The yellow house at 127 North Pine Avenue in Albany is where Gerhard Weinberg first tried corn on the cob and learned he could ask his neighbors for candy one day every October.

"So there were a few culinary novelties if you will," Weinberg said from his current home in Elfland, NC. "I had never eaten broccolli!" 

Albany, New York was a place so different from what he was used to as a boy and not just in the food, but in the way he was treated as a human being. 

As a young boy in Hannover, Germany, Weinberg would come home from first grade trying to hide his bloody nose because he said his classmates "made it very clear that I was a damn Jew and they were going to beat up on a Jewish boy." 

That was 1934 in Germany, when Weinberg was just 6-years-old. By 1938, he was kicked out of school and banned from public swimming pools and local museums. His parents enrolled him and his siblings in English classes and with the help of a wealthy great uncle, their family was able to move to the United States.

First, they made a stop in England and during that time, relatives got sent to concentration camps and their synagogue went up in flames.  

Weinberg was 11 and he wanted to understand why there was so much hate at his home.

"I thought If people are mad enough to burn down God's houses, what's going to happen when God gets mad at them?" 

That question stayed with Weinberg as he went to the University of Albany, served in the US Military, and earned his Masters degree and PhD from the University of Chicago.

He made a career of researching World War II and Adolf Hitler's legacy. He soon found himself in the unlikely position of Hitler's editor when he came across references to the "fact that Hitler had written and dictated another book."  

In 1958, Mein Kampf was the only known book that Hitler had ever written, but Weinberg discovered the dictator's second book while looking through research materials in an old Torpedo Factory. 

"There is a coherence and consistency, one is entitled to call it evil, and terrible and in many cases wrong, but it was coherent and he stuck with it," Weinberg said about Hitler's second book. 

He worked with the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich to publish it. But because of controversy surrounding Hitler's writing, it wasn't until 2003 that he was able to publish a legitimate version in English.

On January 8, 2016, the Institute of Contemporary History published Hitler's words again in an effort to do what Weinberg did: provide historical context to the rambling words of a tyrant to understand why millions followed him. 

"The people who went in this direction are not some separate species of critter on this earth," said Weinberg. "They're people like other people which means that other people could fall for this nonsense if they are so inclined."

And that is exactly why a Jewish boy who escaped Hitler's reign believes so strongly in the re-publishing of Hitler's first book. It's a chance to get it right with notes and historical context to explain the insanity on the pages. 

Eighty-eight-year-old Gerhard Weinberg can't forget the reason he came to Albany, and he doesn't think you should either.