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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 תמליל 0:00 [Music] 0:06 since they first appeared in the 18th century Freemasons have provoked speculation and aroused fantasy in 0:13 Europe and across the globe with their enigmatic symbols secret rituals and supposed influence in the 0:19 political and economic world no other organization has generated as much Fascination and hostility 0:29 they say that Freemasonry is secretive but no it's discrete [Music] 0:37 with World War II this hostility came to a head [Music] 0:43 convinced that the Freemasons held political and esoteric Secrets the Nazis launched Mass robberies of European 0:49 Masonic lodges in occupied countries [Music] 0:58 whether esoteric documents in these archives yes 1:05 to have possession of the secret Archives of the Freemasons was to fight from within to destroy their influence 1:14 it's the largest collection of masonic archives it's ever been brought together in the world 1:26 what became of them what do they contain our investigation unveils the secrets of 1:31 the Freemasonry archives Incredible Journey 1:41 [Music] 1:54 thank you 2:01 [Music] 2:20 June 14 1940 the Victorious German Army enters Paris the capital is declared an 2:26 open City like Belgium and Holland France has fallen into Hitler's clutches 2:34 so what happened in Paris in 1940 as the German Army arrived when an army arrives 2:39 in the city it tries to neutralize and then occupy the centers of power and in the mind of the Nazi leaders power in 2:46 France was located in the Ministries the government the political parties but also Freemasonry 2:52 [Music] the Nazis rounded up tons of sensitive documents belonging to the police 2:58 Foreign Affairs departments trade unions and also Masonic lodges the Freemasons 3:04 are often associated with the French third Republic and rightly so from the very beginning of Nazi occupation the 3:10 French lodges were occupied by German military police foreign 3:38 the wehrmacht and gestapo broke into the most important Masonic lodges the grand Orient of France the Grand 3:45 Lodge of France and the duaima in Paris and Bordeaux alone there were up to 50 raids 3:52 the operation was repeated in the provinces between June of 1940 and February 1941. 3:58 the entire recorded history of French Freemasonry disappeared in the imagination of the extreme right 4:05 and especially the Nazis it was the idea that in Western Europe Freemasonry was 4:10 pulling the strings of liberal democracy and there was definitely this idea that 4:16 they would find information that would explain the resistance of Western democracies to the new European order 4:26 with his rise to power in 1933 in Germany Hitler ordered that all Masonic 4:31 societies be dissolved put repressive policies in place in all 4:37 occupied countries but especially France where there were 49 000 active Freemasons 4:46 [Music] in occupied zones Masonic lodges were 4:51 immediately closed and arrests took place especially people who had held positions 4:58 in Freemasonry 5:05 while newspapers were placing the blame for the military defeat on Freemasonry the Germans continued their methodical 5:11 robbing 5:21 each with its own agenda first the rsha intelligence service which merged 5:26 several services including the infamous Gestapo they were the ones who first visited The 5:34 Lodges to seize the documents and then there was also Alfred rosenberg's military staff 5:43 Rosenberg himself was not a policeman he was an ideologist he was the linchpin of 5:49 the denunciation of Jewish Freemasonry of judeo-bolshevism and starting in July 1940 Hitler 5:56 entrusted Rosenberg with the mission of searching the libraries and archives of enemies of the regime 6:02 and that's what he did 6:13 the Germans took all of our archives what they were interested in finding 6:20 varied according to who was in charge everyone knows the men like Rosenberg 6:25 were especially attentive to anything esoteric and to the inherent spirituality of 6:30 Freemasonry 6:38 at once anti-semitic anti-catholic and anti-freemason Alfred Rosenberg was a conspiracy 6:44 theorist and believed that occult Powers ruled the world he wanted to produce evidence 6:50 from the summer of 1940 rosenberg's military staff raided the Masonic archives 7:02 conspiracy theories stoked the Flames of the National Socialist worldview 7:08 but there was also a pagan branch of regime officials who wanted a new Germanic religion 7:14 [Music] this mystical movement which was a mixture of Nordic myths and ancient 7:19 