A UVF flag presented the day before Britain entered the First World War has fetched more at a Belfast auction than a pencil thought to have belonged to Adolf Hitler.
The pencil is believed to have been a 52nd birthday present to the Nazi dictator from his partner Eva Braun.
Bloomfield Auctions had been criticised for facilitating the sale on Tuesday which eventually sold for £5,400, well below an expected figure of between £50,000-£80,000.
Receiving a higher bid of £13,000 was a UVF flag dating from August 3, 1914, that was presented to the Mourne Companies UVF by the Countess of Kilmorey, Ellen Constance during the height of the Home Rule Crisis.
Several other items with links to Nazi Germany were under the hammer on Tuesday, including a signed photograph of Hitler which sold for £6,200, again lower than the predicted price of between £10,000 and £15,000.
The items were part of a wide-ranging militaria auction which had also included historic British Army medals, deactivated guns, a treaty with notes written by the Irish Unionist Edward Carson and a PSNI peaked cap thought to have been worn by the former Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan.
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Criticising Bloomfield Auctions was the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who called the sale of the Nazi collection “an insult to the millions who perished” in the holocaust and to “the few survivors left, and to Jews everywhere”.
Bloomfield Auctions defended its decision, by claiming the items were being sold to “legitimate collectors who have a passion for history”.
They also denied trying to cause offence, adding: “All items have a story and tell of a particular time in history.”
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Pencil purported to have belonged to Adolf Hitler sells for tenth of estimate
