It isn’t every day someone walks into The Journal office with an original, unpublished photograph of Adolf Hitler. But such was the case recently when Sarnia’s John Helle arrived with a page from the family snapshot album.
This image shows the Nazi Führer entering the village of Kurort-Jonsdorf in the fall of 1938, shortly after Germany annexed portions of German-speaking Czechoslovakia with the blessing of Europe’s major powers.
Helle was three years old and living in the village when his father Emil, a member of the local photography club, took these images.
“The Allies should never have given Hitler that power,” said Helle, who immigrated to Canada in 1956 with a suitcase, $40 and no English.
“He went on to kill millions and millions of people.”
Helle's photographer father would later die in a Soviet concentration camp.
Photo courtesy, John Helle