After we had explored the area where Oskar Schindler's factory and parts of the old Krakow ghetto still stand, we headed back into the heart of the city for our lunch. We headed to a small square in Kazimierz, the old Jewish District, which I remembered from my earlier visit for selling excellent zapiekanka. There were a few stalls selling fruit and vegetables, but also a larger area where various objects were set up. After a closer look, we saw that these were mostly old military badges, a few daggers, and the less obvious antiques such as old pairs of spectacles. It wasn't long, however, before I spotted one item which gave me a start. In a little clear plastic wallet was an armband with the Jewish star of David and the word 'Oberkapo' on it, very similar to the one above.
The seller noticed my look and said, in broken English, 'Kapo band from old Krakow Ghetto. Very original.' I nodded and asked how much it was. '60 zloty' (about £12, all the money I had left).
Was that a reasonable price for such an item? What is a reasonable price for something from a ghetto, that conjures up connotations of suffering, starvation, persecution and death? Even if I bought the armband, what would I do with it? Keep it in a drawer in my student house to look at occasionally, with no connection to the person who once wore it and, I thought with a shudder, what fate might have befallen them?
Politely, I declined.
At another stall, amongst fur hats and daggers with beautifully carved handles, we discovered an old German Iron Cross. It was dated 1918 on one side, 1939 on the other, with a small swastika in the middle. Tactfully, the stall owner had displayed it on the 1918 side. This item was yours for just 80 zloty (around £16).
Having seen this, it was no surprise to me when I saw similar stalls set up in Berlin a few days later. From this my partner and I discovered one item that stood out amongst all the others; a case containing genuine SS hat badges, like those above. Out of curiosity, I enquired about the price once again. The answer shows the difference in price between Poland and other European countries as much as anything. "Vierzig Euro" - 40 Euros, perhaps just over £35 in the current economic climate. What amazed me further was that the stall owner was preoccupied with a potential customer most of the time away from the stall. Really, what was to stop someone picking one of his items up - even Nazi memorabilia - and just walking away with it? Would people not take the chance, or was it because stealing SS memorabilia might make someone question their morals even more? On the other hand, did this stall owner sell such items so often he wasn't so bothered to protect them?
After perusing a few more stalls, I decided to buy a 1939 German 1 pfennig piece, for the equivalent of about £1. One side displays the eagle with the swastika and 'Deutsches Reich 1939' ('German Reich 1939)' on it. Wasn't it a little contradictory of you to buy that, I hear you ask? Possibly. Maybe this is just another thing I'm going to keep in a drawer, although I do intend to show it to my little brother to bring him in touch with a piece of history, for one thing. I also feel less guilty for buying such an item as it has little connotations of the suffering people endured under Hitler. 1 pfennig was also a very small amount of money, nowhere near enough to be a matter of life and death for anyone.
I would be very interested to hear your opinions on this. What do you think - should stall vendors be able to profit from the sale of items connected to the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, or should they instead be kept in a museum or somewhere similar?