occult doctrines arose from a secret racist organization the Thule society which had influenced 7:26 the Nazi party from its Inception 7:31 the tuna Society was actually formed by a breakaway Masonic Lodge 7:37 meaning it operated totally independently and was very much into esotericism 7:44 the Nazis were attracted to its philosophy and took inspiration from it 7:52 thank you founded in 1918 Chile's members included future key figures of the regime such as 7:59 Rudolf Hess the fuhrer's right-hand man Hermann Goering and of course Alfred 8:04 Rosenberg spied Hitler for his Sinister swastika 8:10 the prevent him from subsequently dissolving the group which was too fanatical in his eyes 8:16 [Music] Alfred Rosenberg was faithful to the 8:22 teachings of the Thule society and remained convinced that the Freemasons archives held tremendous secrets 8:29 like the alchemist's Philosopher's Stone believed to have the power to transform lead into gold 8:35 but to focus solely on rosenberg's obsession with the occult would be to forget that the archives also held great 8:41 political importance [Music] 8:51 the Germans took over the headquarters of the grand Orient on Rooker day taking hold of the archives 8:57 all of this lasted for weeks months then after a while the Vichy regime was set 9:04 up and there were discussions between Vichy and the Germans said we should handle the Freemasons if 9:11 we still have authority over some sectors of the occupied Zone and therefore this is our responsibility and 9:16 that means all of the Freemasons belongings and archives should be transferred to us 9:27 [Music] 9:36 secret societies were banned and at that point the secret society's Department was created which was partly based at 9:44 the National Library the idea was to document both the 9:50 current affairs of Freemasonry so there was Intelligence carried out by the police 9:56 and then it was also about referencing creating a library for the future 10:05 director of The Secret society's Department was benafi an anti-mason historian 10:11 he published a monthly anti-masonic newsletter and with the help of a hundred zealous employees he exploited 10:17 archives left behind by the Germans Faye and his team kept records on 150 10:23 000 people from all the Masonic obedences often taking things to the Absurd they even kept fires on thousands 10:29 of members who were long dead they kept extensive files on each of the fifteen thousand members of the Grand 10:35 Lodge of France which included their identity card the functions they held in the lodge their political leanings their 10:43 Union activity their beliefs relative to the values of the Republic sometimes the content of these records 10:50 was extremely damaging the civil servants all lost their jobs and some were prosecuted and deported 10:59 in Premiere released 11:13 regime declared a ban on secret societies not only Banning their existence but also seizing all of their 11:20 property this was the first Major anti-masonic 11:26 law and all civil servants were required to declare if they'd ever been a Freemason 11:31 and swear they'd never re-enter a masonic lodge if ever Freemasonry were to start again in France 11:37 [Music] 11:50 Vision enlisted turncoat Masons to collaborate with the secret societies Department using the archives and lodges they 11:57 created an anti-masonic film based on the Freemason rituals of that era 12:02 [Music] 12:10 thank you [Music] 12:19 foreign 12:27 [Music] 12:50 foreign Embassy 12:56 [Music] 13:28 it was a great success in Paris and then it traveled to Bordeaux and other cities around France 13:36 foreign 13:45 [Music] 14:01 [Music] 14:17 thank you Belgian Freemasons were subject to the 14:23 same persecution as their French Brothers [Music] 14:32 part of their archives were pillaged by the Germans and the rest were used by Belgian collaborators the rexists who 14:38 settled in their lodges [Music] 14:44 the hunt was on [Music] 14:51 [Music] the rexists were a far-right political 14:57 party led by Leon de Grant created before the war [Music] 15:03 degree the ground wrote something in his journal which resembled 15:12 besides eliminating the Jews we will be nowhere if we don't also 15:17 eliminate the Freemasons [Music] 15:27 [Music] here the same Sinister tasks were 15:32 carried out they kept records on the Masons they published names they helped the Germans to flush out the brothers who are part 15:39 of the resistance [Music] a sculpture commemorates seven 15:45 Freemasons who in the estevegan concentration camp created the Liberty Sherry Lodge 15:53 [Music] foreign 16:03 we don't know how many Masons were arrested we know how many were deported 16:08 shocked or died in prison or were killed in battle in 1940. 