Hitler's Hat finds a home at NY State Military Museum

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Adolph Hitler's top hat on display at the New York Military Museum in Saratoga Springs.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK (04/25/2025) (readMedia)-- Adolph Hitler's top hat has a new home at the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The hat was "liberated" from the Nazi dictator's Munich apartment by a 19-year-old Jewish Soldier from Brooklyn on April 30, 1945.

Eighty years later, the hat found by Private 1st Class Richard Marowitz, a regimental recon Soldier in the 42nd Infantry Division, as the Third Reich collapsed, was donated to the museum by his children, Larry, Linda and Roberta.

Hitler's hat will be displayed as part of the museum's 80th commemoration of the actions of the 42nd Infantry Division in liberating the Dachau Concentration Camp and the end of the Holocaust in WWII.

"We're thrilled that the New York State Military Museum has the exhibit," Larry Marowitz said during an April 24 ceremony. "There's a story to be told. It is history."

"We look for artifacts that tell the story of New York veterans, and this collection from the Marowitz family is a compelling narrative that we're honored to display," said Courtney Burns, the director of history for the New York National Guard.

The 42nd Infantry Division has been a part of the New York Army National Guard since 1947.

Marowitz, who died in 2014, had been among the first liberators to arrive at the Dachau Concentration Camp in southern Germany on April 29, 1945.

The 42nd was one of three Army divisions to free 33,000 prisoners during its advance to capture Munich, 10 miles away.

In Munich early on April 30, Marowitz and a dozen reconnaissance Soldiers arrived at Hitler's Munich apartment to search any papers of intelligence significance.

While looking in a bedroom closet, Marowitz discovered a box on an upper shelf. Climbing up, he found a top hat with the initials "A.H." in the hat lining.

Imagining the Nazi leader's head still inside the hat, he tossed it to the floor and stomped on it.Later that day, with Russian forces approaching the center of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker.

"When he heard some skinny Jewish kid stomped all over his favorite hat, he committed suicide," Marowitz joked to the Associated Press for a news article in 2001.

The war souvenir stayed with Marowitz during post-war occupation duties in Austria before returning to New York.For the next 50 years, Hitler's hat remained at the bottom of a duffel bag in his Albany home. The hat became a prop for the magic tricks at children's birthday parties.

For most of their lives, the Marowitz children didn't know of the hat's unique history.

"The hat was in the basement, with all my father's magic tricks. We had no idea it was there for all those years," explained Larry Marowitz.

"We learned the story of Hitler's Hat because my father belonged to the Jewish War Veterans," he said.

"He had gone to a meeting and they had asked people to bring any souvenirs that they may have picked up. So, my father brought Hitler's Hat," Larry Marowitz said.

"Many Soldiers came back from the war and never spoke about it again, and my father never really did either," he said. "It wasn't until he went to a 42nd Rainbow Division Reunion and he met up with all his comrades that they all started talking about it."

In the 1990s, Marowitz joined with fellow Albany area WWII veterans to speak about the Holocaust and their wartime experiences with middle and high school students.The hat would be brought out in a plain shopping bag for students to see and touch.

"Once word got out, it just took off. It really went national and went all over the world," Larry Marowitz said.

Discovered by documentary film maker Jeff Krulik, the story of Marowitz and the veterans of the Rainbow Division were featured in the film "Hitler's Hat" that premiered in January 2003.

"It may not be a pretty sight, but that tiny piece of history holds many memories for those of us who were there for the Taking of the Top Hat," Marowitz wrote in 1995.

The New York State Military Museum, administered by the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs tells the story of New Yorkers involvement in American Wars from the Revolutionary War to the present day.