Pencil purported to have belonged to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sells for tenth of estimate at Belfast auction house

The pencil sold for £5,400 to an online bidder at Bloomfield Auctions in the Northern Ireland capital on Tuesday. It had been expected to fetch between £50,000 – £80,000.

It is believed the pencil had been given to the Nazi dictator by his long-term partner Eva Braun as a gift for his 52nd birthday on April 20, 1941. It is inscribed with ‘Eva’ in German and the initials “AH”. The pencil was originally purchased by a collector at an auction in 2002 and since then has remained in the collector’s family.

Bloomfield Auctions was urged to halt the sale for moral reasons by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin. He described the trade in items which belonged to senior Nazis as “an insult to the millions who perished” in the holocaust, as well as “the few survivors left, and to Jews everywhere”.

However the auction house stressed that the item is a part of history, adding those who buy such items are “legitimate collectors who have a passion for history”. They insisted they did not seek to cause hurt or distress to any one or any part of society, adding: “All items have a story and tell of a particular time in history.”

An original signed photograph of Hitler, expected to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000, is also going under the hammer.