Crazy old coot or dangerous Holocaust denier? That's the question officials from Walworth County in the US state of Wisconsin are asking these days about 87-year-old Ted Junker. The retired farmer, who was born in Germany but grew up in Romania, says he wants to build a memorial to Nazi dictator Adolf Hilter on his land to clear up what he sees are historical inaccuracies about the most hated man of the 20th century.

"I like the US," Junker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel according to the Associated Press. "I can't understand why people don't know the truth. This is for understanding, not hate."

In Junker's mind, Hitler is not to blame for starting World War II, and so he built a memorial for $200,000 (€159,096) on his farm to supposedly set the record straight.

According to the AP, Junker lived in Romania during Hitler's rise to power and volunteered to join elite Nazi unit the Waffen SS in 1940. After serving in Russia, he came to the United States in 1955 and worked as a janitor in Chicago. He bought his farm in Wisconsin's Walworth County 43 years ago.

The county's director of land use and resource management Michael Cotter said Junker had proposed an elaborate Hitler memorial and information center in 2001. But after visiting the site, which is supposed to open to the public on June 25, there was not much on display. "I was expecting to see Lugers, uniforms, helmets and pictures -- a museum. I don't think it's a museum, but I don't think it's a storage shed, either," he said.

Loren Waite, town chairman of nearby Sugar Creek, is concerned about the negative publicity Junker is causing. "As long as it was just on his (farm), that was one thing, but now that he's gone public, we're afraid of what's going to happen here," Waite said. "He's just a mixed up old man."

But Kathy Heilbronner, assistant director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, told the AP that Junker was a classic Holocaust denier. "In making these assertions, he's deliberately choosing to ignore the overwhelming volume of everything that supports every aspect of the Holocaust," Heilbronner said.