How much for KL prisonner uniforms

[Jean-Loup]

What would a vary approximate value for a concentration camp prisonners tunic be worth, in good condition, with serial number, and red triangle? I have never seen any for sale, but might have the possibility to get one, and would like to have a vague idea.

JL

[John Pic]

They are worth more than any uniform on the face of this planet and yet no price should be paid for such an item ever.

[Øyvind]

They are worth more than any uniform on the face of this planet and yet no price should be paid for such an item ever.

Well said

Cheers
Øyvind

[jotuntroll]

In these times of denial I would like all hollocaust items to go to 100% serious museums!

[bwanek1]

HEAR, HEAR!

Such an item is not a "collectible."

[Jean-Loup]

I got a reply by PM. Question answered. Thanks guys.

JL

[CWP]

If SS uniform items from KZ guards are collectible, why not KZ inmate items as well? I am also curious how much these may be worth and if there are any in collections.

[Larry L]

Price is what you are willing to pay.
Lot of "normal" prisoners had similar tunics, so it would be difficult to know that it was actually used in KL. Triangles are easy to add etc.

And why not these are not collectibles? We should then stop collecting all 3rd reich items. If you collect human remains, that would be different.
Why some people collect knight's crosses for example? Propably lot of killing and suffering had to be done before getting one.

Propably that kind of item would be more "touching", there was actually a person who suffered a lot. It would remind us better that "never again" than just a plain tunic from "grazy nazi murderer".

L

[bwanek1]

I believe there is a substantial difference between the uniform items and equipment of soldiers and those of thugs and sadists. I recognize that it is a slippery slope when one begins talking about the Waffen SS simply as “elite soldiers,” as if they were no different than U.S. Army Rangers or British S.A.S. The ranks of the Waffen SS did include some of the most fanatical Nazis and the war crimes of many are well documented. However, they were soldiers nonetheless and the killing of armed enemy combatants is permissible in wartime (within the rules of war). Combat decorations are given in recognition of valor in the face of danger, not cruelty against one’s adversary. By contrast, the atrocities committed by the guards of concentration camps against unarmed inmates are not justifiable under any accepted moral or legal code. Such acts were not acts of bravery, but of cowardice. I have visited the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. as well as both Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I have seen the prisoner uniforms on display at those places. I do not understand why anyone would want such a symbol of inhumanity in their personal possession. Rather than reminding one individual "never again," put in a museum and remind thousands. This is not to cast dispersions on anyone else. It is simply my personal perspective.

[John Pic]

Couldnt have said it better.

[Bob Hritz]

I have a different perspective. I have such a set, in my collection. I believe it also brings a sense of reality of the harsh treatment of prisoners by members of the SS. I have thought, long and hard, about this communist prisoner who was incarcerated because of his political beliefs. I gives me a better understanding of the tolerance allowed that even unpopular beliefs and utterances should be protected in a free society. That set also puts the SS collection in a different light from those who would deny the cruelty and hardships inflicted on anyone who would not, or could not, fit into Hitler's and Himmler's dream of an race of Aryan supermen.

I also have an original yellow Star of David. This was brought into one of my ads by the man who gave it to me, so that I would not collect to glorify the Third Reich, but to put it into historical perspective. I recall talking to this man, for some time, before he took out his 'war souvenir'. From our conversation, he knew I was not a fascist or a sympathizer of the Third Reich. As he left, he reached into his pocket and handed me the Star of David and said "Never forget". Not only have I not forgotten the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime, I have not forgetten this unknown man, with the deep set eyes of a witness to something I would never want to see.

It is not what you collect, but how you collect. We are historians and those who preserve the artifacts of a time, in history, that should never be forgotten or repeated. In troubled times, such as we live, it is easy to say "kill them all". However we, as collectors of an era of horrendous suffering, should always know better the results of such a call for genocide.

Bob Hritz

[Lassi]

Dos anybody ever learn from history? I personally think not, not much anyway. I wish people did but I think it´s a fantasy, Hitler didn´t learn much from Napoleon, what about ex Yugoslavia had they learned much? Perhaps how to build prison camps? What about the Jews and how they treat the Palestinians. What about US or Denmark for that sake, who gives us the right to police the world? Who gave the terrorist the right to blow up civilians, their god? I don´t want to turn this in to a political discussion, just want to ask the question who is right and who is wrong? I feel great sadness and sorrow for the one who died and suffered in all these conflicts, Jews, communist, Nazis, Democrats, Conservatives, mothers, wife's, Fathers, brothers, sisters, poor, rich etc. No human deserves to suffer or die by an others hand.
Finlay I wish to thank you Americans for saving our ass twice the past 100 years

Regards Lassi

[Oberjunker]

Lets also not forget that those prisoner uniforms were worn by Wehrmacht POW's as well from all branches of service at Buchenwald and other camps in Eastern Germany were used as concentration camps again until 1950. Nearly half of the internees at Buchenwald alone perished from starvation and mistreatment.

