A BARGAIN hunter snapped up some old time dance records and discovered Nazi war crime documents hidden beneath them.

Now Pat Goodship's discovery, dating from 1946, is to be auctioned. Mrs Goodship, 52, of Briar Leaze, Compton Bassett, spent £2 on two small boxes of 78rpm records at a North Wiltshire auction house.

At the bottom of piles of chipped Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and dance band discs, she found a series of books and papers, many in German.

She hoped they were sheet music, which she collects, but soon realised they related to World War Two.

Mrs Goodship, a married mother of two, said: "I saw four or five sheets listing 33 accused and where they were held.There was a list of victims and one of witnesses.

"Over two or three days, I kept picking the papers up, looking at them and trying to piece them together."

Mrs Goodship also enlisted the help of her son, Paul, who lives in Chippenham, who has a good knowledge of German.

Finally, she decided to call in the Old Town auction house of Dominic Winter, whose document specialist, Richard Westwood-Brookes, is studying her discovery.

Mr Westwood-Brookes said much of the data seemed to concern a man called Josef Schmeiden, who may have worked at Dachau, near Munich. This was the notorious concentration camp which specialised in holding political detainees, many of whom perished.

However, further investigation will take place before the documents are auctioned, probably next month.

Although the experts have not put a figure on the value of her find, Mrs Goodship has been told she could quite possibly be sitting on a small fortune.

Mrs Goodship will be going to Dominic Winter in Swindon on November 9 when the documents are due to be auctioned.

She said: "It was just fascinating to hold something like that in my hands but I haven't really got any use for them which is why I am going to sell them.

"Things like this need to be kept preserved for future generations. You just don't know what discoveries they could lead to."