A Geneva businessman says he has purchased Adolf Hitler’s top hat and other items of Nazi memorabilia to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis and will donate them to a Jewish group
A Geneva businessman says he has purchased Adolf Hitler’s top hat and other Nazi memorabilia to keep them out of the hands of neo-Nazis and will donate them to a Jewish group.
Abdallah Chatila, a Lebanese Christian who has lived in Switzerland for decades, told The Associated Press on Monday he paid some 600,000 euros ($660,000) for the items last week at a Munich auction, intending to destroy them after reading of Jewish groups’ objections to the sale.
He says: “I have no direct interest whatsoever, I just thought it was the right thing to do.”
Instead, just before the auction he spoke with the Keren Hayesod group and decided to donate them to the Jewish organization.
The European Jewish Association applauded his “supreme act of kindness, generosity and solidarity.”
