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The Simon Wiesenthal Center has acquired at a price of 100,000 pounds, Hitler's oldest known written expression of his hatred for Jews.

The letter, known as the "Gemlich letter," and considered Hitler's first antisemitic writing, was written in 1919, and sent to Adolf Gemlich, head of the German Army in the Post World War One era. In the letter, Hitler was careful to project himself as a sober intellectual with antisemitic views based on objective facts. He speaks in favor of what he termed "rational" and "scientific" antisemitism. In the letter, Hitler referred to the Jews as "racial tuberculosis" and spoke of the need for "elimination of the privileges of the Jews."

Hitler, in his 1919 letter, wrote on his plans for "irrevocable removal of Jews."  Some have interpreted his expression "removal of Jews" as in reference to the extermination policy he would later implement. But some scholars have pointed out that, in the context of his discussion in the letter, he more likely only meant segregation or expulsion of the Jews rather than physical liquidation.

The letter is said to have deeply impressed Adolf Gemlich to whom it was addressed. Gemlich had been referred to Hitler  on the "Jewish question" by Captain Karl Mayr, officer in charge of the Reichswehr News and Enlightenment Department. The letter is considered to have effectively launched Hitler's political career and helped establish his reputation among radical right wing conservatives as an ideologue with the desired flavor of antisemitic views and rhetoric skills.

The letter will be displayed in public by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in July, in its Museum of Tolerance, the educational arm of the center founded in 1993 and which receives about 350, 000 visitors every year. The letter is of historical significance because it is documentary evidence of how far back in time Hitler had been nursing his hatred for Jews and ruminating over ideas that would mature into the historic fact of the Jewish Holocaust.