Man buys auction items to thwart neo-Nazis
BERLIN — A Lebaneseborn Swiss real estate mogul said Monday that he purchased Adolf Hitler’s top hat and other Nazi memorabilia from a German auction in order to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis, and has agreed to donate them to a Jewish group.
Abdallah Chatila, a Lebanese Christian who has lived in Switzerland for decades, told the AP he paid about $660,000 for the items at the Munich auction last week, intending to destroy them after reading of Jewish groups’ objections to the sale.
“I wanted to make sure that these pieces wouldn’t fall into bad hands, to the wrong side of the story, so I decided to buy them,” he said.
Shortly before the auction, however, he decided it would be better to donate them to a Jewish organization, and got in touch with the Keren Hayesod-United
Israel Appeal group.
Chatila is never going to even see the items — which also include a silver-plated edition of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and a typewriter used by the dictator’s secretary — that will be sent directly to the group, he said.
Keren Hayesod’s European director told France’s Le Point magazine that the items would likely be sent to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial, which has a selection of Nazi artifacts.
The European Jewish
Association, which had led the campaign against the auction going ahead, applauded Chatila for stepping in.
“Such a conscience, such an act of selfless generosity to do something that you feel strongly about is the equivalent of finding a precious diamond in an Everest of coal,” EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin wrote. “You have set an example for the world to follow when it comes to this macabre and sickening trade in Nazi trinkets.”