SS Dachau - Guard with Cutt off Rune Tab

[gj dettore]

Fred,
The "K" collar tab that may be a match is bullion and vertical.
gjd.

[Winkelman]

Will a member who has a copy of Bando's, "Insignia and Artifacts of the Waffen SS" please post the cut-off the "K" tab on page 319? Then compare that tab to the INITIAL posting of this thread. What are the chances that the "K" tab once belonged to the SS officer in the film footage?

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[wolfslair44]

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Man how eerie does that caption read when put next to the picture below!

[gj dettore]

Thank you Winkelman for posting the tab picture. This is what I think is quite possible, in my humble opinion. We can agree the footage shows an older ss officer who was proud to wear the "old fighters chevron" that recently had been on the ground and someone sliced off his collar tab. He is wearing a M-36 style dark colored collar which is most likely green.

Now take a close look at the tab photo on page 319-yes it's mine. This tab meant something special whoever wore it. Observe the black thread repairs at the top right. This tab has been in service for some time. Why would a ss officer bother to repair it if another was available? Now we get to the conjectures, perhaps replacements were not available anymore due to new regulations. The owner was proud to wear it showing his was an old timer in the camp system so it was repaired and continued to be worn. When was the tab removed is the question and by whom? It's obvious the tab was haphazardly cut off a collar and not likely by the wearer. Sure it's possible a tunic was hanging on a hook and a GI hacked off the tab or did a GI in Dachau knock a ss officer to the ground leaned over him and sliced away. The first hack was during a slight struggle that occurred when the ss officer was on the ground which cut his uniform on his left upper chest. Whoever sliced off the collar from the ss officer was no surgeon. There is no way to prove absolutely that my tab is the one in the film footage-I'm simply glad to own it.

Photographic evidence shows the GI was in Dachau at the time of its liberation. He told his family the tab was recovered from the desk drawer of the camp commandant. That always rang a bit odd to me, why would any officer carefully repair a part of his uniform then ruin it by slicing it from a uniform? Could it be the GI sanitized the true story of its acquisition to his family for reasons us here, can understand. The film footage only shows the beginning of the story and not its ending. The GI that cut off the tab would know all of it and retelling it after the war was not going to happen.

[Ian Hulley]

The 'K' tab would be from a member of the Kommandant's staff ... a functionary of the Concentration Camp itself, a long-serving one at that. In the case of Dachau the officials of the camp itself had left a couple of days before the liberation, handing the camp over to SS-Ustuf Wicker to deal with the Americans.

What people are forgetting is that there was the huge complex of factories, warehouses, barracks and family accommodation buildings at Dachau that was nothing to do with the Concentration Camp, which was actually relatively small. It was a mustering point for fighting units being rebuilt ... this Alte Kampfe could have been something to do with any part of that ... the supply depot or even the hospital for example.

There's been a sudden jump to the assumption that the missing tab is a Skull and also the further step to being a Skull K. For me it was just as likely cut from a jacket hanging in the Kommandantur as it was from the 'unfortunate' subject of the thread.

Ian