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Would you hang this in your house?

294 replies

Floofparty · 13/09/2026 14:41

My DH has inherited a framed certificate and medal which was presented to a relative in 1937 when she was a British army nurse. She was stationed in Spain when a German battleship was bombed and she helped care for the injured.

The medal was awarded to her by the German Red Cross with the approval of Adolf Hitler, and his name is very prominent on the certificate - it stands out more than any of the other text. Do you think it’s bad taste to hang this in our house, or is it merely an interesting piece of historical memorabilia?

YABU - guests may take offence or think it odd
YANBU - hang the frame

OP posts:
Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 20:49

Duckduckgander · 16/09/2026 12:49

Is that your way of saying you can't answer the question?

Do you really assume that anyone that asks for clarification for the rationale behind a view you hold, that they don't share is disingenuous?

You don't owe anyone an explanation for how you feel, you have every right to your own opinion. But maybe you should be less quick to judge and make offensive assumptions of people who hold different opinions to you.

I have already explained my views throughout this thread and you are welcome to read them. I will absolutely judge people who think is is acceptable to collect/display n*zi memorabilia. If you find that offensive then maybe you could explain why?

Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 20:40

AlwaysExtraHot · 16/09/2026 09:18

You should look up the meaning of the word glorifying if you are unsure as to why I used the word to describe the action of displaying a certificate endorsed by Adolf Hitler.

It means to make something seem better or more important than it actually is, no?
I don't see how displaying a certificate with Hitler's name on it in an administrative context does that.

I'm guessing that English is your second language @AlwaysExtraHot ? I don't understand what you mean by 'administrative context'? To be clear; hanging a certificate which was presented to a member of your family on the wall of your home where visitors can see and admire it and the presenter is not what I would describe as 'administrative'. It is demonstrating pride in the certificate and it's meaning. Whilst the OP's family may be proud of the relative and her work, I am at a loss as to why she or her family would be proud to receive something with Adolf Hitler's prominent seal of approval on it or why they would be happy to display it in their home.

Duckduckgander · 16/09/2026 12:49

Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 09:09

From what you've written, I can see that you already know the answer to your disingenuous question @Duckduckgander 🙄

Edited

Is that your way of saying you can't answer the question?

Do you really assume that anyone that asks for clarification for the rationale behind a view you hold, that they don't share is disingenuous?

You don't owe anyone an explanation for how you feel, you have every right to your own opinion. But maybe you should be less quick to judge and make offensive assumptions of people who hold different opinions to you.

AlwaysExtraHot · 16/09/2026 09:18

Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 09:07

I'm trying not to receive a ban for offensive language and, honestly, I don't even like writing that word in full, it turns my stomach.
You should look up the meaning of the word glorifying if you are unsure as to why I used the word to describe the action of displaying a certificate endorsed by Adolf Hitler.

You should look up the meaning of the word glorifying if you are unsure as to why I used the word to describe the action of displaying a certificate endorsed by Adolf Hitler.

It means to make something seem better or more important than it actually is, no?
I don't see how displaying a certificate with Hitler's name on it in an administrative context does that.

Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 09:09

From what you've written, I can see that you already know the answer to your disingenuous question @Duckduckgander 🙄

Crispsandcola · 16/09/2026 09:07

DailyPlanner · 13/09/2026 20:45

that's the point, where exactly do you see "glorification of Nazis"?

You know you can write the word, you don't catch Nazis by writing it?

I'm trying not to receive a ban for offensive language and, honestly, I don't even like writing that word in full, it turns my stomach.
You should look up the meaning of the word glorifying if you are unsure as to why I used the word to describe the action of displaying a certificate endorsed by Adolf Hitler.

DearDenimEagle · 15/09/2026 21:09

As a German married to a Jew, I’d have hung it up in the office.. or the upstairs hall, where only we would see it

DailyPlanner · 15/09/2026 18:57

icircleyouuuuuu · 15/09/2026 17:00

No, I personally think someone who cared for and looked after Nazis during the world war should be a family shame, not celebration

People like you might confuse German soldiers and Nazis, so it's not a nurse family would should be ashamed here.

Realworld10 · 15/09/2026 18:56

My DF and DGPs have an admirable collection of medals for military and heroic merits but they didn't hang them up on display. It's a case of personal achievement and pride without the need to show it. Call it class, stoicism, whatever, so no I don't see why you want to as she probably wouldn't have had it on display either. Rather they were kept and preserved and boxes to look at, show people.

I'm the same with awards and qualifications, wouldn't dream of having them in prominent places, it's just a bit pretentious IMO.

