7194 - Erich Raeder Autograph Letter Signed from Nuremberg on His Wife’s Soviet Detention and “Kidnapping”

Erich Raeder Autograph Letter Signed from Nuremberg on His Wife’s Soviet Detention and “Kidnapping” ALS in German, signed “Erich Raeder,” five pages on three sheets, 8 x 10.5, January 12, 1947. Handwritten letter to "Major Teich, Commander of the USA Military Prison, Nuremberg." Raeder reports that on January 11, 1947 he received word from his sister-in-law that his wife Erika had disappeared from Luckenwalde/Mark, Castle 23, where she had been held in Russian custody. He asks that steps be taken through the U.S. Chief Theater Commander in Germany, via the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, to secure her immediate release from the Internal Commissariat there. He then lays out, in detail, the full history of his wife's ordeal: he was taken prisoner of war to Moscow on July 7, 1945, and his wife voluntarily accompanied him to nurse him through illness; their Potsdam apartment was looted by Soviet forces both before and after her departure; they lived together in Moscow under reasonable conditions from July to October 1945, with assurances she was "not considered a War Criminal"; he was then suddenly transferred to Nuremberg while she was released from the Commissariat but, instead of being allowed to return to Potsdam, was taken by a Colonel Pilmanoff to Luckenwalde and held in solitary confinement at Castle 23 for months, with no social contact, doctor, or dentist, poor food causing hunger and weight loss, and correspondence only rarely permitted. He describes a brief improvement after an August 1946 visit by Pilmanoff (timed to coincide with other Nuremberg wives being allowed to visit their husbands), followed by a letter his wife was forced to write on Russian terms that never reached him, and further deterioration after visits were cut off September 30, 1946. Raeder speculates on the Soviets' motives, possibly to suppress knowledge of the looted Potsdam house, or retaliation for his own attempts to reach American military authorities on her behalf, and states plainly that his wife never belonged to the Nazi Party or any organization and went to Potsdam voluntarily. He closes fearing for her ruined health following her "kidnapping" in mid December 1946, and begs for urgent, energetic steps, offering to provide further information at any time. In fine condition.