PORTRAITS OWNED by Adolf Hitler which depict his parents Alois and Klara Hitler have been put up for auction at an opening price of $5,000. Bidding opens on 1 September and ends at lunchtime 16 days later.

US auctioneer Craig Gottlieb Militaria Auctions describes the oil portraits as “an important piece of history” which were “liberated” from Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest mountain retreat in Bavaria. The auction house says that the pictures are “very famous images from the Third Reich period” and appeared on postcards.

The portraits had been missing since the end of WWII, and photographs taken of them during Hitler’s time have helped authenticate them now.

The paintings, which were commissioned by Adolf Hitler himself, are being sold by the family of the French soldier who “liberated” them from the Berchtesgaden house after the war.

Of Hitler’s parents, the listing in Craig Gottlieb Militaria Auctions says:

These are the mother and father of National Socialism.  There is great mystery surrounding the ethnic background oF Alois Hitler, who many historians say was the illegitimate child of a Jewish man.  Klara was said to have eyes like Medusa, as a direct result of this painting.  Historically, the value of these objects cannot be understated.