16:16 this figure is a little over 800. 16:21 in France and Europe persecution of Freemasons was not comparable to that of the Jews 16:27 it was mostly for acts of resistance that brothers were deported like Pierre bossolet or those in the network petrium 16:34 recupare here hatred for Freemasons reached its horrible culmination 16:41 anti-masonry sentiment has existed from the beginning of Freemasonry 16:46 it started in 1736 with Pope Clement xii's famous people-ball denouncing the 16:52 Masons Masonic conspiracy theories became popular starting in the late 18th 16:57 century and in the early 19th century the theory of the judeo-masonic conspiracy began 17:04 so these are very old Concepts the first proposition for a law that would prohibit masonry in France was in 1934. 17:13 it was debated in the National Assembly but not adopted 17:18 it is nevertheless interesting to know that such a law was even discussed 17:31 the right tended to be hostile or suspicious of masonry as was the Catholic Church especially 17:38 the high-ranking members the Press was also hostile especially 17:43 during the stavisky affairs a financial and political Scandal that 17:51 nearly brought down the Republic in 1934 named after a swindler who had Freemasons among his many accomplices 18:00 thank you the secret societies Department scoured 18:06 the archives attempting to prove involvement of The Lodges but in vain 18:16 they did find however proof of freemasonry's widespread political influence especially under the French 18:21 third Republic [Music] 18:28 meanwhile the Germans began sorting their thousands of masonic boxes just a portion of millions of plundered 18:35 archives from all over Europe we usually think that the Jewish books 18:43 and the art all the very famous Jewish art collections from France were the 18:49 first things that were taken and the most important things that were taken but as it turns out actually it was the 18:56 Masonic archives that were the first cultural property that were taken by uh 19:03 Einstein stopper right slider Rosenberg and he reported to Berlin that oh 19:10 there's so many archives and cultural Treasures that are left behind we must 19:16 take these immediately to to to Germany [Music] 19:27 thank you [Music] 19:45 the Nazi war machine was now in full swing but for the Germans the study of the 19:52 archives was still considered important from a strategic standpoint 20:04 why did the Germans confiscate Masonic archives because in the mind of the 20:09 Nazis Freemasons are one of the four powers that oppose Nazism and totalitarianism along with the Jews 20:15 Communists and Democrats the Germans were highly organized they wanted to study their enemies 20:21 [Music] 20:27 Alfred Rosenberg gave his delusions an intellectual gloss creating an Institute in Frankfurt that was dedicated to the 20:33 Jewish question along with an Annex to study the Freemasons and part of their archives 20:39 Alfred Rosenberg had a very strong competitor namely Himmler 20:46 who directed The Secret services for State security and him who happened to 20:52 have been very interested in Masons it was himmler's group that decided that 20:57 they should be heir to many of the Masonic materials that were captured by 21:05 the ER foreign 21:12 they had set up a research center for Masonic studies in two large Masonic 21:19 buildings of two of the largest German Masonic lodges in Berlin that were taken 21:25 over by the Nazi regime because Masons were one of the first to to suffer in in 21:31 Germany 21:37 these buildings became the headquarters for the Gestapo but in the basements 21:42 they set up a bomb proof shelters for the libraries of the materials that they 21:49 had collected first of all from lodges all over Germany and then of course from France also and from other countries in 21:56 the west Belgium the Netherlands the boxes of archives were meticulously 22:03 indexed by SS officers Freemasonry Specialists historians and a team of translators 22:08 [Music] nevertheless they were overwhelmed by the mass of thousands and thousands of 22:14 documents ranging from notes taken in 18th century meetings to early 20th century conferences on anti-fascism 22:22 a wealth of information for the specialists but there was little time to make use of 22:28 their spoils 22:37 starting in 1942 and especially by 1943 the Allies began heavily bombing Germany 22:44 and so they began evacuating into the far-flung