A dagger supposedly once owned by Heinrich Himmler, the leader of Adolf Hitler’sSS security force that helped run Nazi concentration camps, is being sold through the 49-year-old Portland family business O’Gallerie, prompting local outrage in the days since an Oregon artist discovered the listing.
“We don’t believe that a business or an individual should be able to profit from something like this — it’s shameful,” says Bob Horenstein, the director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. He says he’s tried without success to reach O’Gallerie’s owners.
Horenstein’s view on the Portland auction house selling the dagger:
“They don’t care. They just want to make money off of it.”
O’Gallerie on Sunday did not respond to emails or phone messages from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The online catalog reads, “VERY RARE HEINRICH HIMMLER PRESENTATION SS HONOR DAGGER.” The photograph that accompanies the listing shows a gleaming knife with the Nazi war eagle stamped on its handle. The blade itself offers the message: “Meine Ehre Heisst Treue,” or “Loyalty is My Honor.”
Items used or touched by high-ranking Nazis have become collectibles in part because of the admiration of racists devoted to grotesque, lost-cause fantasies. Robert Harris, author of a book about the faked Hitler diaries that created a worldwide hoopla in 1983, reported on a Nazi memorabilia rush that gained momentum in the 1970s, with items such as concentration-camp tablecloths selling for outrageous sums. The Marquess of Bath, Lord Henry Thynne, “acquired Himmler’s spectacles, removed from his body after his suicide,” Harris wrote.
Himmler, one of the architects of the Holocaust, killed himself in May 1945 after being captured by Allied forces as the Nazi regime was collapsing. The dagger that’s being auctioned by O’Gallerie might be one that he presented to SS officers during special ceremonies.
Portlanders opposed to the O’Gallerie auction are undecided on what, if anything, they should do about the Himmler dagger listing. Suggestions have ranged from ignoring it, in hopes of the item gaining little public attention, to buying the dagger themselves and giving it to a Holocaust museum, where it can be displayed with the proper historical context.
“You can’t force these people not to sell their stuff,” says Portland attorney Hank Kaplan, the son of Holocaust survivors. “I think it’s shameful, but there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about it other than point out how shameful it is.”
Horenstein, for his part, would like to see the dagger come into the possession of those opposed to it being a personal collectible. But he doesn’t necessarily believe a museum is the right place for it.
“The symbolism of these items is very painful,” he says, adding, “These things should be taken out of circulation and destroyed.”