Duckduckgander · 15/09/2026 18:14

icircleyouuuuuu · 15/09/2026 17:00

No, I personally think someone who cared for and looked after Nazis during the world war should be a family shame, not celebration

I think the event in question was actually prior to the war. But nevertheless I'd certainly feel quite proud if she were a family member of mine.

icircleyouuuuuu · 15/09/2026 17:00

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

No, I personally think someone who cared for and looked after Nazis during the world war should be a family shame, not celebration

PrettyPickle · 15/09/2026 16:54

ShutupLwren · 14/09/2026 18:33

My grandmother was Jewish and was absolutely horrified one day when I came home from a shift at a hospice and cared for a dying man with swastika tattoos. I was telling her about how he was being a dick to the African nurses and he’d have been even worse to me had he known my family history. As it happened he was as pleasant as he could muster with me and I sat with him, washed, dressed, fed him porridge and yogurts and read him the paper. I held his hand and changed his pads for him.
Gave him a hug before I left and told him I would be back soon to see him.
Same way I did with the murderers, the rapists and paedophiles. I may hate who someone is, what they are or what they have done. But when a person is faced with death what good is being anything but kind to them? If they believe in hell, that’s on their mind and they’re terrified. If they don’t, they’re not bothered anyway. Just because someone has done something pure evil to someone else, it is not the job of the person caring for them in their final weeks, days or hours to dole out punishment. I tried explaining that to my grandmother but she was so upset that it made no difference. “You are a glorified skivvy” she told me, “you should have walked out and refused” and for some time she was angry with me and quite ashamed for a really long time. She was proud when I started the job, but she just assumed I’d only ever have to look after nice elderly people.
It’s actually quite divisive at times the care sector. I always feel bad for surgeons who have to operate on much hated prisoners, you’re just doing your job and the population think you’re a prick for stabilising a child killer. Every single comment on the daily mail comments section is commenting as though you’re a bigger twat than the perpetrator is for not letting them die.

I’d definitely not be hanging up anything signed by adolf, but I’d keep it, history is always interesting, especially family history. She may have hated every single person she cared for and still showed them compassion. And knowing first hand how challenging that can be, I’d not want to throw her history away.

And this is it, that spark of compassion, should not be thrown away, the world would be a better place if we showed love and care to all.

Why be ashamed and hide such a compassionate womans work.

PrettyPickle · 15/09/2026 16:50

This reply has been deleted

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JeanSimmons · 15/09/2026 15:33

DailyPlanner · 15/09/2026 15:19

You obviously don't have much knowledge of what you are talking about. Hang whatever you want in your own house, but jumping to ridiculous conclusions about other people because you don't know or understand a subject, is a step too far. It's you who look silly though, not the people you are attacking.

I'm sorry, but if you think that this is in any way appropriate then you are the ignorant one. I can assure you that most people would feel the way I do. You can sneer all you like. You don't look cool, just racist and ignorant.

DailyPlanner · 15/09/2026 15:19

JeanSimmons · 14/09/2026 22:30

No, I'm not. You are, in a very big way.

You obviously don't have much knowledge of what you are talking about. Hang whatever you want in your own house, but jumping to ridiculous conclusions about other people because you don't know or understand a subject, is a step too far. It's you who look silly though, not the people you are attacking.

Wildefish · 15/09/2026 15:09

Stompythedinosaur · 13/09/2026 14:52

I'd keep it, that's very interesting family history, but I don't think I'd display it.

Excellent answer.

PrettyPickle · 15/09/2026 13:50

Ketzele · 14/09/2026 22:45

I've read the thread carefully now and am pondering people's visceral responses. They're all valid (well, mostly) just different.

Context is everything. Im looking round my own living room (which you walk straight into from the street) and thinking it does actually look like a museum. The first thing you see is a massive painting of my great great grandmother, who died in Berlin in 1943. There's a photo of my mum as a toddler clutching a menoriah. There's a painting of a rabbi FGS. Subtle it ain't, and you can't miss that Im intensely interested in memorabilia from that period.

Presumably OP isn't living in a memorial of dead relatives like I am, and this thread will have shown her how many people will respond to the certificate. There are ways to manage that. But I still think we shouldn't give magical properties to Hitler's name. The certificate is not cursed.

I've just remembered that I've also got a small bust of Stalin, another truly evil man, that I picked up from a vintage stall in Moscow nearly 40 years ago. And I'm currently translating letters written home by a great uncle when he was fighting for the Germans in WW1. He was shot off his horse, and it's sad to think that some of his colleagues then may have been Nazi commanders 20 years later. Am I wrong to have these things, I wonder?