regions of the Reich 22:50 the Masonic archives were evacuated in part to tanzenberg where they were 22:55 discovered by The Americans but what makes their story quite 23:00 incredible is that they were then evacuated to the east in Poland and the former Czechoslovakia regions that had 23:08 fallen under the control of the Nazis 23:24 [Music] 23:32 it was in these medieval castles that the SS hid the secret Archives of the Freemasons 23:42 the leader Himmler took a portion of them to his Fortress vivelsberg a place where he conducted strange ceremonies 23:48 inspired by ancient times I have written or an article about 23:55 rather curious research that the Nazis were doing and that himmler's groups were doing in one castle in the sudeten 24:04 land even of in 1944 at the very last 24:10 year of the war they had a very special research group 24:15 that were into esoteric disciplines and there were about 40 different disciplines that were being studied in 24:23 this Castle but they were collecting books on all these occult subjects 24:28 Himmler amassed the largest esoteric library in the world with 13 000 stolen books 24:34 of spells alchemical manuscripts witchcraft trial proceedings he also sees the documents that he 24:41 considered most valuable from the European Masonic archives clearly this Holocaust orchestrator A 24:47 technocrat of death also paradoxically believed that the Freemasons held mysterious esoteric powers 24:56 foreign 1945 the Red Army and Allied troops 25:02 destroyed the Third Reich once again many different parties were eager to obtain the millions of archives 25:07 that had been plundered by the Nazis 25:13 the archives changed hands after a few months because the Allies the Americans 25:19 the British the French and the Soviets all scrambled to get their hands on them 25:27 this was first of all for military reasons to obtain operational information you need to have the enemies 25:34 archives but they all reacted differently the U.S gave them back to their original owners while the Soviets 25:41 took them to Moscow quite illegally 25:50 hundreds of thousands of boxes of documents with official information about Foreign Affairs military police 25:57 unions and also about Freemasonry were confiscated by Stalin and secretly sent 26:02 to Moscow 26:07 the Russians were also interested in the Freemasons not for symbolic or esoteric reasons for which they had no use 26:15 it was the brother's political networks that Stalin and berrier his henchmen head of the nkvd the precursors of the 26:21 KGB wanted to investigate to find out whether they had infiltrated the Communist parties in pre-war Europe 26:28 [Music] once the archives have been transferred 26:33 to the Soviet Union they were not stored in a classic fashion in a university or in the National Archives 26:41 they were transferred to an archive Department that answered to the KGB it was called the Central State archive 26:59 translators within requisitioned to dissect the archives with orders not to discuss their research with their 27:05 families or else they would be sent to Siberia 27:14 by the middle of 1945 there were about 1.5 million of these files on Soviet 27:20 territories 27:26 and it was imperative that their fate be determined as soon as possible 27:31 that's why nkvd leadership held a special meeting where it was decided 27:36 that they would set up the special archives 27:43 the Russian Specialists were overwhelmed by the scope of the spoils taken from Germany while Europeans remain convinced 27:49 that these documents had disappeared during the war 27:55 we can say that it was a gulag of archives in the sense that the archives were essentially deported 28:06 the veil of secrecy was typical of the Soviet political project and its practices 28:16 [Music] 28:25 [Music] 28:31 there was an agreement between the occupying powers in Germany that the pillage cultural property would be 28:37 returned to the original owners who had been robbed everything and it's probably unsurprising that the Americans in the 28:42 English were true to their word they set up centers where people came looking for what had been taken whereas 28:48 Stalin signed the papers enthusiastically and returned two or three documents saying that's all we have and then he kept it a secret for 28:55 the next 50 years 29:04 a dawn of the Cold War the Revival of Freemasonry and European ruling circles worried Stalin 29:14 the Russians are in a state of total paranoia first NATO's operational Center 29:19 was in the west so you can imagine they did everything they could to penetrate it 29:25 but it was particularly interesting for them to use masonry which was strongly represented in NATO as it had many 29:31 American English and French members it's clear now that masonry was a tactic 29:37 for them to penetrate that environment 29:54 special archives existed for 53 years from 1946 until 1999. 