German auctioneer defends Nazi sale, including premium copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf
- Among the 842 Nazi items going under the hammer are Hitler’s top hat and a luxury edition of his manifesto Mein Kampf
- Hermann Historica acknowledges it’s almost impossible to filter out bidders with ‘wrong’ ideologies, but says it has strict controls over the sale process
The controversy around the auction, which is set to run on Wednesday evening, escalated last week when Menachem Margolin, a rabbi and chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA), wrote to the Hermann Historica auction house asking them to reconsider the sale.
“I ask you again to withdraw the Nazi auction items, again not because of any illegality, but instead to send a message that some things – particularly when so metaphorically blood-soaked – should not and must not be traded,” Margolin wrote in the November 11 letter.
“I am writing to respectfully ask you to withdraw the auction. This is not a legal appeal to you, but very much a moral one. What you are doing is not illegal, but it is wrong.”
Items in the auction include: a top hat that once belonged to Hitler; a cocktail dress once worn by his wife, Eva Braun; and a luxury edition of Hitler’s treatise Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
Bernhard Pacher, managing director of Hermann Historica, says he and his company have received numerous emails since the letter from the EJA, some of them insulting. But he says the sale is being handled with the utmost care.