So if you wanted to get really creative in your mind, the red triangle was a post-post war additon after it was worn by a Waffen-SS veteran (45-50), after it was worn by a 33-45 inmate. So it could be a Jewish Homosexual Communist (what color would that star be?) and a Waffen-SS veterans garb (TK?), only to have the historic value tarnished by someone applying the triangle post war!

[Donald Abenheim]

Some points

Couldnt have said it better.

I realize that there is often no utility to such a post, but these matters do constitute my professional calling, so do consider this: the SS saw itself as the guardian of the security of an organization that made race the center of citizenship, and freely and violently disenfranchised those in Germany and beyond who did not meet Nazi standards. The organization within the SS that gained control of the concentration camp system prided itself on its ideological fanatacism founded on this racism and willingness to use state sponsored terror against the enemies of the regime. Indeed, much is made nowadays about "terrorism," but surely the Totenkopfverbaende wrote new pages in the book of terror in the 20th century. Eicke prided himself on NOT being a soldier, even if he did go on to lead his units at the tactical and even operational level. However, in the formation of the ethos of the armed (I do not want to use paramilitary here...) units of the SSTV, there was a deliberate attempt to delineate one self from the regular army, as well as other entities---particularly by a kind of wholesale abandonment of accepted ethical norms and practices that had limited organized violence in the past. This development did, in my opinion, represent some kind of qualitative leap in the wrong direction in the 20th century, with disastrous results firstly for the benighted souls who wore white and blue stripes, and later for Germany's neighbors and finally, for Germany itself---indeed, most especially for Germany itself. With foregoing, I do not want to damn everyone, but those interested in the past do something of a disservice to themselves and the struggle to understand the truth when they mix up things that are really quite separate. The essence of soldiering is the disciplined used of organized violence for a specific political end, usually limited---I realize that such a statement might go against the grain with some reading things, but the history channel and ripping yarns about war do not constitute the whole of the profession of soldiering, nor of the very best that Germans and central Europeans have done in the profession of soldiers in modern history. Forgive me, but I know something about same by dint of about thirty years of involvement with all of this, slightly less than I have collected this regalia. I shall not generalize whether a private collector should own concentration camp garb; surely collectors are very eager to own the regalia of the warders and the tormentors who looked to Eicke as their "Papa Eicke." However, a hyper nationalist creed of racial superiority that denied life and limb to others because they were deemed to be of different "race", granted some truly perposterous quack science is rather a far cry from the honor and tradition of Prussian/Austrian German soldiers. I do not deny for an instant that many in the Waffen SS were accomplished soldiers, and many of them were, at least in their own minds, little different from other soldiers everywhere.

To raise this issue here usually has a deleterious effect, but since these issues of soldierly ethos, discipline, and wars of ideas are once again loose in the world, I feel enjoined to write something. There is a qualitative difference to the events of the mid-20th century that one does poorly to ignore, especially as we in the 21st century cannot seem to figure out the nature of politics, society, policy, and strategy in the midst of a very serious crisis, indeed. I appreciate John and Bob's graceful sentiments above. Postscriptum: I also note the comparisons with the other totalitarian systems of the 20th century, about which rather less is known and appreciated in the West than about Hitler's Germany. That Stlain or Mao surely killed many, many more than Shickelgruber does not in any sense pardon what transpired in Germany, or somehow exonerate those who perpetrated crimes in the name of Germany. It is also true that the full image of the totalitarian mass murders of the 20th century has not been filled out as wholly as had that of the III. Reich. Nonetheless, the case of how jail house sadists, torturers, and architects of genocide could also seek to hijack the legitimate ethos of German soldiers needs to be seen for what it was and remains. And surely there were honorable individuals even in wretched circumstances, but the viewers here should have no illusions about about core idea, ideals, and practices that were at the pit of the thing.

[Banzi64]

I would be very careful of any of those items, because there is a guy in Bloomington Indiana that makes very convincing fakes that are aged as well. I see his items passed as originals a lot..