During the latter months of the Second World War, Edmund F. Franz served with the U.S. Army's War Crimes Branch in Wiesbaden, Germany. Part of the team involved in war crimes investigation, Franz processed hundreds of pages of first-hand accounts by perpetrators, eye witnesses, concentration camp survivors, political prisoners, and prisoners of war that ultimately served the prosecution during the Nuremberg trials.
At the end of his military service, Franz returned to civilian life in Aurora, Ohio, seldom discussing his experiences in Germany. Before his death in 1984, however, he left careful instructions for his wife to deliver a briefcase of papers he had accumulated during the war to a friend and Cleveland businessman, David M. Berke (1911-1999), who decided in turn to donate the records to Kent State's Jewish Studies program.
From the guide to the David M. Berke Collection of Nuremberg Trials Depositions MS 804., 1944-1945, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)