30:01 most of the documents had been studied translated summarized standardized 30:07 cataloged and the time had come to make the records public 30:19 with Stalin gone all of the archives that have been taken in Germany Masonic or otherwise were forgotten for nearly 30:25 half a century after the fall of Communism they 30:30 resurfaced thanks to the work of a stubborn American researcher Patricia grimstead who rediscovered them 30:40 the role of Patricia grimstead in the Sofia is Central since she's the one who knew about these archives and pursued 30:46 them with very little evidence in the beginning and as you know she was denounced as a 30:53 spy the former Soviets were not very happy with her discoveries she played an 31:00 absolutely critical role 31:05 it was at the end of 1990 in October and I was working with a Ukrainian colleague 31:12 who was allowed to go into the stacks came out running to me he said oh dear I 31:18 can't do this anymore because there are all these signatures of barrier that I've seen 31:25 laurenti Beria nicknamed the Russian Himmler The Man Behind the torture and deportations of any and all who 31:31 challenged communism so it was about a week later that I was given permission to go back in the 31:38 stacks and see more of these files I found a top secret folder about the 31:44 seizure by Smash the Soviet counter or Espionage group Beria had sent 31:50 instructions for a special team to go to a small village 31:56 in the sudeten land this was in may 1945. they brought 28 Freight card train 32:04 wagons sealed of course of French archives [Music] 32:14 countries that had fallen victim to the Nazis were shaken to the core by these findings as they discovered that whole 32:20 sections of their Collective memory had landed in the hands of the Russians Freemasons were alerted 32:28 as soon as I had confirmation that Masonic archives existed somewhere in Moscow I organized a special group they 32:36 discovered that there were roughly 28 000 files the boxes were numbered and well organized as you can imagine would 32:43 be the case of the Soviet administration of the time 32:53 the talks began very quickly 32:58 France organized missions both diplomatic but also secret services to 33:04 take a look at what was there and from then on the French archives started being returned 33:11 but this was not without resistance because the Russian Doomer considered these documents to be a national 33:16 treasure that they were War reparations 33:27 the foreign affairs minister was Lauren Fabius I had some contacts in his office 33:33 and so I knew they were reluctant reluctant because the Russians have a hard time returning what they've taken from others but from the Nazis in 33:40 particular throughout the entire history of the Soviet Union 33:47 didn't refuse the transfer it was just suspended 33:59 yes the planted archives are still a sensitive issue for Russia as is the 34:04 entire memory of the second world war in fact it's become a major focus of political discourse for Vladimir Putin 34:14 um it's a sensitive issue because it brings 34:20 to the Forefront the way that Soviet practices were not necessarily in keeping with international law 34:28 nor did they respect their allies at the time since France and the USSR were 34:33 allies there was no reason not to return 18th century archives to France 34:53 The Collection contained France's Masonic documents but also the archives of many other departments 35:00 when all lined up the documents of the French police alone represented six kilometers 35:07 there were also the documents of political parties unions like the cgt the private correspondence of notable 35:13 figures such as Leon bloom not to mention the archives of the Protestant Federation and human rights 35:19 League [Music] I wrote a letter to President sharak 35:26 dated November 25th 1997 asking him to intercede on our behalf to recover these 35:31 archives the idea was to influence his counterpart president Yeltsin of the 35:38 Russian Federation foreign 35:49 from the moment the president became involved things became much easier thanks to his exacting manner 36:05 [Music] 36:26 France paid 4 million francs which was not negligible at that time 36:31 that the Russians since it was no longer the USSR by this