I just got a bunch of WWII memorabilia (the unwanted kind)...what do I do with it?

A relative has been holding on to this stuff for a long time and of all things it is Nazi memorabilia.
A relative of ours was a displaced person in World War II. This person was not a Nazi, but was displaced in Germany after the war and attended college there while waiting to come to the US. This person just started collecting stuff because they thought it might be worth something some day...The person who saved this stuff had spent most of the war hiding from the Nazis...so it seems odd that he collected all this junk.

My relative gave it to me...and said...can you sell it on Ebay?? I really don't like that idea because some freeper out there might buy it to satisfy their Nazi fetish...and that seems wrong to me...

I am conflicted. I think perhaps it would be better to give it to a museum or some group that would know what to do with it. Profiting from the Nazi crap seems sick to me....I would rather people learn from it.

I hate having this stuff in my house...so where do I get rid of it?

I was thinking about one of our local Veterans groups...sometimes they put stuff like this in display cases for people to see and to document history.

They might want it for a display.

I'm a WWII geek, but not THAT kind of geek.

how the person in question ever came to have this stuff...I will never know but then again I am sure there were lots of former party members ready to dump their stuff...

when we were cleaning out his mother's apartment. He donated them to the dumpster out in back of her building. He refused to donate or sell them. He wanted the crap destroyed.

and not just because they're FReepers, but because it is history.

What sort of stuff is it. I can direct you to some sites, or ebay works too.

most of the pins date from the '30s...and some include regions of Germany...Tyrol, Salzburg...etc

It depends on what they are made of, primarily as an indicator of rarity, what version of what pin, which group the pin was associated with (some are rarer than others) and provenance. Badges, same dynamics apply, although they don't age as well and there are a LOT more on the market.

This is history. (at least one small aspect of it.)

If GIVEN to you, you can figure what you want to do with it. If handed over to you with a request to sell, then is it yours?

i am so confused!!!! :cry:

and that I would keep the money as a "gift"...gag...but I don't want money generated from this stuff.

Nazi memorabilia. They use it for displays, put it in traveling collections, study it or simply put it in the archives. There are a number of Nazi-studying academics, both in the fields of history and political science, for whom the collection you're describing would be a goldmine of information. If you're looking for someone with an knowledge of these sorts of materials who could direct you to people who would be interested in them for study, let me know...it's the life's work of one of my professors from college. He's probably going to refer you to the Holocaust museum as well though.

There is an odd fact about the Nazis, they were meticulous in record-keeping throughout the way, and almost as meticulous in destroying the evidence as the allies advanced. We still know very very little about the Nazis compared to what we know about WW-I Germany, or the Soviets or virtually any other major 20th c enemy regime. Pretty much every major artifact discovered in the past 50 years which has advanced our knowledge has come out of collections like the one you describe.

Possibly the most important piece of artifact history discovered thus far was actually thrown-away. A woman was cleaning out her father's things post-death and found a ledger book containing the name and number of every person in, out and executed at one camp, all supplies in and out of the camp, and the amounts of material in store. Thinking it ghastly and presuming that this information was both known and not of interest, threw the book away. Someone else fished it out of the trash...with it we finally had an academically-studiable record of the day-to-day operations of a Nazi death camp. (Virtually the only one...also virtually the only record of what happened to these people...who survived and who didn't.)

Imagine if that had been lost to history.

taking the applicable tax writeoff.

which has a far smaller display. It is fantastic, though. You might want to look into that. I was stunned the first time I went there. It was amazing and all the work of one survivor.

people about the atrocities.

I will contact them and see if they want it...if so, I will mail them the items...some of this stuff I don't even know what it would have been used for.

I would sure like to see it though... PM me if interested.

Ebay does not allow any thing Nazi.

I don't go for the Nazi stuff myself, although I do have a rather expansive collection of old military medals for someone my age (some of them date to World War One), but I don't collect Nazi memorabilia personally. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who eat that stuff up, including some who I would say seem a little too interested in the Nazis. You could donate it to a museum as has already been suggested, but if you give it to a big one it'll probably just wind up in a warehouse unless you have something really spectacular.

With that in mind, you might try donating it to a local history museum near where this person lives/lived and they could put in on display to show the history of some people who immigrated to the area and as a means of talking about their life experiences. That might be a better use. You could also see if a library would want it for a similar exhibit, although I doubt a library would exhibit 3rd Reich material.

If you could post a picture of it I could probably tell you what it all is and let you know if you have anything valuable there. If you absolutely can't find a place for it, sell it to a collectors' shop and donate the money to charity.

or to the Holocaust Museum in DC...

if neither wants this stuff, I will give it to a Veteran's museum...

You could get a value and write it off as a charitable contribution.

I know, I'm SO mercenary.
;-)

Sounds like absolutely fascinating stuff, but I agree, that's not the kind of thing you want lying around the house.

and don't automatically assume that people who collect Nazi shit are themselves Nazis. I don't, but I've read countless books about the rise of the Nazis, and I loathe them. Know your enemy, and all that.

Then again, a REALLY extensive collection of ONLY Nazi stuff might be a little odd

it was found in the stuff of some jewish neighbors that passed away. so, yeah, you never know.

I am writing up papers to indicate where they came from, who brought them to the US...etc and I am citing my relative who gave them to me as the person who is donating them.

The folks there were very nice. In fact the person I spoke to told me that it is not uncommon for people to have stuff like this and not know what to do with it. She also told me that the collection might have some monetary value, however I told her that we were uncomfortable profiting from this type of memorabilia.