Bottom line: is it immoral to sell Adolf Hitler’s underpants or other Nazi memorabilia?
- Big money abounds in the German war artefact market, and Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland is the centre of the trade in the US
- Many buyers are Jewish, says the auction house’s founder, Basil ‘Bill’ Panagopulos, but it’s a trade that infuriates some
He has auctioned the journals of Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele for US$300,000, Adolf Hitler’s telephone from the Führerbunker for US$243,000 and Hitler’s ring featuring a swastika made of 16 rubies for more than US$65,000.
A pair of Hitler’s underpants, monogrammed “AH”, sold for US$6,700 last year.
Then, just before Thanksgiving, a Hitler-inscribed propaganda photograph that shows the architect of the Holocaust hugging a German girl of Jewish heritage went for more than US$11,000.
Big money abounds in the Nazi artefact market, and Basil “Bill” Panagopulos, founder of Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland, is the trade’s unabashed promoter.
But at a time of growing anti-Semitism and white nationalism in the US and beyond, the buying and selling of Hitler’s belongings and other Third Reich tchotchkes – including counterfeits – is stirring up the same kind of debate that has dogged displays of Confederate flags and Civil War statues.
Which items of the past are worth keeping? Which spoils of war should be preserved? And which symbols of hatred are better off consigned to history’s trash heap?