Martin Dannenberg, who found copy of Nuremberg Laws, dies

BALTIMORE - Martin Ernest Dannenberg, who as a young World War II Army sergeant discovered a copy of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws, one of Nazi Germany's most infamous documents, died Aug. 18 in his sleep at his home in Guilford, Md. He was 94.

Dannenberg, who was a special agent in charge of an Army counterintelligence team, told The Baltimore Sun in 1999 about the moment on April 28, 1945, when he realized the significance of the documents he had found in a small-town bank in Eichstatt, Germany.

What he held was a rather ordinary brown manila envelope sealed with red wax embossed with swastikas.

"Because here is this thing that (begins) the persecution of the Jews. And a Jewish person has found it." Dannenberg carefully slit the top of the envelope and withdrew the typescript documents. The first thing he saw was Adolf Hitler's signature.

With Hitler's signature in September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws legislation formally legalized anti-Semitism and persecution of the Jews.

"The first thought that crossed my mind was that this would be a hell of a souvenir to take back to Baltimore," Dannenberg recalled in 1999, but he decided instead to turn it over to 3rd Army headquarters.

It was the last time Dannenberg saw the envelope for more than half a century.

The envelope eventually made its way to Gen. George S. Patton Jr., commander of the 3rd Army, who made it his personal property.

In June 1945, during a trip home to California, Patton donated the envelope to the Huntington Library in San Marino.

For the next 54 years, it remained undisturbed in a library vault until being discovered and placed on public display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles in 1999, where Dannenberg was a guest speaker at the opening ceremony.