Some truly awful people gain power in the name of the greater good and decent people, feeling that they, on their own can do nothing, get swept along. Its not good but its human.

And then some people, far too unique and rare, rise above it and think about the real greater good of human compassion. In this case a nurse, in pre war Europe just looking at helping the suffering no matter who they are. Thats pretty special to me.

A soldier writing letters from the front line where he puts on a brave face - some call out for their mum in the stinking trenches, does it matter which side they were on, they die/suffer in the same way - are we to abandon compassion completely?

This woman showed immense bravery and bucked the trend, she didn't care what others thought, she followed her own conscience. Maybe if more people had the strength to follow their own conscience, then repeated horrors like the holocaust or slavery would never again happened?

I'm not willing to minimise that spark of humanity in an otherwise dark world. I believe we need to rethink it!

ginasevern · 15/09/2026 12:04

@AtomHeartMotherOfGod "Elizabeth I executed shit loads of people but I'll bet no one would care having something referencing her on view."

That's such a poor analogy that it's hard to even know where to begin. Firstly Elizabeth I died 423 years ago when England was still classed as Medieval. Medieval beliefs, standards and world views were so unimaginably removed from our own that it would take pages and pages to explain it to you. Secondly, she didn't send 6 million people to be gassed to death in the biggest genocide the world has ever seen, nor did she leave the whole of Europe in inconceivable and utter devastation. The material effects of which were still being felt at least 30 years after the war and the emotional suffering still continues. There are millions of people alive now, as we speak, who were victims of not only the Holocaust but the war as a whole. Children whose parents were gassed to death or who were experimented on in the vilest of ways known to mankind in order to create the "master race". There are millions of people still alive now who will never know what happened to their families or homes. All of this is within living memory and happened in the 20th century. My own father was a medic who saw the horrors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where 70,000 alone died of starvation and disease. The scars are very real and still here.

ginasevern · 15/09/2026 11:25

outerspacepotato · 14/09/2026 20:29

She was saving German lives that were there helping the Fascists with the Condor Legion and testing out new tech.

Guernica.

Ah right. I'm very aware of Guernica. I believe this certificate relates to the bombing of the Deutschland which was patrolling off Ibiza as part of (allegedly) the international non-intervention and observation patrol. It was however bombed by Republican forces in the mistaken belief that it was a Spanish Nationalist (socialist) ship. There were many dead, with the injured being taken to Gibraltar where a British medical facility tended to them. Four extra British nurses were flown out by the RAF to help and they all received awards signed by Hitler afterwards.

Baublebonkers · 15/09/2026 09:06

It’s your house hanging it where you want?

Bowies · 15/09/2026 03:57

Long term loan to eg Imperial War museum I wouldn’t put it on my wall.

Scorchio84 · 15/09/2026 03:09

Monty36 · 14/09/2026 08:54

I suspect many who might see it may well not ask anything about it. But make assumptions. That is the problem for the OP.

I agree with this point, I suspect a lot of people wouldn't bring it up, who wants that conversation at a party, over a cuppa or dinner?

One side of my family is Anglo-German, we are not Jewish but I know how uncomfortable something like that would make us all, there's still tremendous generational guilt & shame over what happened during & before WWII (the other side is Irish so we have quite the mongrel pedigree!)

It's wonderful what your husbands relative did & she was obviously very compassionate but I think ultimately most people would judge anyone who has anything from that regime displayed in their home

anon4net · 15/09/2026 02:01

No, I would not display anything signed by Hitler in my home.

malware · 15/09/2026 01:06

@AtomHeartMotherOfGod
Two points: firstly Elizabeth I was not that into executing people compared to monarchs of the age (maybe 800 people compared to 25,000 of Henry VIII). Certainly nowhere near 6 million.

Secondly, we do have a few hundred's years perspective on that particular episode.

My Mother was forced to leave Germany (aged 6). The repercussions led to mental health issues which still echo through the years. A family scattered around the world. Gaps in the family tree. A feeling of always being the outsider.

So it's not at all like Elizabeth I at all from where I am standing. It's difficult to hear that pain expressed as a sort of entertainment, an interesting sideshow. I suppose it's still quite real to me, I do still feel its effects. Hopefully the next generation will not.

GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing · 14/09/2026 23:13

I wouldn’t hang it on display, no. I wouldn’t want to look at something with Hitler’s name on it myself every day.

I would keep it though.