A small archive of thirteenth-century letters and other documents has been returned to Poland after spending a few decades in the possession of an American WWII veteran, the BBC reports.
The seventeen letters on vellum, some written by Popes Alexander IV and Gregory X, were discovered in Austria during the war by GI George Gavin, and are believed to have originated in the archives of Wroclaw, Poland. Gavin's son Philip recently decided to repatriate the documents, and they were accepted by "Wladyslaw Stepniak, deputy director of the Polish national archives, at Warsaw airport on Monday." Stepniak told the AP "We are very, very grateful. These letters are of great value to us."
