A typewritten letter that shows Hitler’s hatred of Jews – and his belief that they should be removed from Germany by a “ruthless government” – will be displayed to the public for the first time Wednesday at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
The letter is the single most important document in the museum’s historical archive, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who heads the Simon Weisenthal Center, which operates the facility.
It’s important, Hier said, because it shows that long before he became powerful, Hitler espoused anti-Semitism, and called for the elimination of Jews.
That’s significant, he said, because there are no records that Hitler personally ordered the extermination of Jews in his concentration camps, and some have argued that it was aides – not the dictator himself – who originally had the idea.
“This letter tells us it was Adolf Hitler’s idea to get rid of the Jews,” Heir said. “He had this idea when he was a nobody., and 21 years later he implemented everything he wrote about. He eliminated one-third of world Jewry and started a war in which 50,000 people lost their lives.”
In the letter, which is on display along with a timeline of the Holocaust and other images, Hitler refers to the “Jewish peril.” He says that Jews flatter rulers to get their way, and are ruthless in their pursuit of money. It’s not enough to foster anti-Semitism, Hitler writes – governments must “remove” them.
“Anti-Semitism stemming from purely emotive reasons will always find its expression in the form of pogroms (physical violence against Jews),” Hitler wrote, according to a translation provided by the Weisenthal Center. “But anti-Semitism based on reason must lead to the systematic legal combatting and removal of rights of the Jew. … Its final aim, however, must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether.”
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Hitler wrote the letter while working for the German army in 1919. It was just after the end of the First World War, and a fellow soldier requested the army’s position on the role of the Jews in the country’s defeat.
Hitler, who worked in a propaganda unit, was assigned to write a response. This letter, called the Gemlich letter because it was addressed to soldier Adolf Gemlich, is the four-page result. It was written six years before Hitler's famous manifesto, Mein Kampf.
The Museum of Tolerance is located at 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles.
