Artifacts from the Holocaust and Nazi Germany

Various items related to the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust were given over the years to the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University, in most cases anonymously. Many of the objects were found in a box in the Institute's storage room in the fall of 2012 by the then new director Dr. Krondorfer. This box had been given to the Institute years earlier by a young man from a trading post in northern Arizona, but provenance can no longer be traced and established. The collection sheds light on select aspects of life in Germany before, during, and after the Nazi dictatorship. It includes everyday items like currency and chinaware, items that speak to the life under the conditions of World War II, and objects related to Nazi propaganda and the genocide against European Jews (like the official stamp of the camp commander of the concentration camp of Gross-Rosen). It also includes items related directly to the Holocaust, such as the money printed by the Jewish Council in the ghetto of Litzmannstadt/Lodz in Poland. Finally, it includes two items that at first sight seem to relate to Nazi Germany because of the display of swastikas; these items, however, were Native American objects used as "good luck symbols" in the United States before the 1940s.