Background: 1st generation German Jewish offspring. Dad was 8, his sister was 3 when they got out. 6 weeks before Kristallnacht.
In going through some boxes a few years ago I came across these 1936 Berlin Olympics Commemorative books. They’re in remarkably good shape. What’s unusual- something I have never seen ANYWHERE- is that all of the photographs in the books, and there are more than 100 between the 2 volumes- are genuine B&W glossy photos. I am guessing they were purchased separately and glued into place.
I was completely horrified. Then I thought about it a bit. In 1936, few Jews thought that the anti-Semetic rhetoric would amount to much. My Dad was 7. Why not collect these? Or perhaps his Mom and Dad gave them to him as a gift? Perfectly normal thing to do for a kid interested in sporting and such.
Now I have them. They’re of some value obviously. I could take them to a friend’s home, say some things out loud about the amazing 2-generation damage done to my family and its DNA by the Nazis and tear out all of the pages and burn them up.
Fitting, for all of the books the Nazis delighted in burning up. Or- sell them and donate the proceeds to a local Jewish charity.
I know a woman who has an eBay business, and they got a knife that had a German word carved into the handle. Google Translate looked innocuous enough, so they listed it, and then got an e-mail from Google stating that the knife was Nazi memorabilia, which eBay does not knowingly sell.
See, that’s what I THOUGHT ! But my link from eBay shows different. Which is weird. It’s a Great Britain-based rare bookseller. Wonder if the U.K. rules regarding this are different?
My first reaction was that I wouldn’t want anything in my house with a swastika emblazoned on it but then remembered that a good portion of the paperbacks I own from the Seventies (Jack Higgens, Robert Ludlum, Ira Levin, etc) feature the damned thing on the covers.
There’s a certain amount of historical value there. While I can understand a temptation to burn them, if they were mine and I could find a charity or museum I was comfortable with to take them I’d opt for that.
I certainly understand why some people would burn them. There are multiple motivations for that which make sense.
Having said that, however, I would tend to go in a different direction. Since the war, and all the damage that the Nazis inflicted on the world DID happen, I say that maybe some small measure of belated good can be made to come out of it. I would either look into donating the books to some museum, or possibly sell them and use the money for a charitable cause.
This. The thing about this time in history that is important to the victims, is that it not be forgotten. Don’t feel like you are glorifying the 3rd Reich, you are keeping the memory alive as a warning. It seems pretty important now that we remember how the slide to the horror to follow happened. And how innocuous it seemed at the time. We are seeing it now.
We found something similarly troubling among my husband’s parent’s possessions after they died. It’s a set of a dozen highball glasses, brand new, still in their presentation box. My guess is that they were wedding presents or such, because his parents were actually strict Methodists and never drank any alcohol, so far as he or any of his sibs remember.
The trouble is, the artwork printed on the glasses is of black men and women whooping it up, drinking and dancing, sort of dressed in Flapper era garb I think, but they’re grossly exaggerated negro caricatures.
My sister told me that artifacts like there were highly collectible, apparently mostly by African-Americans. A way of somehow defanging their message? By showing how far they’ve come or how far they had to come from, something like that? I don’t know.
I have no idea of how one would go about finding a ‘suitable’ collector of such. My first impulse was to just smash up the set and drop the shards into the recycling bin, but hubby and sister thought, well, if someone wanted them for a non-bigotted reasons, as a historical relic… Anyway, we just shoved the box into the back of one of our storage closets and there they still sit more than forty years later.
We must decide what to do with them before someone else runs into them while cleaning out after our deaths and wondering…
I’ve heard that; some African-Americans collect all sorts of stuff like that. I think I’ve seen such stuff on Antiques Roadshow once or twice. Perhaps you might check some episodes or the website to see which dealers are familiar with that stuff.
Yes, it’s the memory of something that for that then-child was a representation of a normal shared experience, just while his own undoing was already being engineered. Material evidence of how it can all come under an insidious and even seductive facade. I too would seek to entrust it to those seeking to preserve the memory or study the age, if they will have it.
If it was me, I would offer it to the Holocaust museum as artifacts brought out of Germany as the Holocaust was occurring. If they decline ask if there is another museum or archive that might be interested. A university Judaic Studies archive? Objects make such powerful teaching materials that it seems important to preserve the books.
I suspect that there are many thousands of these sets- in pristine condition- in museums. That said, I will reach out to see if any wish to have them to display for the very very valid reasons stated by Dopers above.
If I do sell them, the money will go to maintain the artifacts and relics housed by Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia. I stood on that Bima on the first day of Succoth in 1975 and read from the Torah. A Succah arched over me, redolent with the scent of autumn gourds and corn and other harvested produce.
No matter how small the amount they sell for, the money will go to educate Jews.
It’s the best I can do with the awfulness of what it represents.
ETA: starvingbutstrong, that’s a remarkable story. Those shotglasses…being owned by African-Americans. Complicated stuff.
I’d probably display them as a piece of family history, but I understand why you might not want to.
In lieu of selling the books, I have a different suggestion:
Write a letter. Explain what the books are, why you have them, and how you have struggled with it. Tell the story of your father and why you suspect he had them in the first place, and why he kept them all these years.
Put the letter in one of the books. Put the books back in the box. Make a donation to Rodeph Shalom equal to whatever pittance you would have gotten for selling them.
The true value that of these books are their place in your family’s history. Selling them will erase that. So put it away and leave it for another generation. Maybe it will be a curiosity quickly forgotten, or maybe it will shine a light in a time of darkness. Who knows?
I apologize in advance if I’m being dumb, as this is a subject I’m not well versed in. But I’m wanting to clear up something in my head.
Are the contents of the books beyond the cover bad? Like is any content contained within antisemitic? Is Hitler or other Nazi stuff pictured inside? Is it more a principle thing, due to antisemitism at the 1936 games?
I hope I’m not being offensive by asking. But I admit that, while I am against all forms of bigotry, I don’t really know a lot about this era beyond what I was taught in school.