Beschreibung:

WORLD WAR II]. Autograph album containing 105 inscriptions and signatures of important political prisoners, by Dr. Deszo de Onody in the German SS concentration camp in Innsbruck, Austria. April-May 1945. Small 4to, the signatures in ink on 11 pages of a thin notebook of lined paper, written on rectos only, the notebook neatly stapled in blue paper wrappers, blank label on upper cover, very slight age-toning to the paper, but otherwise in fine condition. HIGH-RANKING POLTICAL PRISONERS, INCLUDING LEON BLUM, LATER PRESIDENT OF FRANCE, IN A SPECIAL CONCENTRATION CAMP A most remarkable album, documenting an especially significant group of prisoners of the Nazi regime. Those held in this special Austrian SS camp included one king, several former premiers, many nobles, high-ranked officials of government and the army, key clergymen, relatives of world leaders, well-known dissenters, intellectuals and academics, many of them German. Among the nations represented are Poland, Russia, Italy, Greece, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, England, Hungary, Belgium and Holland. Dr. de Onody himself had been a member of the Hungarian government; when Hungary proclaimed its surrender to the allies on 16 October 1944, he was arrested--as the affadavit of von Schuschnigg (see below) states--"on account of your activities against the Nazi regime and your participation in the Hungarian underground movement." Partial contents: The 105 signatures or inscriptions include: Friedrich Leopold, Prinz Preussen (King Leopold III of Belgium, captured during the German invasion of Belgium, 1940); Prince Xavier de Bourbon; Philipp, Prinz von Thurin; Bishop Gabriel Piquet, vque de Clermont (Bishop of Clermont, active in the French Resistance); Hjalmar Schlacht (President of the Reichsbank 1923-1939, played a key role in Germany's economic rebirth, hostile to Hitler, tried by the Allies as a war criminal, acquitted); Carl Edquist (Swedish official who assisted Raoul Wallenberg in the rescue of Jews); Generaloberst Franz Halder (high-ranked German officer in Hitler circle, fell out of favor and was imprisoned); Captain Peter Best (British Secret Service); General Alexander Papagol (Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army); Richard Schmitz (Minister of Austria, Mayor of Vienna); Captain Peter Churchill (War Office officer, nephew of Prime Minister Winston Churchill ; no fewer than 10 members of the family Von Stauffenberg (relatives of Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg, who planted a bomb at Hitler's Headquarters in July 1944). Lon Blum (Jewish Prime Minister of France captured in 1940, later Provisional President of France); Fritz Thyssen (German industrialist, opposed to Nazi regime); several officers of the Royal Air Force; seven members of the Goerdeler family (relatives of Himmler's physician, who attempted peace negotiations through Switzerland, murdered by the SS); and many others. [With]: BLUM, Lon (1872-1950), French Prime Minister. Document signed ("Lon Blum"), Paris, 17 January 1946. 1 page, folio, notarized at bottom, in French. Affadavit stating that he met Onody in Regensburg prison camp in 1945 "where the Gestapo had brought us together with several prisoners of the Buchenwald Concentration camp." Blum, former French Prime Minister, states that they had been liberated by units of the American 5th Army on 27 April 1945 and "it was found that SS Commander Stiller had with him Himmler's order to execute all the political prisoners, before they could fall into the Allies' hands." -- SCHUSCHNIGG, Kurt Von (1897-1977), Minister of Austria. Document signed ("Kurt Schuschnigg") countersigned by Richard Schmitz, Rome, 10 December 1945. 1 page, folio, in English. Affadavit signed by the former Chancellor and former Minister of Austria, stating that "on the 27th of April...about 150 people from 22 nations of the world, were deported by the German Gestapo..." An account of the camp is given in Jean Lacouture, Leon Blum , transl. G. Holoch, 1982, pp.460-465.