The signature on the letter above, which is printed and not hand signed, is that of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Joseph Erbprinz von Waldeck-Pyrmont (1896-1967). Waldeck -Pyrmont was a nephew of Queen Wilmina of Holland and was born in the family castle in Arolsen in 1896. He served with distinction as a junior oficer in World War I, ending the war when he was seriously wounded in action. After the war, Waldeck -Pyrmont joined the NSDAP on 1 November 1929 just in time to participate in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 9 November and earn the Blood Order. On 2 March 1930 he became a member of the SS, serving first as an adjutant to Sepp Dietrich in Munich before subsequently becoming Himmler's Chief of Staff and in September 1930.

Promoted to SS Obergruppenfuhrer (SS Lieutenant General), Waldeck-Pyrmont was also elected to serve as a member of the Reichstag in 1933 for the district of Dusseldorf-West. Due to a combination of merit and valuable ties with the old aristocrcy, Waldeck-Pyrmont was promoted to the position of Hohrer SS (Senior SS) and became the Police Commander for the district of Kassel-Mainfranken in 1939. With the outbreak of the war in September, Waldeck-Pyrmont was promoted to the rank of SS General and General der Waffen SS respectively.

Following the victory over Poland, Waldeck-Pyrmont was tasked by Himmler with the mission of establishing what became known as the Bureau for Germanization of the Eastern Peoples", which he ran from a headquarters that he established in Kassel for this purpose until the end of the war, while simultaneously performing his other duties as the Police Commander in Kassel, Wehrkrise IX Commander, SS Oberabschnitt IX Commander and General der Waffen SS.respectively.

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After the war, he was arrested by the Allies and sentenced to life in prision by an American Military Court in August 1947. The first of the two charges against Waldeck-Pyrmont was that, while he admittedly never held actual command, the fact that the camp at Buchenwald was located in his jurisdictional area of operations was considered sufficient to hold him personally responsible for anything that may have happened there. Incidentally, it should be noted that Buchenwald has never been identified as a "Death Camp" and that no such charges were laid against Waldeck-Pyrmont.

The second of the charges on which Waldeck-Pyrmont was found guility was that he personally ordered the execution of the Camp Commander of Buchenwald, Brigade Fuhrer Koch (Ilse Koch's Husband) after it was discovered that he had disgraced both himself and the SS through his private use of convict labor to become a millionaire. For health reasons, he was released from prison in 1950 and died in November 1967 at the age of seventy one.