The shooting rampage by Nazi-enthusiast Frederick W. Cowan in New Rochelle Monday has focused attention on a booming business–the sale of Nazi memorabilia. Cowan, a moving van company employee who shot five persons to death before taking his own life, had a large collection of Nazi helmets, badges, medals, swastika arm bands and daggers in addition to an arsenal of deadly weapons in his attic. He also had photographs of Hitler. Himmler and other Nazis and a collection of racist literature and recordings.
But dealers in the multi-million dollar Nazi artifacts market insist that the vast majority of their customers are not “Nazi kooks.” They say that the purchasers of these items range from pre-adolescent boys to military historians and other scholars of the Nazi era. Many are legitimate collectors. Nazi items are regularly advertised in gun and sporting magazines. One of the biggest outlets is Unique Imports of Alexandria. Va., run by Roderick Jones, a retired Air Force man. He assured reporters this week that Cowan was not on his world-wide mailing list of some 55,000 names.
Many of the items sold by Unique and by score of other dealers around the country, were brought here by World War II GIs. Others are “authentic” replicas of Nazi items and weapons. According to reports. there is also a large business in Nazi porno books–paper backs offering explicit descriptions of rape and other sexual assaults on concentration camp inmates, most of them Jewish. One publisher dedicates his books “to the memory” of concentration camp victims.
Meanwhile, police are tracing a possible link between Cowan and the militant, racist National States Rights Party. He reportedly carried a membership card in that organization and received its publication, “Thunderbolt.” After the carnage in New Rochelle, neighbors of Cowan told reporters that the killer was forever ranting against Jews and Blacks and threatening to “liquidate” them. His bloodbath was apparently triggered by a desire to kill his boss, Norman Bing, who is Jewish. Bing, who had suspended Cowan for rudeness to a customer, was not one of the victims.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
