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Museum Reverses Decision to Sell Hitler Car
Updated 8:57 AM ET February 9, 2000
TORONTO (Reuters) - Adolf Hitler’s limousine won’t be sold to anyone —
including a Las Vegas casino owner fined $1.5 million by the Nevada Gaming
Commission for holding a Nazi- theme party — a Canadian War Museum official
said on Tuesday.
Director Dr. Jack Granatstein and the board of the museum in Ottawa took the
decision Monday after about 200 Canadians objected to the museum’s plan to
sell it.
“We won’t sell the car based on the reaction from the public,” Granatstein
told Reuters. “It (the reaction) was about 90 percent against selling.”
The controversy began last week when an Ottawa newspaper reported that
Granatastein thought the six-meter (20-feet) limousine might raise about C$20
million at an auction — money he said could be used to build a new war
museum.
The black Mercedes-Benz, weighing 4,100 kilograms (9,000 pounds), was donated
to the museum in 1970 by a Quebec City businessman who mistakenly thought it
belonged to Hitler henchman Herman Goering.
Granatstein had reservations about selling the Hitler car because he feared
it might end up as an icon for neo-Nazi groups.
Then Ralph Engelstad, owner of the 2,700-room Imperial Palace Hotel and
Casino in Las Vegas, expressed interest in the car, the Ottawa Citizen
reported.
He wanted to add it to his vintage car collection which includes a
six-wheeled Nazi staff car and a Mercedes-Benz once owned by Gestapo chief
Heinrich Himmler, the paper said.
Engelstad got into trouble in 1988 with the Nevada Gaming Commission for
holding a party that featured a picture of him wearing a Nazi uniform,
T-shirts for the bar staff bearing Hitler’s picture and the slogan “Adolf
Hitler European Tour 1939-45,” the newspaper reported.
A spokeswoman for the Nevada Gaming Commission said Engelstad was fined $1.5
million for holding the party.
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