LIFE 0

Secret WWI documents surface at flea market in Turkish capital

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency | 9/14/2011 12:00:00 AM |

A total of 4,221 documents from the World War I era have been found at a flea market in Ankara, Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday.

Some of the documents bore the mark “secret” on them while others were entirely encrypted.

The most prominent finds among the documents were ones belonging to Herbert Hoover, who later became the 31st president of the United States, and Spanish King Alphonso XIII.

Speaking to Anatolia, collector Fuat Köksal said he was going through a stack of papers at the flea market in 2009 when he came upon letters handwritten in Spanish bearing the date “1915” on them.

"I instantly realized what I had come across," Köksal said. "I went through the rest of the stack and found telegrams mentioning 'Marques de Villalobar.'"

Köksal said he purchased the entire stack and after some research he found out that Marques de Villalobar was the Spanish ambassador to Belgium during World War I. "Pictures of him [Villalobar], personal letters and official transactions showed that this stack was a personal collection of Marques de Villalobar," he said.

Almost all of the documents belonged to the period of time when Germany occupied Belgium during the war, Köksal said.

Köksal said there were nearly 60 encrypted telegrams and handwritten documents. "These could shed light to encryption techniques at the time," he said.

[HH]First issues of Belgian newspaper

Among the finds were the first 69 issues of Belgian daily "La Libre Belgique," which was founded in 1915 and circulated in secret due to the German occupation at the time.

"The paper celebrates its 96th anniversary this year," Köksal said. "I guess even the paper's archives would not have the issues I have found."

Köksal said he needed help from historians to sort, prioritize and decrypt the entire collection.