Man buys £465,000 of Nazi memorabilia at German auction, including Hitler's jacket and Goering's silk underwear

A man from Argentina has reportedly purchased more than 50 items of Nazi memorabilia from a controversial auction - totalling more than €600,000 (£465,000).

The buyer, who used the number 888 – evoking the Nazi ‘88’ code meaning “Heil Hitler”- spent €275,000 (£213,160) on a uniform jacket which once belonged to Adolf Hitler.

Among the other items he bought were a pair of Hermann Goering’s silk underwear – for which he paid €3,000 (£2325) – and the brass container Goering had used to kill himself with hydrogen cyanide before he was due to be executed following charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1946 Nuremberg trials.

German newspaper Bild, which had sent an undercover reporter to the event because it was officially closed to the press, spoke to the winning bidder who said he was “from Argentina” and had bought the items “for a museum”, although he did not give his name.

The reporter also said the room was filled with “young couples, elderly men, and muscular guys with shaved heads and tribal tattoos”.

The items, sold under the theme ‘Hitler and the Nazi Grandees – a look into the abyss of evil’, are from the collection of John K. Latimer, who was the physician at the Nuremberg trials.

The Central Council for Jews in Germany had previously tried to cancel the auction, held at Hermann Historica, with its president Josef Schuster saying “making business, without any limits, with items of Hitler, Goering and Eva Braun [is] “scandalous and disgusting”.

“Such items belong in museums or archives, they should not be sold for profit,” he told the Germany Press Agency.

It is forbidden display or distribute Nazi objects, slogans and symbols in Germany, although purchasing or owning such items is allowed.