Don't think that those coins that the article refers to were actually camp money. And I wonder how they could help with the identification of people who were killed there. But I appreciate this guy's initiative. You may know that the museum at that site had to be (temporarily) closed due to a lack of funds ... Christian
I doubt that any of the camps but perhaps Aushwitz will ever remain marked sites or museums, musuem seeming a very inappropriate word, more like memorials. No one even survived Sobibor to even document it yet fund a serious memorial. They will fade into history as lost sites and 4 hundred years from now some archeologist will search for them seeking legends and glory. This is just human nature. Ruben
As for fading into history, I don't think so. Just take this very website - whenever somebody posts some coin from Nazi Germany here, there will usually be a long discussion about the regime, its symbols, etc. Have not really read anything new in those topics, so I just try to not post there, but it seems that period is just too ... fascinating? Hard for me to find a suitable word. What will happen in a couple of centuries, we don't know of course. But while I find it quite strange when people reduce German history to those twelve years, it would be terrible if over here we did the contrary and focus on everything except those years. Fortunately a lot has been and will be done to not forget. Auschwitz, for example, is a Unesco World Cultural Heritage site - and certainly not because it is so beautiful there. In Germany, there are plans to make Buchenwald (see this GDR coin from 1972) one. I have always found it interesting that this camp was right next to Weimar, city of Goethe and Schiller so to say, which already is a Unesco site ... Christian
Back in 1994 I was living down in the SW USA and in the fall of that year we went through a flood and evacuation to a Red Cross center. We had an older neighbour near us that we kind of looked in on from time to time and when the flood happened we had her come and stay with us - until we all got evacuated. When we got to the Red Cross shelter later we were talking with her and she thanked us for bringing her with us. She said we reminded her of the Germans that smuggled her out of Germany in 1936 when she was a girl, they apparently smuggled her out in a series of safehouses until she made it to safety in France. From there she came to America. It turned out the reason she left, her whole family and her country was that she was Jewish. I appreciated the comparison, but cannot imagine that what we did was nearly as risky as what those kind Germans did in 1936.
A flawed parallel, I think. However, if she said it "reminded" her of 1936, that would not actually mean equating the two situations. Maybe she had just never, or rarely, experienced such unselfish help from people who were basically strangers between '36 and '94 ... Christian
Almost no camps used coinage, just a few POW camps and the lodz getto. Now all camps even had camp money and those that did used a paper currency. With as upset as some people get over collecting of coins used by the Nazi regime can you imagine the reaction to people that collect the camp money. As I do. I don't have much, but I will get more.
would anyone be able to find this article again? I tried clicking on the link and even googling the article but was unable to locate it. It was an interesting read and I was wanting to send it to a friend of mine. Thanks.
I am all for not incriminating coins with the history of the era, and I respect your right to collect this currency Conder, but personally that is where I draw the line. To me, I do not collect such things, and prefer to leave such items to the descendants of those affected if they wish to do so. That is just me though. Like I said, I respect everyone's right to make their own decision. It is a hard line, though, as I do own a slave tag from Charleston, similar but not the same.