point had asked for in 36:37 order to microfilm documents that interested them to pay for the packaging and the 36:43 creation of an inventory list as they would be sending all of this to France in trucks 36:50 [Music] what became of this money remains a 36:55 mystery 37:04 in Moscow The Diplomatic maneuvering of the European embassies intensified as 37:09 each fought to recover a lost past the Netherlands Belgium and Norway began 37:16 working on discrete negotiations and secret deals [Music] 37:26 foreign [Music] 37:34 at the end of 1999 we were warned that the archives could soon be returning to France and we began to have meetings 37:41 with the foreign Ministries archive management director who orchestrated the logistics of the returns 37:48 we were informed just days before that the hundreds of archive boxes would arrive by truck on December 23rd at Rook 37:55 a day 38:03 the grand Orient of France the Grand Lodge of France and the duaima were all reunited with their missing archives as 38:09 were the lodges in Belgium [Music] and so we unpacked these boxes in a 38:17 rather extraordinary atmosphere because December 23rd was the decoration of the grand orient's Christmas tree so there 38:23 were lots of children running around we brought the boxes up and then we 38:28 closed the door of the library and we began to open the 750 boxes just a small 38:34 group of us people from the library my colleagues and me and then something extraordinary 38:40 happened we opened the box pulled out a file and we see which was the Legendary Lodge of the 38:47 18th century whose members included Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire all of the archives had disappeared probably at 38:53 the time of the revolution on the early 19th century so he had practically no documentation a 19th century author 39:00 wrote a huge book about the lodge and he said I'm writing this with no reference documents and so here we finally Nerf 39:07 sir and we said if the rest of the 750 boxes are like this we're not going to survive 39:21 at the Grand Lodge of France it was the sisters of the women's Grand Lodge who combed through the archives 39:29 as in other lodges they found manuscripts of rituals dating from the origins of Freemasonry International 39:34 correspondence such as letters of the Marquis De Lafayette and documents detailing the everyday life of The 39:40 Lodges [Music] 39:51 a collection of documents that would shine a new light on the role of Freemasonry from the enlightenment right 39:57 up until World War II [Music] 40:06 I'm very happy to see them in the home where they belong because I had been 40:13 working with the archivist from the ground Oreo from the very when I first 40:19 learned about the Masonic archives in Moscow so for me it's a great pleasure and a great sense of satisfaction for 40:27 seeing them here [Music] 40:38 foreign 40:45 documents in these archives yes not in every one of the 750 boxes but there 40:51 were boxes of archives dating back to the 18th century and in the 18th century there were 40:57 several branches of Freemasonry a branch that was very in line with the enlightenment like that of Le Nerf Sur 41:03 inspired by the ideas of Voltaire or Rousseau then there was an illuminous branch which was interested in the 41:09 secrets of existence with the unknown and in their papers we found some very 41:14 important documents on an esoteric figure of the 18th century called Martinez de Pasquale 41:21 a sort of wizard we don't know much about who taught a kind of judeo-christian Kabbalah 41:30 [Music] 41:35 Martinez de Pasquale one of the great enigmas of Freemasonry 41:41 he appeared in the middle of the 18th century and founded a new Masonic order where brothers who were occult 41:47 enthusiasts could practice Magic foreign 41:58 but to reduce the Freemasons to such esoteric practices would be to indulge in fantasies just as the Nazis did 42:14 the archives are also a great way to demystify a Freemasonry especially for those who didn't know 42:20 much about it and show that we were vital to the European culture that crystallized around the 18th century 42:27 a culture that continues or should continue to inspire us 42:36 [Music] 42:45 what fascinates the public about Freemasonry and continues to attract new 42:50 candidates is indeed its esoteric and symbolic side 42:59 if it still works as well as it does today it's because in the last decades we've seen a decline in religion and 43:07 those who go to The Lodges find a spirituality there that they can't find elsewhere foreign 43:13 [Music] 43:24 [Music] our