The Garden State is home to one unexpected historical object - Adolf Hitler's toilet. The toilet came off of the Aviso Grille, Hitler's largest private yacht, Tablet Magazine reported.
After the war, the Aviso Grille was taken to the U.S. and ended up in the hands of New Jersey shipyard owner Harry Doan, according to Tablet Magazine. The magazine reported that Doan initially charged 25 cents to those who wanted to tour Hitler's yacht. But Doan soon decided he didn't want to host a memorial to Hitler, so he tossed the toilet in his salvage yard in the 1950s.
"The ship had to be destroyed," local resident and historian Dick Glass told RoadsideAmerica.com. "The government wasn't going to allow it to be set up as some kind of memorial for Adolf."
Around that time, Sam Carlani, the owner of Greg's auto repair shop in Florence, N.J., needed a toilet, Tablet Magazine reported - and he claimed the toilet from Hitler's yacht. Today, Greg Kohfeldt, the current owner of the shop, inherited the toilet.
When he isn't busy, Kohfeldt sometimes shows visitors the historic toilet, but he said he prefers recognition for his repair work, rather than his toilet, which was in the shop before he was born.
"It's not something to be proud of, but it exists," he told RoadsideAmerica.com. "I use it to go to the bathroom."
It has not been proven whether Hitler actually used that particular toilet - there were probably many toilets on the massive Aviso Grille. But Kohfeldt told RoadsideAmerica.com, "It was still Hitler's property. He owned it all."
Kohfeldt doesn't want to sell the toilet -- simply because he needs somewhere to go to the bathroom, he told RoadsideAmerica.com, but he's willing to give it away to anyone who would buy him a new bathroom.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
