Non von Papen Pistol

[Johnny Peppers]

This has absolutely nothing to do with the von Papen pistol, but as long as we are on the same subject some may find this interesting. Some of the NAPCA members may can add to this as it was related to me by another NAPCA member. Apparently this appeared in the AutoMag some time back. It seems that Sotheby's in London was auctioning off either a PP or PPK that was reportedly a Hitler presentation pistol to a high party official, and was supposedly documented in the Bundesarchives. Once the documents were produced, it was determined that they were fraudulent and had been planted into the archives. The person who planted the forged documentation was later tracked down and prosecuted for the fraud in Germany. If this is all correct, it is just an indication of the lengths that people will go to the perpetrate a fraud. This is not only perpetrated on pistols, but on any high dollar collectible. If you buy any high dollar collectible be sure and get a bill of sale authenticating the originality of your purchase.

[Roadkill]

Sound Familiar?

Fake, reproduction, revival
Common Sense Antiques

By Fred Taylor

The study of antique furniture has its own specialized language which permeates all of the field, whether it be collecting, buying and selling, restoring, or vicarious interest. Much of the vocabulary is self explanatory, but some terms need a little closer attention. Three terms often heard loosely bandied about the trade are fake, reproduction, and revival. Each has its standard definition, and its own twist in the world of antiques.

The Pocket Webster School & Office Dictionary defines fake as â??a fraud or hoax; counterfeit.â?� The American College Dictionary defines it as â??designed to deceive or cheat.â?� That pretty much covers it doesnâ??t it? Or does it? Are there degrees of fake?

In her deeply informative but still witty book Fake, Fraud or Genuine? Myrna Kaye takes a close look at the first item on her â??Most Unwanted Listâ?�: the object entirely made fake, built from scratch to fool you. Her prime example is the 17th century Pilgrim chair in the Henry Ford Museum. The chair was made in the 1920s by a disgruntled wood sculptor with the express goal of fooling the experts. It worked. Even after the hoax was revealed to the Museum, it took another four years of study to verify the fake.

But what about other types of fakes? Ms. Kayeâ??s second example on her list is the â??Old Parts/New Objectâ?� category. This type of reconstruction is of growing concern in todayâ??s market. In some cases this type of fraud is even more difficult to spot than the entire fake, because some or most of the parts are genuinely old. Its just a matter of how they have been reassembled among new parts to create another object. One example of this is the partial disassembly of five chairs, salvaging enough genuine pieces to construct the sixth chair and put some new parts in all the other chairs. The result is a matching set of six chairs, all with some obvious and presumably honest repairs but with enough genuine parts to pass as the real thing.

There are other culprits on Kayeâ??s list, such as the â??Made Up Setâ?� and the â??The Remade Objectâ?� to name only a couple, but they all have one thing in common: they are all made to fool. It seems that motive, not method, is the determining factor of a fake.

RK

[Orv Reichert]

Real History and the Lure of Hitler Money
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Wednesday, June 12, 2002


THE alleged mastermind of an audacious international scam to sell Hitler's suicide pistol and the gun of Hitler's niece and lover Geli Raubal for $4.75 million has surfaced in Queensland as the head of a militant Jewish group.

CHARGED â?¦ Zeev Gideon Korwan â?¦ a.k.a. Michael O'Hara, above, faces charges over an international Hitler pistol scam.weapon.

Michael O'Hara, a.k.a. Zeev Gideon Korwan, is facing 139 fraud charges in Melbourne after elaborately forged documents authenticating Hitler's Walther PPK 7.65mm handgun and Ms Raubal's Walther Special 8, 6.35 calibre, were planted in archives in Germany and Russia.

These documents include wartime letters from SS chief Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's driver and bodyguard Emile Maurice and the Walther gun factory.

At one stage, a page was removed by razor blade from a file at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and a letter by Himmler in 1935 identifying the guns by serial numbers substituted.

The phony Nazi documents were designed to entice traders into thinking the guns were genuine.

O'Hara, who police say perpetrated the document frauds, has emerged on the Gold Coast as Korwan, the Queensland head of the Jewish Defence League, whose leader was arrested last year over an alleged plan to blow up a mosque in Los Angeles.

Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies president David Paratz said the local Jewish community totally dissociated itself from the JDL and he had no reason to think Korwan was Jewish.

But in an e-mail to The Courier-Mail, Shelly Rubin, whose husband Irv Rubin was arrested for plotting to bomb the LA mosque and a Muslim public affairs office, said Korwan was the JDL's Queensland leader.

O'Hara as Korwan was quoted in The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles in April as having raised $US2.25 million for an international campaign to re-establish the outlawed Israeli Kach party of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the JDL's founder, who was assassinated in New York in 1990.

O'Hara this week said he had information that terrorists would target an Australian monument and that about 10 terrorists operated from Lakemba and Auburn mosques in Sydney. He said he had spent decades hunting Nazi war criminals and Palestinian terrorists, but a source said he simply had reinvented himself as a JDL activist to claim a political motive for the Hitler gun plot.

O'Hara said the Hitler gun ploy aimed to flush out anti-Jewish international gun traders.

"Through the Hitler guns scenario the JDL have identified several major sources of illegal arms operators supplying to so-called legitimate Arab royals who, in turn, passed on the arms to the terrorist cells in the Middle East and now Australia a king other places," he said. He claimed an Arab royal had offered $US1 million and another had offered $US2.5 million.

[The money had nothing to do with it ..... right? ...Orv]