Poop deck: Why is Hitler's toilet in South Jersey?

An online publication focused on Jewish life is featuring - and we're not making this up - a story about a toilet used by Hitler that can be found in an auto body shop in Florence, Burlington County.

The Tablet reports that Sam Carlani's auto shop, which is owned by Greg Kohfeldt, possesses the unusual artifact. The toilet, The Tablet says, came from Hitler's biggest yacht, the Aviso Grille. (The Philadelphia Inquirer also wrote about it in 1997)

"He wanted to ride it down the Thames in London and go live in Windsor Palace when he invaded," Kohfeldt told a reporter for the publication.

The toilet had a long road to South Jersey. After World War II, the Aviso Grille was taken to a New Jersey shipyard. The shipyard's owner charged visitors to tour the yacht, but federal officials stopped him to keep the ship from morphing into a memorial to Hitler. So the ship was scrapped.

Auto body shop Sam Carlani needed a new toilet and purchased the one shorn from the yacht. The toilet has been a sort of tourist attraction since 1952. But that's not all. The local American Legion Post in Florence also has one of Hitler's tables from the yacht.

The Aviso Grille was built in 1934 at the Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany.  It was to be the official German State yacht in 1935 and came to represent the Nazi State.

But The Tablet is not the first to write about the toilet - again, we are not making this up.  Roadsideamerica.com has long had a story about the commode.