Nazi memorabilia auction
Nazi memorabilia items belonging to Hermann Goering (R) will go on sale on 18 June with Adolf Hitler (L) watercolours being sold two years ago.

An Argentine collector spent more than 600,000 Euros (£465,000, $680,000) on Nazi memorabilia at a controversial auction in Germany.

Among the 50 items the anonymous buyer purchased were a trousers and jacket worn by Adolf Hitler for €275,000 (£210,000. $300,000) and a set of Hermann Goering's silk underwear for €3,000 (£2,320, $3,387 ), Bild reported.

The bidder also bought the brass hydrogen cyanide phial that Goering, the founder of the Gestapo and the chief of the Luftwaffe, used to kill himself before his scheduled execution in 1946.

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According to an undercover reporter from the publication sent to the event, which was closed to the press, the collector submitted the bids under the number 888. The number evokes the '88' code that is used by neo-Nazis to stand for Heil Hitler.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany appealed to the organisers of the auction, Hermann Historica, to cancel the event, which took place in the southern city of Munich.

The council's president, Josef Schuster, described as "scandalous and disgusting" the idea of "making business, without any limits, with items of Hitler, Goering and Eva Braun".

"Such items belong in museums or archives, they should not be sold for profit," Schuster told national news agency DPA.

The top buyer identified himself as an Argentinian to Bild, and claimed he was purchasing the items for a museum, but did not give his name.

The items sold were previously owned by US army medic John K Lattimer, a general medical officer during the Nuremberg trials of leading Third Reich figures, including Goering.

In Germany, it is illegal to display Nazi-era symbols, slogans and objects, but their sale is not forbidden.