Amid Jewish Outrage, Hitler’s Manuscripts Fetch Over $40,000
Jewish Community Believes Auction Would Promote Neo-Nazism
Thousands of antiquarians love to gather artifacts that once belonged to the people who changed the course of history.
However, the collections may sometimes give an impression of exculpation to figures who had received more hate than love.
One such auction was organized in Munich at Hermann Historica auction house where handwritten speech notes by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler came under the hammer amid objections from Jewish groups. The groups opposed the happening, maintaining that it would stir Neo-Nazism in the society.
The scrawled writings date back to pre-World War II (WWII) and were sold to anonymous bidders way higher than their starting prices.
A nine-page manuscript by Hitler outlining his speech to new military officers in Berlin in 1939 about eight months before the beginning of WWII managed to bag $40,300.
Apart from the writings from a man who spurred a genocide of nearly six million European Jews, the collections also contained pots from his tea service and presentation copies of his books.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the Head of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, expressed concerns saying that the event could mark a rise to anti-Semitism in Germany.
However, the Hermann Historica auction house came in defense of the program.
The officials said that Hitler’s writings must be taken as memorabilia that needed preservation irrespective of who they belonged to and what they stated.
