Re: NAZI ARTIFACT

Willard Brooks (willard.brooks@STUDENT.UNI-TUEBINGEN.DE)
Thu, 13 Jul 1995 11:28:22 +0200

On Tue, 11 Jul 1995, Robert Johnson wrote:

> In January, while doing fieldwork among Neo-Nazi groups in Germany,
> I acquired a text titled DEUTCHLAND ERWACHT by Cigarettan*
> Bilderdienft Hamburg*Bahrenfeld published 10 November 1933 at the
> direction of Adolf Hitler.

Soll es nicht "Bilderdienst" geschrieben werden? Wenn es so geschrieben
gewesen waere, dann wuerde ich mich schaetzen, dass es ein Faelaschung
ist, weil kein Deutsche das geschrieben wuerde....oder?

Have you seen the film, "Schtonk!" ?? It was about a man who
falsified Hitler diaries, which, to spite their bogus origins, created
quite a media stir and later quite a number of red faces among the media
sharks who fed on the story. I would be very scpetical of this document.

More, as an American who has lived in Germany and experienced [south
west] Germany, I now feel that the American tendency facination for the
Nazi period is often more than a little bit sensationalist and also
often contains a thinly veiled moral judgement that the americans are
somehow without guilt. The rendering of German Facsism as a
sensationalist symbol of the totally alien and out of the bounds of
american goodness symbol that it often becomes ends up in many ways as a
kind of mask for what I like to call the everyday facism of american
capitalism and the hegemonie that it needs to survive. Symobols such as
German fascism seem to be used as diametrical opposites to bolster the
false piety that we americans seem to need so badly... to evoke the
image of "Amurrica is the graytest cunntry on urth." Perhaps I am also
now revealing a bit of my cultural self hatred. Forgive me.

>
> The individual who gave it to me, a former enlisted member of the SS,
> stated that he had been given it from the hand of Hitler himself on
> the occasion of the ceremony on the rural electrification of villages
> in Hesse.
>
> I wish to donate this work to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
> after a reasonable period of research. Any information on this
> publication including its value would be greatly appreciated.
>
> There is some discoloration of the text as it was kept in a wall
> since the end of the Second World War. The photographes look like
> they were taken yesterday.
>