A man who discovered Hitler’s hat in 1945 has recently passed away. The man in question, Richard Marowitz, was eighty-eight years of age at the time of his passing. A man of Jewish descent, had seen some frightening things during the Second World War. With a very personal bias against the man who led the Third Reich in their march against Europe, he was incredibly angry at the time he found Hitler’s hat. He went on, however to lead a peaceful life until the day he died.
Marowitz grew up in Brooklyn, and joined the fight against the Nazis when he was still a teenager. In his duties as a reconnaissance scout, it was essentially his job to witness the horrors of human indecency during the war. The worst of it was his trip to Dachau. The day after his unit went to Dachau, he found Hitler’s hat in the Fuhrer’s apartment. He was led into a fit of rage, and crushed the former German leader’s silken headwear as if it were the man himself. In fact, he later said during an interview that he was imagining just that scenario. He had seen people starved to death, abused, and ultimately killed. It was a difficult image to remove from his mind.
Although he was furious, Marowitz remained rational enough to understand the significance of the item upon which he had taken out his anger. Knowing that any items once belonging to the Fuhrer would be highly sought, he kept Hitler’s hat when he returned to the United States. He eventually went on to give several lectures at educational facilities, and brought the item with him so he could show it to students.
Eventually, Marowitz was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is this disease to which he finally succumbed earlier this month. The brave Jewish soldier who discovered and brought home Hitler’s hat passed away in his home state, in the comfort of Albany’s Veteran Affairs hospital. In many ways, he was fortunate compared to those he witnessed during the Second World War, whose bodies were stuffed into rail cars and left to decay, the CTV News reports.
Years before Marowitz died, he was the subject of a documentary, which is aptly titled Hitler’s Hat. His prized souvenir is now to become part of a museum exhibit, though the intended museum has not yet been named. His wife and three children still remain, left to tell the story of their family’s patriarch and the day he discovered Hitler’s hat.