I absolutely would not sell them, for the simple reason that you can’t know why the person is buying them or how they’ll be used. You don’t want them to end up in the hands of a neo-Nazi to share with his antisemitic friends.
There were some notable people who competed in the1936 Olympics. Jesse Owens’ victories were a slap in the ugly face of Hitler’s policies. American Louis Zamperini (Unbroken) competed. Are their photos in there? It might increase their value to museums.
There’s an Olympics museum in Lausanne you might also contact. If you strike out with museums, contact college libraries or history departments. If they turn you down and there really are thousands of copies out there, then you can burn them. Maybe say the name of someone who died in the Holocaust with each page.
I didn’t say it was. I merely said the OP wouldn’t know in whose hands it’d end up if they sell it. Considering that Hitler saw the games as a means of promoting white supremacist, antisemitic propaganda and that Jewish athletes were not allowed to participate, it’s not hard to see the appeal the book would have to those who are attracted to those ideals.
yes but you seem to be missing the point. Selling it to someone who reveres Hitler or is a Holocaust denier is certainly not what the op wishes.
My father fought in WW-II and brought back memorabilia. They are merely examples of a regime that was defeated and at great cost to humanity. He would be horrified to know it passed into the hands of modern day nazis.
When I look at them I see the horror that should never be forgotten. I also see a coward who committed suicide beneath a city in ruins while his henchmen executed people in the streets for cowardice.
That’s what I would ask as well. What are the pictures actually of?
I am of the opinion that history should be preserved. Particularly this particular aspect of history that can serve as a cautionary tale. Simply destroying them doesn’t really do anything one way or the other. Not wanting to celebrate General Lee with a statue doesn’t mean we wipe away all evidence of the Confederacy, so to speak.
As another poster alluded to, we tend to view the Third Reich as a sort of cartoonish evil empire. But for that to happen, it had to be “normalized” by a lot of regular Germans.
As for what to actually do with it, I would check around with maybe some local museums, universities, chapter of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Stuff like that.
Why not? The OP would do more good with the money than a Neo-Nazi would. Every dollar that a Neo-Nazi would spend on those books is a dollar that cannot be used in worse ways.
The OP would undoubtedly do good things with the profit. That’s not the issue. If a Neo-Nazi uses the book in the OP as a recruiting tool or to convince the uninformed that Hitler’s principles weren’t that bad, that’s pretty awful and not, I feel certain, what the OP wants. Relativity is not a consideration. If the book could do damage in the hands of the wrong person, that’s reason enough not to sell it, regardless of whether there are items that could do even more damage.
I hesitate to speak for the OP, but if my father had cared enough to hold onto this keepsake of his youth in Germany, I don’t think he’d appreciate me selling it to people who sympathize with those that forced him and his family to flee his country.
My grandfather who fought in World War 2 had the authentic metal shell casing from a German 105mm artillery piece (it was just the spent shell no warhead/tip) that he captured and brought back and gave to my father who held onto it and put in a display case until the 90s where he threw it away because of all the then recent white supremacist bomb-scares and didn’t want guests thinking he might be part of all that.
I’m still mad my dad casually threw something like that away for something so dumb. What I’m saying is, odds are there’s someone who wants it for actual historical value.
I suggest to gain some sort of joy by selling your memorabilia.
Sometimes when in Italy we make a toast we dedicate it “to people who don’t like us”
You could do the same: sell it for a good price and then dedicate what you will buy with the money to fucking nazis.
I came by chance upon an article today that may be of interest to the OP. It’s about nazi memorabilia that are apparently being stolen like never before and people who buy them to donate to Jewish museums and everything in between. Never heard of this MEL Magazine before but it made me think of this thread immediately.
Not advice, but this thread reminds me that I own a small tablecloth embroidered with hundreds of little swastikas. My grandmother made it when she was a child, long before it was associated with Nazis. (The swastika used to be a good luck symbol in American iconography, like a 4 leafed clover – they were often pictured together.)
I used to eat on that tablecloth as a child, when I visiting my grandmother. She used it in the breakfast nook. That was long after Hitler was defeated. Apparently she cared for the tablecloth. It must have taken her ages to embroider.
Anyway, I have this lovely tablecloth, hand-made by my grandmother, and I can’t use it. I don’t feel at all bad about keeping it as a family heirloom, and it’s not of any value historically or anything. But it is a pretty weird object to own. I used to take it out to cover a bridge table or something now and then, but it was just too awkward explaining it. It helps that I’m a Jew, and my grandmother was a Jew, so I don’t think people who saw it suspected that I was harboring secret Nazi sentiments. But it was still weird and awkward to use it. So now it sits in the drawer, with the other table-linens.
You’re half-correct. These are identified in some searching as having been offered/ sold by a cigarette company in Germany.
That said, most of the photographs are 3x5". A fair number are larger, including some that are about 6.5 x4.75". The 3x5 I can see being included in a somewhat large pack of cigarettes. The larger ones show zero folds or creases, indicating that however they were sold, they were sold flat.
The inside page of the book reads,
" Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Altona- Bahrenfeld "
Poking around reveals that mint condition sets sell for $ 500 USD or more. These that I have lack the dust jackets but are otherwise in good condition. This cigarette company printed quite a few hardback books that featured or supported Hitler and reveled in his life and exploits.
And yes, while there are indeed photos of Jesse Owens, there are plenty of shots of Hitler and his upper-level henchmen as well as Nazi flags resplendent with swastikas.
The millennia-old history of the Savarstika is well-documented. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the Hindu, Sufi, First People’s and other uses of that icon. I’m considering burning every page of these books because that icon was appropriated by one of the most vile embodiments of evil to walk the earth in the last 500 years.
Unsure whether the purgative pleasures of torching those B&W images of Hitler are more valuable to me than a small financial contribution to my old Shul.
Well, only you can answer that. But you certainly shouldn’t feel guilty about destroying history if that’s what you choose to do. There’s an active market for this very item. There are plenty of them in circulation to document history.
Mine is completely different – it wasn’t made to celebrate the Nazis, and it was something my grandmother made and cherished. And it’s the only one of it that exists. And it has trivial financial value.
It’s possible for someone to keep a reminder of a time despite that item coming from a group they disliked or just didn’t care about. My father kept a Japanese rifle from World War II in a shelf in our basement. He didn’t do it because he admired the Japanese of that time. He was a Marine who was in various places in the Pacific during World War II. If he was ever close to any Japanese soldiers during that time, they were shooting at him. It was just something that he acquired toward the end of the war and brought back with him as a memento. Basically, he never really discussed the rifle with us and nobody thought that it said anything about his feelings about the war. In fact, he really didn’t much discuss his time in the Marines at all.
I have to respect the motivation for keeping it. My wife has some hand-stitched tablecloths are astonishingly fine in quality and detail. I’d keep it too if it’d been my grandmother who made it. Cherish it and her memory. And if it comes out now and then and is shared and prompts conversation, well all the better.