Bloodlines

At the end of World War II an American military intelligence team retrieved an original copy of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws signed by Hitler and turned over this rare document to General George S. Patton. In 1999 after fifty-five years in the vault of the Huntington Library in southern California the Nuremberg Laws resurfaced and were put on public display for the first time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. In this far-ranging interdisciplinary study that is part historical analysis part cultural critique part detective story and part memoir Tony Platt explores a range of interrelated issues: war-time looting remembrance of the holocaust German and American eugenics and the public responsibilities of museums and cultural centers. This book is based on original research by the author and co-researcher historian Cecilia O'Leary in government military and library archives; interviews and oral histories; and participant observation. It is both a detailed scholarly analysis and a record of the author's activist efforts to correct the historical record.