The head of the European Jewish Association has written to an auction house in Munich, Germany asking for it to halt a November 20 sale of 147 different items from the Third Reich, including clothing belonging to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, Hitler's top hat and a silver-covered edition of Mein Kampf.
"We believe the sale of such memorabilia has little intrinsic historical value but instead will be bought by those who glorify and seek to justify the actions of the greatest evil to affect Europe," says Rabbi Menachem Margolin in the letter to Hermann Historica auction house.
"The trade therefore in such items should simply not take place," Margolin wrote, adding that the auction itself was "not illegal, but it is wrong."
Hermann Historica's director Bernhard Pacher was quoted by Germany's Bild daily newspaper as saying: "Yes, Hitler sells but most of all to customers who are approaching it with serious historical interest."
The items include the personal belongings of top Nazi leaders such as Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, many of which were seized by U.S. soldiers in the final days of World War II.
The dresses belonging to Eva Braun, Hitler's long-term companion who was briefly his wife before their death, were found among 40 trunks seized by the U.S. military in May 1945 in the Austrian city Salzburg.
Some of the more unusual lots include a copy of Hitler's rental contract in Munich and a pair of sunglasses worn by a defendant at the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946 to avoid the glare of the floodlights.