one specific file dealing with one specific officer named the Reverend Henry Edwards. But it’s missing two vital documents: request to appoint him, and then on the wrapper the endorsement dated November 12 1862, by Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States. There is no legitimate reason why such a document would ever leave this file.

This document came to us from a consigner in Rhode Island. The Archives saw it in another dealer’s catalog, a dealer that we had sold the document to. The dealer was resistant, as most dealers and auctioneers are, to the National Archives, claiming their material. They are not happy about it. “Hey! I bought this in good faith, all right? So sue me for it.” We don’t look at it that way. So I contacted the dealer and I said “Send it back to me. I’ll reimburse you the money.” We then contacted the consigner, the person who gave us the document to sell. “We’re going to ask you to refund us what we paid you for it.” Fairly wealthy family, and they agree to do it. I know that the family is not involved in the theft of this document and the disappearance of it from the National Archives. It could have been stolen fifty years ago, forty years ago, twenty years ago, ended up in the hands of a dealer somewhere, sold by the thief. It may have changed hands five times before we go it.

And now, it’s coming back, much to the pleasure of the National Archives and those who are charged with preserving the records.

We said we’ll write you a letter appraising this piece so you get a nice tax deduction. I’m out thousands of dollars because I have to give up my commission, but it’s going back where it belongs. And that’s the right thing to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrSipnppEI8

N. CONEJERO

FBI, National Archives return to rightful owners 10,000 stolen historical US documents

Published May 14, 2013

BALTIMORE – FBI and National Archive officials are returning to their rightful owners more than 10,000 important historical documents seized during a massive theft investigation involving a well-known collector of presidential memorabilia.

Barry Landau and assistant Jason Savedoff were caught stealing documents from the Maryland Historical Society almost two years ago. An investigation led authorities to a cache of thousands of stolen documents in Landau's New York City apartment, including some containing a who's who of American and international history. Both men pleaded guilty to their crimes and are serving prison sentences.

Now, officials are returning the documents to 24 identified victims nationwide, including university libraries and historical societies in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. On Monday, they returned 21 items to the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.

Translation:  

Le FBI et les Archives Nationales restituent à leurs propriétaires légitimes 10.000 documents historiques américains.

Publié le 14 mai 2013, Baltimore.

Le FBI et les Archives Nationales effectuent la restitution à leurs propriétaires légitimes de plus de 10.000 documents historiques de valeur qui ont été saisis au cours d’une enquête sur un vol de grande ampleur impliquant le collectionneur bien connu de souvenirs présidentiels.

Barry Landau et son assistant Jason Savedoff ont été surpris en train de voler des documents de la Société Historique du Maryland il y a près de deux ans. Une enquête a mené les autorités à une cachette contenant des milliers de documents volés dans l’appartement new-yorkais de Landau, dont certains contenaient des références sur des personnages majeurs de l’histoire américaine et internationale. Les deux hommes ont plaidé coupables de leurs crimes et servent actuellement une peine de prison.

A présent, les fonctionnaires restituent les documents aux 24 victimes identifiées à travers le monde, qui comprennent des bibliothèques universitaires et des sociétés historiques des Etats de New-York, du Connecticut, du Maryland et de la Pennsylvanie. Lundi, ils ont restitué 21 archives à la Société Historique du Maryland à Baltimore.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/14/fbi-national-archives-return-to-rightful-owners-10000-stolen-historical-us/

You can read more about Barry Landau and Jason Savedoff's theft here : 

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/25443

N. CONEJERO

The American history doesn’t go back to the crusades or feudality. But it is built on bonding and unifying events and charismatic leaders on which American people can rely to claim its identity. Therefore it makes sense that the first historical records to be stolen are documents or artifacts from these periods of American history. The National Archives offer a list of stolen documents that reveals the need of thieves to get closer to this glorious past and eventually, to make quite a profit by selling them to careless passionates. It is generally for the precious signatures and autographs of presidents and generals that records are targeted.

First of all, there are the missing documents relating to the Civil War. The National Archives report that they are missing documents from confederate generals and officers, like John Adams, who was assigned to Fort Crook, California, James Jay Archer, who was brigadier during the Seven Days battle, or Lewis A. Armistead, a brigadier who died during the battle of Gettysburg. Then, there are the leaders’ records stolen from the National Archives, like a letter and a telegram from George Armstrong Custer, famous for his defeat at Little Big Horn against Indians. Stolen archives about Civil War are also more singular, like a letter from a saddle maker in an arsenal (1).                     

Thefts are also due to the strong personality of their authors, especially when they were presidents of the young republic of the United States. Lots of letters have been stolen, that are signed by Ulysses S. Grant, and telegrams signed by Abraham Lincoln (2).                

And there are more peculiar thefts, like the ones of presidential pardons. Amongst others, there are the pardons of Peter Armill (aka West) in 1851, the 8^th of October and John W. Comegys on 1853, the 9^th of March, by the thirteenth president Millard Fillmore, or the pardon of Anna M. Blacklock in 1870, the 21^st of March, by Ulysses Grant. Beyond the obvious reason that comes to the mind – the signature of an American president – perhaps those pardons were stolen for the pardoned. Why not imagine that thieves might be relatives of the men and women mentioned on the pardons.

There are finally stolen archives that might have been a challenge for the thieves, because all records are not paper easily slipped into a bag or a folder. There are artifacts, belonging once again to presidents. Some are of small size, and so not hard to conceal, like a class ring from US Coast Guard Academy given to President Lyndon B. Johnson, or a dagger and scabbard decorated with gold, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, which was a state gift to President Truman from Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Saud (3). But there are also more ambitious thieves who purchased large artifacts like an official portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt or maps, especially the target maps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki used in 1945 (4) (5).

(1) (2) (3)

(4) (5)

So, in the light of the examples, we can see that stolen records obviously deal with major events in American history. It is logical if we consider that thieves are collectors who will keep for themselves the stolen documents, and also if they are dealers, because those artifacts are the most likely to be illegally bought.

 http://www.archives.gov/research/recover/missing-documents.html

N. CONEJERO

As a federal country, the United States have established laws preventing or prosecuting records thefts.

In the 18 United States Code, there is a part on concealment, removal or mutilation of records. It says that anyone who tries or succeeds in damaging archives shall be guilty and imprisoned, which may last three years. And it concerns a large variety of archives: record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing. Moreover, if archivists are found guilty of such crimes, they risk the same punishment and cannot have the custody of any record anymore, wherever the public institution they may try to work in.

Another article mentions public records theft: stealing them is as wrong as stealing public money or property of any kind. A public record is considered as such as long as it is the property of the United States, their departments and agencies. And if the theft sells the stolen properties of the States, he may be imprisoned ten years, if the stolen records are of great value.

In the 44 Unites State Code, there is an add to the other laws. The persons in charge of a federal department or agency are due to report any risk or sign of destruction and removal of the records related to their agencies. The national Archivists are informed and can take actions to secure or increase the security of the records.

In order to stop, or at least lessen the stealing, the National Archives have found a way to get some help, directly from the users and lectors of the Archives. By their web site, they give a way to alert archivists if there are publics records found on web auctions sites for illegal sale.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/641

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/44/3106

http://www.archives.gov/research/recover/

N. CONEJERO