Expert who oversaw German World War II records dead at 93
WASHINGTON (AP) - Robert Wolfe, who for more than 30 years served as a specialist in Nazi Germany at the National Archives and Records Administration, has died. He was 93.
Wolfe died Dec. 9 of respiratory failure at a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, his son Marc Wolfe confirmed Monday.
Wolfe joined the archives in 1961 and worked there until his retirement in 1995, though he continued to serve as a consultant and help researchers as a volunteer, his son said. The records he oversaw and helped researchers study included documents captured in Germany during World War II and others related to the Nuremberg trials.
He was an expert in war crimes records, postwar occupation records, World War II records and postwar military records, the National Archives and Records Administration said in 2001 press release announcing his appointment to a working group on war crimes records.
Before joining the archives he was a member of an American Historical Association team that put on microfilm German records captured during the war.
Wolfe himself had served in the Army during World War II. Following the war he gathered evidence for prosecutors handling the Nuremberg trials, said author and friend Edwin Black, and worked for the U.S. government in Germany, where he met his wife. Marc Wolfe said his father developed a passion for Germany before the war and was taught hatred of the enemy as a soldier, but later re-found his love for Germany.
"His father, a Jew, counseled him against hatred," his son Marc Wolfe said. "Dad said that he will not let Hitler have the victory of judging people as a whole."
He was fierce in his pursuit of records documenting Nazi crimes, Marc Wolfe said, adding that his father used a Nazi dagger to edge his lawn.
Wolfe was born March 2, 1921, in Burlington, Vermont. He graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in history and earned a master's degree from Columbia University in political science. In addition to his son Marc Wolfe, he is survived by his wife of 66 years, Ingeborg E. Wolfe, and another son, Randolph Wolfe of Florida.
Wolfe will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, though no date has been set.
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