Hinda Mandell: Mein Kampf in My House

Boston Globe:

The heirloom that they fear

By Hinda Mandell, Globe Correspondent  |  January 31, 2010

Jewelry. Real estate. Artwork. These are possessions that ignite many a family feud over an inheritance.

"Mein Kampf?" Maybe not so much.

But such is the situation in my family.

We’re stuck on whether anyone should inherit a copy of Adolf Hitler’s political manifesto that my great-uncle grabbed from the rucksack of a German soldier he likely killed in battle in 1944.

Some mystery surrounds the book, but this much is clear: for decades, "Mein Kampf" has been an unwelcome possession in my parents' home. Yet whether we should continue to keep it, as an unusual heirloom, or donate it — we are Jewish, after all — remains a question far from settled.

My father, Fred Mandell, 67, a business and innovation consultant, is the agitated guardian of the book. Its title means “My struggle,’’ and Hitler wrote it in prison in the early 1920s after a failed attempt to overthrow the government in Munich.

For much of my dad’s life, he has displayed the book, a 1937 edition printed in Germany, among his vast collection of Jewish history books.

“I remember being conflicted between throwing it out . . . and putting it in a prominent position, as a way of saying ‘You can’t hurt us. We won. We outlasted you,’ ’’ said my father. His uncle who brought the book stateside, Eddie Cohen, died in 2001.

My father’s decision to keep the book was an act so personal that he rarely spoke about its existence, let alone why he felt compelled to display it - always upside down - on the bookshelf.

“I wanted to have dominion over this book that represented so much more than a book or ideology. It represented the fate of Jews,’’ he said.

But now my father’s ready to be done with the book and the space it’s taken up on his bookshelves, first in Brookline, then Newton and now Needham, where he lives with my mother.

After raising three children, my father said he’s done his part to affirm Jewish continuity. And the book - outlining Hitler’s venomous hatred of Jews - is no longer a focal point in his life.

But we’re far from agreement on what should happen to it.

My brother and I argue that the book should remain in the Mandell household as an artifact of family history. Its existence is a reminder of history on both a family and global level.

Yet my mother doesn’t need such a reminder. [Read the rest]

posted by: jrtelegraph