"Ask the Rabbi" by R. Mermelstein

I believe you are asking a sincere question, and not out of antagonism. Your question deserves a response. Stalin murdered a great many Jews. He banished all religion from the USSR. Stalin was anti religion in general. Hitler blamed his country's post WW1 troubles on the "International Jew". He formulated the Final Solution. I was born eight years after V-J Day, but I remember relatives with serial numbers tattooed on their forearms. Hitler ordered horrendous medical experiments on Jewish camp prisoners. Hitler murdered 13 million people. (Only) 6 million of those were Jews. Stalin's atrocities were committed in his country. Hitler scoured all of Europe to exterminate Jews.  Read the Nuremberg Laws, defining who was a German citizen and the ban on intermarriage. The focused carnage by Hitler on Jews was unprecedented. I've no problem with collectors of WW2 war relics of the Nazi regime. My father brought Japanese war relics home after WW2. That didn't make him a Japanese sympathizer. Collectors of Nazi relics are not, in my book, sympathizers. Nazi items, with a Swastika, do evoke very negative emotions in Jews that were born long after the war ended. It represents, to them, an ongoing reminder of a concept to rid the world of the Jewish people. This concept refuses to die. Whether it comes from the mouth of Richard Butler of Aryan Nations or a lunatic that just last Saturday shot and wounded nine Orthodox Jews walking in the street on their Sabbath. Ask yourself this: If a group had a charter to rid the world of YOUR people, and they had a symbol representing their cause, wouldn't you be even a little concerned?

Think about it.

Sincerely,

R. Mermelstein