A collapsible top hat that supposedly belonged to Adolf Hitler sold for 50,000 euros ($55,300) at a Munich-based online auction on Wednesday. Along with a number of other Nazi items, it was purchased by Swiss-Lebanese investor Abdallah Chatila who donated it to Keren Hayesod, the Israeli fundraising organization. But he couldn’t get all the Nazi memorabilia that were on offer. It’s time the other buyers got more attention.
The gesture by Chatila, who is a Lebanese Christian, was praised by the European Jewish Association, which called it a “supreme act of kindness, generosity and solidarity.”
The owners of the auction house behind the sales, meanwhile, contended to the German news station NTV that it was their responsibility to prevent the wrong people from obtaining the Nazi items.
“By far the biggest share of buyers who acquire from us are museums, state collections and private collectors who study the subject matter painstakingly,” Bernhard Pacher of the Hermann Historica auction group told the TV station, according to Bloomberg.
