Discovery Of Hitler’s Book Indicating Plans For A North American Holocaust
Library and Archives CanadaThe 137-page report detailing North America’s Jewish population.
One of the top history news stories this year was the discovery of a book believed to be owned by Adolf Hitler which pointed to his ambitions to invade North America and massacre the continent’s Jewish population.
Clinically titled Statistics, Media, and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada, the book is 137 pages long and painstakingly identifies exactly where Jews lived throughout North America.
The book was written by Nazi linguist and researcher Heinz Kloss, who used his visits to the U.S. in 1936 and 1937 to assemble a network of Nazi sympathizers and collect demographic data from across the continent.
The bookplate is decorated with a swastika, an eagle, and the words “ex libris Adolf Hitler,” which has led experts to believe the book was indeed one of the Führer’s personal items. Experts believe it may have been part of an extensive research commission he kept in his alpine mountain retreat in Bavaria.
According to Michael Kent, curator of the Jacob M. Lowy Collection at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), where the book is currently held, the book would’ve played “an important role” in implementing Hitler’s Final Solution to all of North America if he had managed to successfully to invade the continent.
How the book made its way to North America is uncertain, though some believe it might have been taken as a souvenir by American soldiers while ransacking Hitler’s home after the war. The disturbing document, which the LAC purchased last year from a private collector for about $4,500, was finally unveiled to the public just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“This item touches a chord with people with the fact the Nazis would have chosen to implement a ‘Final Solution’ in Canada and the U.S., and reminds us conflicts and human tragedies are not as far away as they seem,” Kent noted.
