A four-page letter by Adolf Hitler — believed to contain his first written anti-Semitic comments calling Jews a threat that should be removed — was unveiled this week.
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the L.A.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center paid $150,000 to a private dealer last month to obtain the 1919 writing, known as the Gemlich letter. It originally was found by American soldier William F. Ziegler in a Nazi archive near Nuremberg, Germany, in the final months of World War II.
Hitler’s letter calls for a strong government that could handle the “Jewish threat” and bring about the “removal of the Jews altogether.”
“The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people,” Hitler wrote in German. “The cause of this aversion … arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression that the individual Jew leaves — almost always an unfavorable one.”
Hier said the letter was typed by Hitler on a German army typewriter and that it “set the gold standard about man’s inhumanity to man.” At the time it was written, Hitler was serving in the army, and had taken to riling up the troops with his anti-Semitic rants. A superior officer urged Hitler to put his ideas on paper.
The letter has long been known to scholars. It is considered significant because it demonstrates how early Hitler was forming his anti-Semitic views.
Hier unveiled the letter in New York but the center plans to put it on view at its Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in July.
In one section of the letter, Hitler said that a powerful government could curtail the so-called “Jewish threat” by denying their rights, but that “its final aim, however, must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether.” — ap