Although not a new discovery, the document is still chilling. And in about one month, visitors to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles will be able to see it for themselves: a letter penned by Adolf Hitler in 1919 in which he first described his aspirations for the "systematic removal" of Jews from Germany. American soldier William F. Siegler found the letter at Nazi headquarters in Nuremberg at the end of World War II. It then passed through the hands of several owners until recently, when the Wiesenthal Center bought it for $150,000. The center says that internationally renowned experts have examined the letter and confirmed its authenticity. Hitler composed the letter on September 16, 1919, in Munich. At the time he was a 30-year-old soldier in the German Army, which had surrendered the previous year, marking the end of World War I. The letter was addressed to Adolf Gemlich, who was part of a propaganda unit educating demobilized soldiers on nationalism, and expressed concern about the influences of Bolshevism on soldiers returning from the eastern front. Hitler, who cultivated a worldview according to which Jews "stabbed the German people in the back during the war (World War I)," wrote that Jews were "a tuberculosis in the body of the nation" and they led to rotting in the body. According to Hitler, Jews were "materialistic in their thoughts and aspirations" -- a clear reference to the prominence of Jews among Communists. "Most Germans feel great aversion when they have personal contact with them (Jews). Judaism is without a doubt a race, not a religious group ... non-Germans, in terms of race, live among us, and have feelings, thoughts and aspirations of their own, while enjoying all of our rights," he wrote. In his letter, Hitler presents what he calls the need for "calculated anti-Semitism," rather than "emotional anti-Semitism, (which) has to date achieved only pogroms." "Reasoned anti-Semitism must lead to a legal struggle to abrogate rights for Jews that give them favored positions ... the final goal must be the uncompromising removal of Jews altogether." This is his first written statement about the Jews, historian Saul Friedlander told The New York Times. It shows that this was the very core of his political passion. Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and director of the Wiesenthal Center, told German newspaper Der Spiegel that what began as a private letter stating the opinions of a specific individual became, 22 years later, the conventional wisdom of an entire nation leading to the destruction of the Jewish people. "The letter is a seminal document, which belongs to future generations," Hier said.
