Collectors' Items

A few of the German Nazis caught last week distinguished themselves by admitting that they were Nazis.

P: Dr. Robert Ley, leader of Hitler's Labor Front and "Strength Through Joy" movement, turned up in a four-day beard, blue pajamas, a green hat. Found in an Austrian home, where he had put up as "Dr. Ernst Distelmeyer," joyless, strengthless Dr. Ley relinquished a vial of poison and told his U.S. captors: "I will always believe that Adolf Hitler was Germany's greatest man. ... I did everything I could for Germany. ... I think work is beautiful. . . . Life doesn't mean a damned thing to me. You can beat me; you can torture me, but I'll never doubt Hitler's acts."

P: Said a German U-boat skipper, surrendering his ship at Portsmouth, N.H. (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS): "There's no difference between a German and a Nazi. A Nazi is a good German and a good German is a Nazi."

P: Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Reich's chief mythologist and "Director of Philosophic Outlook," was found by the British. His hiding place: a hospital bed within a stone's throw of Admiral Doenitz' headquarters in Flensburg (see above). Rosenberg's presence strengthened suspicions that Himmler may have also taken refuge somewhere near Doenitz.

P: Police General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heinrich Himmler's specialist in mass execution-by-gas, was found hiding in a fortified chalet in the Tyrol with his adjutant, Artur Scheidler.

P: Protested Adolf Hitler's onetime protegee, Nazi cinemactress Leni Riefenstahl, when U.S. troops ejected her from Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's hill villa at Kitzbuhel, Austria: "Some of my best friends were Jews." With tears in her great brown eyes she complained of the disrespect of an unnamed Boston Irish doughboy. "Baby," he had said, "I've been going to the movies a long time and I never heard of you."

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