Would you hang this in your house?

[Floofparty]

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

Someone may have posted this link already but I’m guessing this is the event linked to the OP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_incident_(1937)

Yes

These certificates are online. It depends if it bears the large Nazi Eagle. It's a valuable piece of history, especially being signed by Queen Victoria's grandson, who was a British Prince and carried the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha name. I wouldn't display it, but if it fits in, then go ahead. If it was signed by the other heads of the Red Cross, I'd say no, because they took part in human experiments. I'd look at this as historical.

That debate is a live one in this house! I have oil paintings - portraits - hung all over, usually bought off Ebay. I got one that in the listing looked like a charming 30s portrait of a young man. Only on receiving it did I realise it is actually Nazi art (name on the back: Portrait of a Brownshirt).

My daughters feel I should burn it, or at least give it a disrespectful glow-up with lipstick and sequins. I think context is everything: my family are Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, nobody is going to think we are Nazis. Maybe this young man was an evil-hearted fascist who is spinning in his grave at ending up in our house, next to my menorah. Or maybe he was in over his head, frightened and soon to be dead.

We argued this for ages and the compromise was that it is hung where my daughters and visitors dont see it. I do understand their point of view, but also feel that Hitler ruined far too much for my family when he was alive and he should not have any say in my interior decor now he is dead.

If I were you I would hang that certificate with pride.

are you even aware that many non-Jewish families also suffered, badly, from Hitler's regime?

I am not sure such a performative performance is a sign of intelligence.

Care to explain why it would be illegal?

Just to add: in this situation I might mount the certificate and have the mount conceal the signature. That way it wouldn't be confronting for visitors.

Your relative should absolutely be celebrated. She was saving lives, not collaborating with Nazis. Just cut your mount a bit higher so that her name is the focus, not Adolf's.

I think if you have it up it would be good for people to get to choose not to look at it. So out of the entrance hall and lounge and such. It would make me feel icky to look at that name while at a play date or having a drink with a friend. As a Jew with a gay mother and a black sister in law, my whole family would have been wiped out for multiple reasons. And I know it was a long time ago but given the recent experiences of my children as the only Jews at their school, the worry my grandparents experienced is feeling relevant again today.

I appreciate you want to honour this important part of your own history but can’t you display the medal on its own? With a photo of this brave woman maybe?

I don't know for sure, but Germany and Austria take anything that could possibly be a positive or even neutral slant on Hitler and Nazism very, very seriously. I don't know if it would be illegal in those countries, but it might be.
I don't think that signalling disapproval is a 'performative performance'(which phrase is a tautology anyway) I would genuinely be disturbed that anyone would think that displaying an item signed by Hitler is in any way appropriate.

All the more reason not to display it, then!

Like me? No.

I don’t think it’s inherently offensive to Jewish people we aren't a single viewpoint, and many are very committed to preserving historical artefacts, even uncomfortable ones, because they’re part of the truth of what happened. This isn’t Nazi memorabilia, it’s a record of a British nurse’s bravery in a horrific period. The context and intention matter.

missing the point!

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

If it has Hitler's signature, it is Nazi memorabilia.

Its not glorifying Nazi's, its commemorating and acknowledging the immense bravery of a British Nurse.

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?

It's a part of his family's history and a award for his relative . I think I would hang it upstairs where family can see but not visitors.
You can be proud of her award but doesn't mean you like who signed it.

It wouldn't bother me if I saw it as a visitor, I love history and would find it fascinating. Probably one of a kind.

I would because it's really interesting, but would try to find an "ironic" location like a bathroom or something like that. Definitely not in a "prime" location like dining room.

Not sure why people are voting on aesthetics, when the OP is clearly asking about the ethical side of it.

Hitler was an awful man, but I'd still think it an incredibly interesting thing to look at if I visited your house.

Elizabeth I executed shit loads of people but I'll bet no one would care having something referencing her on view. Having it up in your house doesn't do him any honour, does it? It honours the compassion of your relative (as @SethTrek says) and helps us remember that there were many decent people in Germany who recognised that.

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.

@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.

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

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

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

It’s your house hanging it where you want?