Here's a story:
A silver-plated pencil purported to have belonged to Adolf Hitler has sold for one-tenth of its pre-auction estimate at a Belfast auction house.
How much did it go for?
The pencil sold for £5,400 to an online bidder at Bloomfield Auctions in the Northern Ireland capital on Tuesday.
It had been expected to fetch between £50,000-£80,000.
And:
It is believed the pencil had been given to the Nazi dictator by his long-term partner Eva Braun as a gift for his 52nd birthday on 20 April 1941.
It is inscribed with "Eva'" in German and the initials "AH".
The pencil was originally purchased by a collector at an auction in 2002 and since then has remained in the collector's family.
Understandably:
It is believed the pencil had been given to the Nazi dictator by his long-term partner Eva Braun as a gift for his 52nd birthday on 20 April 1941.
It is inscribed with "Eva'" in German and the initials "AH".
The pencil was originally purchased by a collector at an auction in 2002 and since then has remained in the collector's family.
Bloomfield Auctions was urged to halt the sale for moral reasons by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
He described the trade in items which belonged to senior Nazis as "an insult to the millions who perished" in the holocaust, as well as "the few survivors left, and to Jews everywhere".
A pencil is a small thing, an inanimate object, but a pencil that has the historical and material connections to Hitler is a different thing. Of course there must be tens of thousands of objects that are associated as closely or more so with him. But they weren't on sale in Bloomfield (notably the sale of Nazi memorabilia is banned in some European states).
The whole issue of collectibles, of having objects that are associated with someone is fraught with issues. There's a further issue of these in private collections as distinct from national or state ones. I'd imagine there will be no ban on these sort of objects any time soon.
But in a curious way the outcome of the sale seems to at least offer a small sliver of, perhaps not justice, but something. A tenth of the asking price? Not quite worthless, but... Sounds about right.
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