"Are you a Jew?", Heinrich Himmler asked a young prisoner during a visit to the eastern front in 1941.

"Yes."  

"Both parents Jewish?"  

"Yes", replied the boy.

"Do you have non-Jewish ancestors?"  

"No".

"Then I cannot help you."

That was Heinrich Himmler. The prisoner was shot.

Hitler was said to be "magnetic". Göring was a brave pilot. Goebbels was an extraordinary demagogue. Heydrich was a skilled fencer, an excellent pilot and musician. No one has ever been able to find anything special about Himmler, not a single moment of charisma and humanity throughout his existence. Among the major Nazi leaders he is the most heinous and the most anonymous. The man who has a track record of unprecedented crimes does not show characteristic signs. Low, flabby , bald, chubby , watery eyes, receding chin, limp handshake, Himmler was dull and pedantic .

His features are so common that in May of 1945 he was not identified by the Soviets and by the British who took him into custody. He did not even disguise himself : Himmler just took off his pince- nez . As a gag, Himmler wore his glasses. Beyond that, there was nothing. Until now.

"I'm going to Auschwitz. Kisses, your Heini , " Himmler wrote to his wife Margaret. And again: "In the coming days I will be in Lublin, Zamosch, Auschwitz, Lemberg and then in the new location. I'm curious to see if and how it will work [to use] the phone. Greetings and kisses! Your Pappi ".

A few days later he left for a two-day visit to Auschwitz to see with his own eyes what happens to a transport Jew, the action of the pesticide Zyklon B, the corpses, the ovens. Himmler gave the green light to the large-scale destruction of the Jewish people .

These are just two of the outstanding letters found in Israel and published recently by the German newspaper Die Welt. Documents, correspondence and photographs of the architect of the Holocaust.

But there is a Himmler about whom nobody ever told you.This portrait gives us a special look inside the mind of the modern and efficient anti-Semite.

Himmler was the pioneer of organic food and of the battle against "GM Food", genetically modified food. "The artificial is everywhere," wrote Himmler. "Wherever there is adulterated food, full of ingredients that make it more durable and beautiful."

Himmler was an avid reader of Max Bircher-Benner and Ragnar Berg, the two main supporters of organic foods, the first an inventor of the famous muesli. Himmler was distinguished as one of the zealots fighting additives, preservatives and dyes, and forbade the use of refined white sugar and artificial honey. As a big supporter of natural remedies, the head of the SS was also a bitter enemy of vivisection and campaigned for the protection of the environment and species under threat of extinction, such as the whale .

According to Himmler, you had to ban vivisection in order to "awaken and strengthen the spirit of compassion as one of the highest moral values ​​of the German people." A Himmler proud to define the German people as "the only one in the world to have a decent attitude towards animals."

This most zealous murderer of a children 's story even wrote a book of fairy tales, in which rats unearthed in the homes of the Germans are not killed, but taken to court for trial, "treated with humanity."

On Himmler's wall hung approved guidelines for the transport of animals and he hosted international conferences on animal protection in Berlin. Himmler promulgated a regulation for the slaughter of fish and other cold-blooded animals. Himmler once asked his physician, a well known hunter: "How can you, you, Dr. Kersten, enjoy shooting from a shelter at the defenseless creatures that roam the forest, unable to protect themselves and free from all suspicion? It is' a real crime . Nature is tremendously beautiful and every animal has the right to live  "

Meanwhile, Himmler's SS pursued and felled the Jews in the forests of Poland and Ukraine.

Himmler also decided to outlaw Jewish ritual slaughter, which does not allow one to anesthetize the animal. The kosher tradition was stigmatized by Himmler because it was "against the refined sensibility of the German company" and even as "unnecessary suffering."

Himmler hated tobacco, which he defined "lung masturbation". The Reichsführer who urged his soldiers not to show pity in shooting and gassing women and children , banned smoking not only among his SS, but also in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals and on trains and buses of the city.

Himmler recommended a breakfast of raw leeks and mineral water, and spent part of his activity on the "problem of boiled potatoes," even funding research on the subject

Himmler hated hunting and called it "a crime against innocent human beings killed in cold blood." It is the same Himmler who sponsored the medical experiments in the extermination camps.

The architect of the Holocaust ordered the production of medicinal herbs and organic honey in the concentration camp at Dachau, where Dr. Fahrenkamp ran a sort of green paradise in the middle of the camp. At Auschwitz, Himmler had ordered them to cultivate a special plant from east, the kok-saghyz , which he believed had special healing powers. In the network of twenty concentration camps, Himmler organized the largest European cultivation of medicinal herbs.

He even forbade the use of artificial plastic flowers at  funerals and was proud to make Germany the first European country with nature reserves. The letters by Himmler to his wife are full of references to flowers, one of his obsessions. In a letter, Himmler told her he shipped 150 tulips from the Netherlands: "Of one color, two colors, you do not find these in Germany".

According to Himmler's racist belief, “native species” originate in a certain place and that is where they “belong.” In similar terms, according to Himmler's heirs,

in the West and in the Islamic world, Israel’s “colonization” threatens the “original” Arab environment (a bending of the facts, as the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel). In Iran's Himmlerian rethoric, Israel is a "rotten tree".

Himmler's unknown story reveals that hatred, death and anti-Semitism can also come from politically correct minds.

Ecologist. Animal lover. Darwinian. Enlightened.