"Ask the Rabbi" by R. Mermelstein
QUESTION: Dear Rabbi
Mermelstein:
First, thank you for your response to my earlier query regarding
Marshall and Sanow. I appreciate it and look forward to the
release of your book.
I recently received from my father a fine Browning Hi-Power 9mm.
It is mechanically excellent and a pleasure to shoot, has matching
serial numbers, and includes two original magazines and the original
holster. Unfortunately, the pistol is a WWII German officer's side arm,
replete with eagle/globe/swastika marks and all of the hideous
connotations necessarily associated with them.
I am not a superstitious man, but I am non-denominationally religious
within the Judeo-Christian ethic. I cannot square my value system
with the Third Reich. I hesitate to use the word "cursed" but I
do feel that the pistol is sullied by the Nazi proof marks. I
cannot bring myself to take it to a public range for fear of either
offending the reasonable or attracting the Fascists. I am loath
to destroy it, as the pistol itself is a high-quality piece, and I
dread the legal aftermath of shooting an armed burglar or home invader
with a Nazi-stamped pistol. Finally, given the almost certain
complicity of at least one former owner in the Holocaust, I feel that
the pistol itself is an affront to G-d and Man.
My question is, would having the pistol re-finished and "de-Nazified"
render it acceptable for use? If so, are there any pistol-smiths
you recommend, preferably on the West Coast? What other steps
could or should be taken? And if the pistol's history renders it
an abomination, what should be done with it?
I appreciate your thought on this matter. Thank you.
Charles W. Applegate, Esq.
21 October 2004
ANSWER: Dear Mr. Applegate,
This question has come up over the years with great frequency. Go to:
http://www.gunownersalliance.com/Rabbi_0031.htm
http://www.gunownersalliance.com/Rabbi_0032.htm
http://www.gunownersalliance.com/Rabbi_0100.htm
America has fought foes from abroad, and we even had a little tiff of a
civil nature on our home soil that snuffed out 558,000 lives. All of
our enemies, even those on opposing sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, had
ideologies that conflicted. These conflicts were considered
sufficiently serious to spill enough blood to float battleships, yet no
booty or souvenirs brought home by veterans of any side from the time
of the Revolution were ever vilified or considered so insidious to
raise emotions to a feverish pitch as has Nazi war relics. Perhaps it's
because the Nazi, or Aryan, superiority mentality lives on long after
V-E Day. Civilians and non-combatants are killed in any war, if not as
part of a systematic Final Solution then simply as casualties who
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What it comes down
to is whether someone collects these relics as symbols of an ideology
they associate with or simply as relics under the heading of "To the
victor go the spoils". Confederate weapons killed Union soldiers, but
I've no doubt that many were put to use by ex-Union troops after
Appomattox without a thought given to the matter. German Mauser rifles
were brought home to America after 11/11/1919. There are probably still
thousands of them banging around the country. Loading manuals still
publish data for the 7.7 mm Japanese Arisaka rifle, even though no
American gun maker has ever chambered a rifle for the round. The
Japanese had a pretty strong ideology, too. It took two atomic bombs to
show them they were paying too high a price for their principles. The
Japanese committed genocide just as the Germans did. The rape of
Nanking is as blood- curdling a tale as any that came from Hitler's
death camps, and the Japanese have yet to offer so much as an apology
for the episode. In fact a significant segment of Japanese society
still denies that Nanking and other atrocities took place at all.
Now we come to weapons used by the Nazi war machine, replete with
swastikas and eagle crests. Perhaps some were used to exterminate Jews,
Catholics, Gypsies, German dissidents, or whomever, or a total of 13
million civilians. If you were Henry Ford I, with a framed picture of
Adolph Hitler perched on your desktop, I’d question your motives for
having a relic symbolizing “those halcyon days of yore” and
“Deutschland über allen”. And since the pistol given to you by
your father is a Browning, made in the neutral Belgian Fabrique
Nationale arms plant captured by the Germans and forced to produce guns
for Hitler, and not produced by the German firm of Walther, I wouldn't
mind at all having it in my own collection. Were money no object I
would even buy a perfect Walther P38 specimen with the eagle crest as a
reminder of how Americans and our allies kicked Hitler’s hind side and
the piece now resides in my gun safe as a token of a military victory
that was achieved through the sacrifice of 407,300 American combat
deaths.
Sir, cherish that gift from your father. Do not change a marking on it.
Don’t even have it refinished. Leave it just as it is, because that
John Moses Browning-design pistol made for the Nazis makes a statement.
The statement is stronger than any ideology that Hitler ever held:
America is still here and his Nazi Party is not.
Sincerely,
R. Mermelstein
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