As we reported last week, a set of Adolph Hitler's personalized silverware will be part of an upcoming springtime exhibition at The New York Historical Society. The cutlery, which were given to Hitler as part of a three thousand piece dinner service presented to him to honor his 50th birthday in 1939, had a fascinating and roundabout way of ending up in NYC, and the NYHS considers it one of the “most aesthetically and historically compelling pieces” in its collection. Not everyone agrees however: “I find this totally tasteless...The knife and fork trivialize the evil that Hitler and his allies perpetrated,” Deborah Dwork, a professor of Holocaust history at Clark University, told the Times.

“I believe the inclusion is solely for sensational purposes, that the knife and fork have nothing to do with why Hitler was heinous, why he is infamous. They have nothing to do with the evil of which he was the architect," Dwork added. David G. Marwell, the director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, said it was all about the context of the exhibition, "Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York," and how they dealt with the darker parts of the history: “If they’re not glorified in any way, if they’re not presented as some kind of totem or something that evokes the Nazi message,” he said, “then I’m not offended. I think actually the story of how they got to the New-York Historical Society is an important one. Hitler lost.”

These utensils in particular were from his residence at Berchtesgaden—Hitler spent more time at the Berghof than anywhere else during World War II. After it was bombed by the Allies in 1945, a task force of American soldiers explored the bombed house where they found and took random items. One of the soldiers then gave this flatware to NY financier Carl M. Loeb, who was a German-Jewish immigrant.

Margi Hofer, the society’s curator of decorative arts, said they had never been displayed because “we never had an appropriate context in which to do it.” But now, she thinks there's a perfect opportunity to show them for this exhibit, which starts May 4th: “I think there’s a certain magnetism, because you’re so repulsed by the thought of them being used by Hitler.”