Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Zenger
Zenger
World
Alberto Arellano

European Jewish Association Urges Irish Auction House To Drop Hitler Items

European Jewish Association chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin requested on Tuesday, May 31, that Bloomfield Auctions withdraw from a sale in June two items once belonging to Adolf Hitler.

The items are an initialed pencil given to Hitler by Eva Braun, and a signed and framed photograph.

“This is not a legal appeal to you, Mr. Bennett, but very much a moral one,” wrote Margolin in a letter to Bloomfield Auctions Managing Director Karl Bennett.

Screen showing loft 275 at Bloomfield Auctions during the auction where a Breeches Bible, Geneva Edition printed by Robert Parker, which dates back to 1615, was auctioned off with a winning £20,000 bid. (Photo by Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images)

“In comments attributed to you in a national newspaper, you say: ‘But for me, as a high-end collector of militaria items, they preserve a piece of our past and should be treated as historical objects, no matter if the history they refer to was one of the darkest and most controversial in recorded history,’ ” wrote Margolin.

“We simply cannot fathom how a love trinket such as an engraved pencil or a signed photograph constitutes a historical object of any inherent historical value,” he continued.

“In Europe today and indeed further afield, auction houses are buying and selling to the highest bidder other items such as watches or ashtrays belonging to Hitler, Hermann Göring cutlery sets, even Wehrmacht toilet paper. The defense from Munich to Maryland is the same, these items are of historical interest. They are anything but,” he continued.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin attends European Jewish Association (EJA) delegation visit in Auschwitz concentration camp on January 21, 2020 in Oswiecim, Poland. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Adding that while the EJA supports placing items of historical importance in museums and educational institutions, it opposes as “dangerous” the creation of a “macabre trade in items belonging to mass murderers.”

Such a trade, he said, “Is an insult to the millions who perished, the few survivors left, and to Jews everywhere.”

Margolin concluded by requesting from Bennett that he withdraw the items from sale “in this spirit of decency.”

 

Produced in association with Jewish News Syndicate

Edited by Jessi Rexroad Shull and Sterling Creighton Beard

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.