Having grown up in rural Ohio, you have barely begun to scratch the surface. That’s not all of it by any means.
Collectors gonna collect.
I actually had to double check that you said Ohio, because there’s an antique store I frequent here in Illinois with almost the exact same case. Maybe it’s a Midwest thing. Every antique store I’ve been to, and every flea market, has at least one vendor selling WWII stuff, among which is quite a lot of Nazi stuff. Gives me the creeps, but I imagine there are collectors more interested in the history than endorsing the racism. God, I hope so.
I only see one swastika. Am I blind? Is “Land of Oz” code for… something?
That’s nothing… once I found little racist figures (like salt and pepper shakers, figurines, that sort of thing) at a gas station in south eastern GA. Not even in an antique store or anything like that. Just out in a random gas station.
If you go to any big antique show, you’ll see tons of this sort of stuff. Nazi/WWII paraphernalia, pickanniny dolls, old postcards and valentine’s cards & sheet music with racial caricatures… these are all collectibles and are definitely not all bought and sold by people getting off on racism or anti-semitism. That said, there’s a dude at an antiques show I go to regularly who sells bootleg Amos & Andy VHS tapes alongside pickaninny dolls, so they aren’t all just historic collectors.
Racist Yard Sale!
Theres also a dancing doll hanging in the top middle that’s called a “coon jigger” also a nice WWII big-tooth, big glasses tojo cartoon on some propaganda cartoon in the bottom right corner. But you’d probably need to ask to see the REALLY bad stuff.
Might want to check that top shelf…
I suppose there are history buffs out there who like to collect items from horrible periods of time whether it’s the holocaust or slavery memorabilia. I couldn’t imagine displaying anything like that in my house, but to each his own.
One of my colleagues indeed does collect racist memorabilia, and keeps them in her cube, but that’s part of her work, depictions of African Americans, historically.
My,My,my…
Seems a lot of folk’s have forgotten that during WW II Soldier’s would collect that stuff ( Anything that would fit in a knapsack ) as they went along.
The pain you folk’s feel must be immense.
I hate Ohio Nazis…
Before he died, my grandfather gave me lots of cool stuff from his time in WW II. Nifty tools, /beautiful/ silk maps, flags, patches, etc… In there was a Nazi flag.
He’s been gone for almost a decade, and I’ve thrown that flag away. It was difficult for me to do, not because I want to have a damned swastika in my home, but because it was a gift from my childhood idol, and represented one of the most important times in his life.
My reasons for wanting to hang onto it wouldn’t register with anyone else, and it’s a horrible symbol, so it’s gone. Part of me felt like I was betraying my grandfather when I tossed it in the garbage.
I see two swastikas.
Back in the early 90’s, there were quite a few excellent weekend flea markets in Manhattan, on 6th Avenue, just north of Chelsea, and it always shocked me to see dealers with cases filled with similar Nazi memorabilia - flags, pins, uniform buttons and once, a Waffen-SS dagger. And the sellers of these items were often fellow Jews, often elderly. I’d ask how they could trade in such dreck, and while I was usually met with a shrug, one gentleman replied, “I take that money and donate it to Vad Yashem, or have a tree planted, or a marker laid at Mount Herzl.”
And I’m reminded of a collector acquaintance, one of the most frumish, observant, hypocrites I’d ever met (he wouldn’t shake my hand and refused to purchase a piece of porcelain I’d arranged to sell to him because I wouldn’t tell him if I was menstruating or not). I later learned that he had one of the largest private collections of SS uniforms in the U.S.
After zooming in I could spot five. It’s sickening.
