Two weeks after their story appeared in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, Jenkintown residents Lorna and David Tabby have been featured by the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article titled “A Jewish father collected hundreds of Nazi objects in the basement. His son is struggling with the most basic question: Why?”

The story expands on the Exponent’s coverage, chronicling the Tabby’s basement full of Nazi artifacts collected over a lifetime by David’s father, Gilbert.

Their collection includes “helmets and medals and uniforms and banners and visor caps,” “a child-sized toy Nazi helmet, a Hitler Youth exercise shirt, and a banjo made from a desecrated Torah scroll, stamped with a swastika,” The Inquirer said.

“I don’t know how to say it any other way except that all the Nazi stuff kind of bothers me. I can say now that it’s necessary to tell the story …” David, 64, who is a neurologist in Bala Cynwyd, told The Inquirer. “But I don’t know how you distinguish between glorifying it and just cataloging it.”

The article goes on to discuss David’s commitment to building a museum from the memorabilia and reorganizing a single room in the basement which he has dubbed the “Nazi war machine.” He says the work is a tribute to his father.

For the full story, you can click here. For our previous coverage of The Exponent’s article, you can click here.

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Photo: Jarrad Saffren