Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is one of the most racist and heinous screeds in modern history, but officials say two rare early editions signed by him could go for more than $20,000 at an online auction on Thursday.
Nate Sanders, owner of Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles, says he knows he’ll catch a lot of flack for putting the rare 1925 and 1926 books up for bid.
He said he understands that. “But it is a piece of history. It is a very rare item.”
Hitler was arrested and jailed for the attempt to seize power. He dictated “Mein Kampf,” two volumes of autobiography and anti-Semitic manifesto, to Rudolf Hess while behind bars to raise money for his criminal defense.
Both volumes’ fly-leaves feature Hitler’s signature.
Sanders said volumes of “Mein Kampf” from the 1930s are common, but a copy signed by the author is rare.
Sanders is also auctioning off a leather trench coat he said was worn by Albert Speer, a Nazi government minister who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Nazi regime.
Selling Nazi memorabilia is prohibited in many European countries that saw the horrors of World War II.
(AP)
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4 Responses
Burn it? I disagree. My father read Mein Kampf in college in the 60s (before you start the rant, it was in a Jewish Studies class at the very Jewish Brooklyn College). I still have his copy. He says that every Jew should read it, so we understand what we’re fighting against and what the world thinks of us. These two books should not be sold for profit, but donated to a museum for study and preservation. Modern racists and anti-semites think they invented something new. These books show the result, mass genocide and 40,000,000 or more dead.
In a few weeks we’ll read Parshas Zachor. The Torah commands us to both “remember” Amalek and to wipe him out in the same paragraph. If you wipe him out no one will remember him and another Amalek will arise, so we have the dual command. Similarly here. We should eradicate anti-Semitism but we have to remember what we’re eradicating so we know what it is when we see it.
Buy It And Burn it?
Are you nuts? Save the money and us it to help out needy people is a bigger mitzvah.
To Commenter No. 1: Excellent comment.
LA with capitals means Louisiana !