Collectors of Hate

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/opinion/nazi-memorabilia-market-liveauctioneers.html#:~:text=The%20truth%20is%20that%20many,interestingly%20varied%20in%20terms%20of

("What Kind of Person Has a Closet Full of Nazi Memorabilia?")

To the general public there is but a single message being received from those acquiring this memorabilia: their fascination, and in some meaningful fashion, attachment to quite likely the most horrific demonstration of human depravity the world has ever known.

I do not seek to be informed by Mr. Crow, or others like him, who crowd their homes, their lives, surrounded by these artifacts, of their argument for their practices, their supposed benign, or even altruistic, motivation. 

"Never forget”, if it is indeed the catalyst for the collector, is not what we hear, certainly not what we feel. There is a revulsion on our part, a belief that humankind would be far better served by destroying these private collections memorializing, and to a significant extent, intended or not, glorifying the stark reminders of atrocities committed. 

The wave of neo-Nazism, of anti-Semitism, spiking around the globe is incontrovertible evidence of the harm that is lurking if we in any sense, implicitly as well as explicitly, elevate the world according to Hitler. And there should be no mistake that there is much in this that reeks of something far more sinister than the dealers and collectors would have us believe. 

These are not beanie babies, not baseball cards, not coins nor stamps. This is not an innocuous, sterile undertaking. This is a "hobby" littered in dead bodies, covered in blood and the intended systematic eradication of those deemed undesirable. 

To seek out, or seek profit from, such a moment is something to be viewed with disdain, distrust and grave and abiding disgust.