Adolf Hitler's gold watch was auctioned in the United States for much less than expected, but still more than a million dollars.
The Nazi relic was sold for 1.1 million dollars (about 420 million forints) at the auction held despite the protests of Jewish organizations, much less than the 2-4 million dollars expected by Alexander Historical Auctions.
According to the auction house's announcement on Thursday, the watch with the engraved imperial eagle and swastika was a gift to Hitler in 1933 by members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
It was found by a French soldier at the Nazi leader's Alpine residence in Berchtesgaden on May 4, 1945, four days after Hitler's suicide. The watch was owned by the soldier's family for decades.
The European Jewish Association (EJA), the Jewish umbrella organization, demanded in a letter that the auction be cancelled, saying that the auctioning of items from the property of the genocidal dictator does not promote learning about Nazi atrocities, such items are for museums, not auctions.
Other Nazi relics sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at an auction in Maryland.
An imperial eagle from the former Imperial Chancellery in Berlin fetched $200,000 for a bidder, a bronze writing pad on which Hitler signed the Munich Agreement on the annexation of the bordering Czech territories fetched $290,000, according to the auction house's website.
In 2017, Alexander Historical Auctions auctioned the pink telephone found in Hitler's Berlin bunker at the end of World War II for $243,000.
MTI
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