An auction house based in the Cecil County town of Chesapeake City defended the sale of what it says were personal objects of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, amid criticism from a European Jewish group. Located along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the historic hamlet of Chesapeake City is located 58 miles northwest of Baltimore.
One of the priciest items in the catalog for Friday’s auction by Alexander Historical Auctions house is a candy dish estimated to be worth at least $3,000 that the auction house says belonged to Hitler and was stolen from his Berghof compound near Munich. It is emblazoned with a golden symbol of the Reichsadler — the Nazi party’s imperial eagle — and the initials AH.
Another similarly priced item is a dog collar said to have belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife, for one of her pet Scottish terriers, Negus and Katuschka. A leather artifact with a small metal plate that reads “wau wau” — the sound of a dog barking as it is described in German — it is also studded with multiple metal swastikas.
The European Jewish Association, a Brussels-based lobbying group, condemned the sale in a letter. The items only give “succor to those who idealize what the Nazi party stood for” or offer “buyers the chance to titillate a guest or loved one with an item belonging to a genocidal murderer and his supporters,” wrote the group’s chairman, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Historical Auctions, which has faced similar rebuke for previous sales — including one that featured the personal diaries of Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi physician known as the “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz — dismissed the criticism as “nonsense and sensationalism” in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“What we sell is criminal evidence, no matter how insignificant,” he wrote. “It is tangible, real in-your-face proof that Hitler and Nazis lived, and also persecuted and killed tens of millions of people. To destroy or in any way impede the display or protection of this material is a crime against history.”
The buyers, he noted, “are NOT neo-Nazis, who are too poor and too stupid to appreciate any kind of historic material.”
Cheaper items on sale that are said to have belonged to Hitler and Braun include cutlery, champagne glasses, a beer glass tray and stationery. Some of the items had multiple bids on them on July 28, including the collar going for up to $2,750 and the candy bowl going for up to $1,600.
“The sale of these items is an abhorrence. There is little to no intrinsic historical value to the vast bulk of the lots on display,” Rabbi Margolin wrote to the auction house in a letter that was co-signed by 34 members and leaders of European Jewish communities.
The European Jewish Association does not know whether the items on sale are authentic, a spokesperson for the group told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In 2017, Alexander Historical Auctions sold to an identified buyer an item it had described as Hitler’s telephone. Bidding started at $100,000, and the item ended up fetching $243,000.
Cnaan Liphshiz writes for the JTA global Jewish news source.
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