LONDON, Feb 3: Nazi memorabilia signed by Adolf Hitler was sold privately on Wednesday to an anonymous buyer after a British auction house withdrew it from a public sale because a Jewish leader complained it would be insensitive after Holocaust Memorial Day.

Pictures of Hitler fetched 700 pounds, while his biography, dating from 1934, went for 1,250 pounds, said Richard West wood Brookes, a document specialist at the auction house Mullock Madley.

It said battle plans by the Nazi regime for the invasion of southern England were sold for 450 pounds. The chairman of the Herefordshire Jewish Society telephoned Mullock Madley on Tuesday night to say it would be insensitive to sell such items less than one week after the world remembered the liberation 60 years ago of the infamous Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Poland.

"The reason we have withdrawn it is that we have been persuaded to the argument that to offer it in a public auction might be insensitive," said West wood Brookes. -AFP