The Blacklist 2018 No 2

This is taken directly from a researched and published listing of German militaria dealers, and collectors, whose activities should be of interest to the collecting world. We are sending these out, individually once a week to those who have requested them.

 Ilán Shapiro (aka Alan A. Shapiro and Al Chapman)

As far as can be ascertained, the paternal side of Al Chapman’s family were from Wilno, Lithuania. His grandfather Chaim Shapiro was a Lubavitch rabbi who fled to Stockholm disguised as a Christian. Chaim Shapiro married Esther Domeratsky at Viborg on February 17, 1941 and immigrated to Israel in 1947.

Ilán Shapiro was born in Israel on September 8, 1949, in Tel Aviv. After military service in the IDF, extended from 30 to 36 months by a temporary decree in January 1968, he came to the USA in 1971 to attend an English language school in New York to perfect the colloquial English he learned as a child.

After his English studies, Ilán Shapiro returned to Israel where he became involved with the Israeli think tank JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs). Ilán Shapiro returned to the United States via Canada in 1979 as Alan A. Shapiro. Shapiro has also been closely associated with the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidics, who follow the Qabala and hold extremist and insulting opinions of non-Jews. He is also believed to have links to AIPAC and is believed by U.S. counter intelligence to be probably a Mossad operative.

Currently residing in the Washington area, the clean-shaven Shapiro cultivates a more-American-than-the-Americans image, sometimes going by the name Al Chapman, and is heavily involved in gun shows and, notably, the Third Reich militaria scene in the US. He has been tracked on a number of Internet militaria forums under a variety of pseudonyms.

Shapiro/Chapman is involved in the trading of high end Third Reich militaria and Nazi VIP memorabilia but maintains a firewall between the public and himself. He is said to be involved in the supply of high end fakes to a small group of US and Europe-based dealers.

As Al Shapiro, he sometimes claims to have served in the Six Day War in June 1967 but would have been three months short of his 18th birthday at the time. As Al Chapman, he has claimed to have served in the US Air Force in Vietnam but no record of this service has been found.

Shapiro was taught colloquial English as a child and when he was finished with his obligatory IDF service, he came to the United States to find his fortune and better serve his employers, the Israeli government and people. In due time, Alan became connected with a number of the Hebraic Illuminati in and around Washington, an area that has proven to be of rich pickings for some.

At one period or another, Alan was a very early associate and, as they like to say, a “close friend” of the notorious “Roger Steele” late of “Hollywood Military Hobbies.” Steele, whose real name was Gaylord Earnest Wessock, was a well-known homosexual, convicted counterfeiter and an outlet for the forged and fantasy daggers of James P. Atwood, fake SS insignia and caps manufactured by one John Nesbitt or ‘Reisenhaft’ of California, Inventor of the famous “SS Viking Ring” and other fantasy pieces.

After “Steele’s” death as the result of a stroke, Shapiro sold ‘Hollywood Military Hobbies’ customer lists to a number of dealers as well as the Los Angeles office of the FBI. He later changed his name to “Al Chapman” and ran several retail, mail order outlets, mostly in Miami, Florida.

Shapiro/Chapman then bought a small print shop in Jacksonville, Florida and began to manufacture various German Third Reich lower level documents, such as preliminary certificates for high military decorations. He had an aide, Malcolm Ransome, type in names, add stamps and so on and antique these by soaking them in diluted coffee and stuffing them into a commercial clothes dryer for age.

Shapiro/Chapman sold these documents widely, both in the United States and the UK to a number of militaria dealers (see Mollo, Andrew; Foreman, Adrian; Fischer, Malcom; Ulrich of England; the Klenau Auction in Germany; Merschintsky, Wolfgang; Zyla, Raymond;  Snyder, Charles; Globe Militaria; Andrei Huskins; Stuart, Emily; OMSA; Kleitmann, K.G.; Rich, Dr. Edward P.; Manion’s Auction; Steffans, Roger Auctions.)Using the lists of “Steele’s” customers, he later became an advisor to the Justice Department’s OSI team investigating the existence and identification of alleged neo-Nazi groups in the United States. He has made a liaison with the Wiesenthal Foundation in Los Angeles and the San Diego office of the DHS. He was a collaborator with Andrew Allen, a wealthy San Francisco real estate developer, in penetrating and virtually destroying Willis Carto’s right-wing and anti-Semitic ‘Spotlight’ paper.

Shapiro still manufactures, and sells, fake documents, but the good news is that his printer always uses paper with chemical paper-whiteners and as these were never in use before 1951, an ultra violet light (or “blacklight”) will cause these recent fakes to fluoresce.

Shapiro banks in Paris with a branch of the BNP and uses three different sham American (and one Canadian) corporations to bank his incomes and avoid the American IRS. In what he mistakenly believes is a confidential email, he has boasted of having cheated the IRS out of over three hundred thousand dollars in unpaid taxes.

He has also been the man who supplied the manufacture for the many fake “SS Honor Rings” being sold. His mistake here is not to know that after November 11, 1943, by order of Himmler, no actual rings were presented, only the papers. Most of Shapiro’s ” SS Honor Rings” bearing Himmler’s signature are dated with the spring solstice in March 1944 and therefore are dead giveaways as fakes.