An open letter signed by 34 Jewish leaders called the sale “disgusting” and called for Nazi items to be removed from the auction.
At an auction in the USA, a watch that claimed to have belonged to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, sold for $1.1 million. A Huber watch sold to an anonymous bidder features a swastika and engraved initials AH. Jewish leaders condemned the auction before the sale at Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland. However, the auction house, which previously sold Nazi memorabilia, told German media that its aim was to preserve history, writes the BBC.
Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, orchestrating the systematic murder of 11 million people, six million of whom were killed because they were Jewish.
The watch's catalog says it may have been given to a Nazi to the leader on his birthday in 1933, when he became Chancellor of Germany.
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The auction house estimates that the watch was taken as a trophy when about 30 French soldiers stormed the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat, in May 1945.
At the time, the watch was believed to have been resold and passed down several generations to the present.< /p>
Other items up for auction included a dress that belonged to Hitler's wife Eva Braun, autographed photos of Nazi officials and a yellow fabric Star of David with the word “Jew” on it. During the Holocaust, the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow IDs as armbands or badges with the intention of isolating and persecuting them.
An open letter signed by 34 Jewish leaders called the sale “disgusting” and called for the Nazi items to be removed from the auction.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, said the operation provided “help to those who idealize what the Nazi Party stood for.”
“While the lessons of history obviously need to be learned — and legitimate Nazi artifacts do have a place in museums or institutions of higher learning — the stuff you're selling clearly doesn't,” he wrote he.
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“Regardless of whether the story is good or bad, it needs to be preserved,” Deutsche Welle Senior Vice President Mindy Greenstein told Deutsche Welle. “If you destroy history, there will be no evidence that it happened.”
Documents provided by the auction house state that the institution cannot provide evidence that Hitler actually wore the aforementioned watch. An examination conducted by an independent specialist showed that it “probably” belongs to him.
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Although the watch fetched more than $1 million, it fell short of the auction house's estimate of $2 million to $4 million.
