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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Dalya Alberge

Nazi letters reveal paper restorers’ role in compiling Holocaust ‘hitlist’

Adolf Hitler
A new book explores art restoration under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Photograph: PA

Large numbers of paper restorers and bookbinders were recruited by the Nazis and “contributed directly to genocide” during the second world war, according to research.

A British historian has uncovered a Europe-wide programme in the 1930s and 1940s in which restorers repaired and cleaned historic church and civil records, making them legible so that the Nazis could detect anyone with Jewish ancestry.

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