Selling Nazi artefacts

[greencurtainshanging]

I was in an antique shop last week and was surprised to spot a cabinet full of Nazi artefacts for sale. There were original armbands, some swastika cufflinks, Reich coins and original amateur photos of Hitler as well as a Nazi officer uniform.

I actually (mistakenly) thought it was illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia but apparently it's not. It's really bothered me though and while I think it's important to preserve these things so that future generations can learn, I hate the idea that someone is trading in this stuff and potentially selling it to neo Nazis. I think these items belong in a museum or an archive but they should not be up for sale.

But it got me thinking, should the trade of some things like this be regulated/banned?

There is a big issue with extreme right wing groups in the UK.

Probably Bergen Belsen then rather than Auschwitz

I'm also not sure they should be banned. They are part of history however dark that may be. My grandad was in the merchant navy during the was and he ended up with some u-boat binoculars, a Wehrmacht helmet and a Nazi flag. We still have it all somewhere.

What a coincidence. Soon after reading this thread today I was working on my translation of a German diary from 1933. The diarist writes "they live very much a la Hitler" (sie leben sehr a la Hitler), about some relatives she had visited. I guess this means they had items like the crab/lobster fork, picture of AH on the wall, etc. I took the remark to indicate she was distancing herself a little, although for example if she was Christian herself and said "they very much lead a Christian life" that would be approving.

I know what you mean, I know someone distantly who has a Nazi 'museum' in his house that he's put together through collecting over the years.. including a box of Mein Kampf editions and around 2,000 books on Nazi Germany. it's chilling, particularly the uniforms, but he's not a Nazi as far as I can tell, he lived in Germany and is fascinated by the ideology and how it was seeded in ordinary Germans and their culture. I can understand what compels him to try and make sense of it, however futile that may be.

Good point.
DH is German and the DC have dual nationality. They have been subject to "jokes" about being Nazis at school for years, ramping up whenever their class has been studying ww2 or The Holocaust etc.
Of course we have famlily who fought on both sides and a couple (now deceased) who were members of the Hitler Youth. We feel its really important for the DC to understand how ordinary Germans got caught up in Nazism or at least didnt oppose it and many many who died during WW2 who were simply fighting for their country. We have visited a few places in Germany that are traditionally associated with Nazism and Hitler, not to venerate any of it but to see how in the shoes of an average German in the 1930s we might have been "Nazis" too

First thing I thought of too 🤣

@Hoppinggreen I think that Germany's culture of coming to terms with the past through its openness about Nazism is now one of its strengths. Horrible that your children are called Nazis. Do people not realise they weren't even born then?!

I was also thinking about the fact that the swastika was culturally appropriated by the Nazis in the first place; so the existence of one on something (without any other context of Nazism) could just be any general item with a Hindu good luck symbol on it.

Also, if we're boycotting or criticising companies that were in any way related to the Nazis for making material products, Operation Paperclip actually secured the people themselves, in large numbers. I highly doubt it would be even possible to identify everything that we use today that originally had a connection to Nazi scientists at one stage.

Wild! How interesting

I googled Nazi crab fork but all I found was a Nazi crab knife.