Hitler-owned book details North American Holocaust plans
Ottawa: The Canadian archive has acquired a rare book owned by Adolf Hitler, which is believed to detail the blueprint for a North American Holocaust, the media reported.
Library and Archives Canada purchased the document last year for $4,500 and it was unveiled for the first time on Wednesday, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday, CNN reported on Friday.
The book will go on public display on Saturday before portions of it are made available online.
The 137-page report — titled “Statistics, Media and Organisations of Jewry in the United States and Canada” — was compiled in 1944 by German linguist and researcher Heinz Kloss.
He was responsible for conducting key research for the Nazi regime on issues such as nationality, with a particular focus on the US.
Kloss — who visited the US in 1936-7 and maintained a network of Nazi sympathisers — used 1930s population data to produce a personalised census of the Jewish population in North America, along with information about Jewish organisations and newspapers.
Curator Michael Kent told CNN on Friday that the report would have likely played “an important role” in any implementation of the Final Solution — the term used by Nazi leaders to describe the extermination of the Jewish population — had the Third Reich successfully invaded the US and Canada.
Kent described the report as “quite shocking” and noted that it included detailed analysis not only of cities with large Jewish populations such as Toronto and Winnipeg, Manitoba, but also of small urban areas.
Experts believe the report was part of a confidential series of research commissioned by Hitler and stored at his mountain retreat near Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps.
The bookplate bears a stylised eagle, swastika and the words “ex libris Adolf Hitler”, which suggest that it came from the Nazi leader’s personal library.
The report, along with other books owned by Hitler, is believed to have been brought to the US as a souvenir by American soldiers after they raided his property at the end of the war in 1945.