When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the wife of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi Gestapo and the SS and one of the main orchestrators of the Holocaust, sent him a message: "There is a can of caviar in the ice box. Take it."

On another occasion Himmler's wife, Margarete, received a note: "I am off to Auschwitz. Kisses, Your Heini."

Excerpts from a private collection of hundreds of the Himmlers' personal letters, diaries and photographs were published for the first time this weekend by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and the German paper Die Welt, providing a rare, if jarring, glimpse into the family life of one of Hitler's top lieutenants while he was busy organizing the mass extermination of Jews.

A team of researchers and writers at Die Welt have been analyzing copies of the papers since 2011, according to the German newspaper's website. The newspaper described the collection, which is kept in Israel, as "the largest and most significant find of private documents of a leading Nazi criminal."
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© Realworks Ltd/Die Welt, via Associated PressA photo from 1935 showing Heinrich Himmler with his wife, Marga, his son, Gerhard, his daughter, Gudrun, center, and an unidentified friend in Bavaria.
Die Welt wrote that while the documents "do not change the overall picture of the Nazi reign of terror," they added countless details about Himmler's personality, his daily life and his world. Die Welt said "signs of Himmler's immeasurable anti-Semitism and his obsessiveness" were already apparent in the early letters from 1927.

Read more at the NY Times