Los Angeles, CA – Letter of Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Writing May Be the Original

Los Angeles, CA – In 1919, a soldier in Munich discovered that he could galvanize small groups of fellow trench warfare veterans with virulently anti-Semitic oratory. A superior officer, impressed with the soldier’s oral skills, asked him to commit his ideas to paper.

Thus came into existence the first written record of Adolf Hitler’s obsessive hostility toward Jews, an embryonic form of the worldview that would later lead to the Holocaust and millions of deaths.

Now, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has acquired what it believes may be the original version of the document, known as the Gemlich letter. In July, the center plans to put it on public view for the first time, at its Museum of Tolerance, making the letter the centerpiece of its Holocaust exhibit.

The text of the letter is well known to scholars. It is considered significant because it demonstrates just how early in his career Hitler was formulating his anti-Semitic views.

Othmar Plöckinger, an expert on early Hitler documents, says it appears that the document acquired by the Wiesenthal Center is the original letter written by Hitler and that one in Munich is a copy made about the same time. “There are a lot of points that make me believe it could be the original,” Mr. Plöckinger said of the Wiesenthal Center’s document.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and director of the Wiesenthal Center, says he is convinced that the four-page letter, acquired by the organization for $150,000 last month through a dealer, is genuine. “I am absolutely certain our copy is signed by Adolf Hitler,” Rabbi Hier said.

Hitler wrote that occasional pogroms against the Jews were not enough – the Jewish “race” must be “removed” from Germany as a matter of national policy.

Rabbi Hier said he had persuaded members of the Wiesenthal Center board of trustees to donate the $150,000 purchase price for the Gemlich letter.