Arnold Joseph collection

Arnold Joseph was born in 1927 in Saarbrucken, Germany, to Ferdinand and Elsa Joseph. He immigrated to the United States in 1938 with his mother, stepfather Sydney Hanau, and brother Gary (Gert) and lived in the Bronx. He was drafted into the United States Army in the summer of 1945, assigned as technical sergeant to security at the International Military Tribunal, and served in Nuremberg from January to October 1946. His task was censoring letters exchanged between the defendants and their family members and letters to the defendants from the general public. The head of his unit was Colonel Andrews, and his direct supervisor was Lieutenant Tex Wheelis. The Arnold Joseph collection consists of correspondence to and from defendants at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which Joseph acquired during his military service as a censor. Incoming correspondence from the general public comes from the so‐called “201 file” of letters not to be delivered to the defendants so as not to upset them. It includes a mixture of praise and good wishes for the defendants as well as insults and invectives, and some correspondence includes prayers, poems, and songs. At least one letter is from a former German soldier, another is from a former political prisoner, one is signed “an unknown German,” and another “the whole German people.” In addition to letters to defendants, there are two letters to Hans Bernd Gisevius, who served as a witness for the prosecution, and a postcard to Pastor Martin Niemöller. Some of the envelopes bear Arnold Joseph’s censor stamp: “Censored & Passed Arnold Joseph Censor IMT.”