symbols are not there to scare you our symbols allow you to work on 43:30 yourself obviously we can't explain every aspect 43:36 of it to the public but people have to stop thinking that we 43:42 control everything from behind the scenes No we're just working on ourselves 43:58 is associated with the ruling Powers because historically at the end of the 19th century Freemasonry was a sort of 44:05 political party alternative when there were no political parties who created the political platforms 44:12 well the grand oriented in its lodges the separation of church and state the 44:19 law of associations National Education the law for paid vacation in 1936. all 44:25 of that came from The Lodges but that was another era today political parties are totally independent and don't need 44:31 our lodges so this fantasy that the Freemasons run France needs to stop 44:41 if masonry's political influence has decreased some networks remain active in economic sectors 44:47 and headline making scandals often lead the public to conflate Freemasonry with the players in these affairs 44:56 were Freemasons at one time the masters of the world of course not 45:01 this is not the goal of masonry you can't say that a powerful person picks up the phone to call a particular person 45:08 to make things happen no this was never our ambition masonry does nothing in 45:14 secret 45:28 whenever there's a scandal involving Freemasons whether Financial or political it always rekindles the 45:35 fantasies the fascination the Curiosity for what remains a strange institution 45:46 strange because it came into being three centuries ago because it follows rituals born in the 18th century 45:53 using talismans and it gives the leaders pompous titles 46:03 curiosity when today we're a bit more into Simplicity and modernism 46:08 we're not very YouTube and Twitter compatible probably 46:20 what if behind this mask of power and secrecy the archives reveal a different reality one that's simply human 46:27 Anonymous men and women trying to find themselves 46:33 [Music] if there is only one lesson to be 46:38 learned from the Masonic archives I would say that political parties of the right or left put Society at risk 46:45 when they are extremes we are vulnerable to this right now if 46:53 we're not careful 47:05 you can draw parallels between anti-freemasonry under Vichy and the current anti-freemasonry 47:13 there has always been suspicion of cronyism of the presence of Jews but that's not what it's about anymore 47:20 the Freemasons of 1939 recruited members from the left but today recruitment has 47:26 widely expanded the only party today that could feel threatened by the Freemasons and where 47:32 you can find some anti-freemasonry sentiment is the far right foreign 47:38 [Music] 47:52 these documents which have survived the worst dictatorships of the 20th century are now being studied by the Freemasons 48:00 but the work is far from over [Music] 48:06 yes it does there is that feeling of meeting old friends again after a long separation 48:11 when you think of the journey that these archives have taken he left Paris for Berlin in a somewhat tense atmosphere 48:17 they were repatriated from Berlin to Moscow in the midst of bombs and some things were lost because certain trucks 48:23 were destroyed and then they were returned from Moscow what a journey so 48:29 after 50 years of absence the documents of the grand Orient have come home to the roucade oh 48:36 the Grand Lodge of France and the Dwight Yuma also recovered their documents but what about their memories 48:43 [Music] 48:49 we're sure that there are some archives that have not been returned most have been and indeed it was great to see that 48:55 there were both historical records and more common records about the everyday life of Freemasonry 49:01 so that's quite exciting because they hadn't been sorted 49:09 but some documents have stayed in Moscow and in the Old Eastern Bloc some 49:15 archives were very recently rediscovered in quotes in Minsk in Belarus 49:22 but I think we might still discover more archives or books for example maybe The 49:28 Lodges libraries in Poland yes there's a good chance 49:35 in the red Army's Central archives in the suburbs of Moscow found dozens of boxes containing the 49:41 unreturned plunder of the Nazis Masonic rituals of high-ranking officials alchemical manuscripts accounts of 49:48 pre-war anti-fascist networks these thousands of invaluable documents are still waiting to come to light 49:56 [Music] 50:02 [Music] 50:14 thank you foreign 50:25 [Music] [Applause] 50:44 [Music] 33060