Featured Neuengamme WWII concentraction camp tobacco tray/box/ashtray.

Hello everyone,

I recently had an interesting $5 thrift store find. A handmade wooden tray with an attached lidded tobacco/cigarette box and built-in ashtray. The box lid has a dog's head carved into it. At first I thought it was just an cool bit of roughly made folk art/crafts but then I saw NEUENGAMME carved on one side and DEUTSCHLAND carved on the other. I did a little research and found a couple of examples of Neuengamme prisoners making carved wooden cigarette boxes to trade with guards and I suspect that this is prisoner made as well.

Here are a few pics for those interested...

 

Amazing find! It is quite unbelievable what these prisoners managed to produce with so little equipment.
Neuengamme, like some of the camps here in Norway, housed a very large number of Russian POW's. Here however, they were not treated too harshly, the same unfortunately cannot be said for Neuengamme.
I have a beautiful aluminium tobacco box, with a hinged lid, made by a Russian POW, and dated Christmas 1944. Even with all my years of experience of metalwork and all the tools at my disposal, i would have trouble making it! Unbelieveable workmanship.

 

Sad and truly inspiring at the some time and while under so much hardship. Would also really like to see your box. Please share some photos when you have the time. Thanks

 

Neuengamme was harsh, very harsh. It was also one of the places of medical experiments, mostly on young children.

Many well-known Dutch prisoners, political, Jewish, Sinti, homosexual, and hostages, died in Neuengamme.
Of nearly 7000 Dutch people in the camp, only 613 survived. Numbers were similar for other nationalities.

 

An (almost) unbelievable thrift shop find.

Debora

 

Never Forget.

 

Thank you (and others) for sharing your history knowledge. While am I familiar with the general horrors of WWII, I was not familiar with the particular brutality of Neuengamme. I sent an email last night to the Neuengamme Memorial to see if they would be interested in the piece, and plan to donate it if they are.

 

I had not heard of this camp until it came up in a show I have been watching. Seaside Hotel (set in Denmark.) A minor character had been imprisoned there and was able to escape. Getting him out of Denmark and safely to Sweden was a major theme in several episodes.

 

I will find it out this week and photograph it for you. It is an amazing piece.

Denmark was quite remarkable in that far less than 10% of the Jewish population in Denmark were ever caught by the nazis, most of those were sent to Theresienstadt, and thankfully, only some fifty seven of them suffered as some six million others of their faith did. Many Danes helped and hid Jewish citizens, and the resistance movement had what they referred to as the Taxi service, which smuggled people over to Sweden by boat. It was unparalleled in wartime Europe.
There is an excellent book which deals with this amongst other aspects of Denmark under Nazi occupation, 'The Savage Canary', by David Lampe.

 

In this story line, Robert - a Jew born in Denmark but who went to Austria, married there to a Jewish woman who was killed by the Nazis during an uprising of some kind, was sent to Neuengamme. This was supposedly in 1940. He had changed his citizenship. A small group that tried to find a way to allow him to stay in Denmark were unsuccessful. In a strange twist of fate one of the young women was able to get him on the ferry posing as a Danish author.

I will have to see if I can get a copy of that book.

 

Well done!! Great thought!

 

Absolutely!!

 

That is very kind to say.

Treasure hunting is a hobby that has always more than paid for itself and has allowed me to gift friends and family with special items I otherwise could not afford. I love that occasionally it also provides an opportunity to do something like this.

I found a mysterious piece to research, learned more on this topic (thanks again everyone), and perhaps will be adding a small human piece to this dark time in history.

Hard to get that anywhere for just 5 bucks.

 

their site seems pretty complex.....and well funded....

maybe you could ask if they purchase relevant items....

y'know.....so you can keep your treasure hunting going strong...!!!!

Don't get me wrong..... donating is a good hearted way to proceed....
but maybe the don't already have 15 of these......

 

Stunning item!
It seemed odd to me that a concentration camp prisoner would have had access to that amount of quality wood, as well as the extended time and the tools needed, to make such an item during his/her imprisonment.
Some admittedly quick googling shows a few similar boxes and they often seem to be dated 1945. One such box was made by a prisoner after his liberation. Regarding the days after his release, he states:
"I didn't have anything to do. I was healthy and I had free time but what interested me? Surrounding Buchenwald were several army camps… and there were no German soldiers in them… this really was interesting. There was a carpentry shop there, and I met a Soviet ex-prisoner who was also a metalworker and he said to me, 'Come, Alex, let's do some carpentry' because we had nothing else to do and it would pass the time… This is a cigarette box that I made… I also found a rubber stamp with which I could stamp the name 'Buchenwald' and my prison number on the box."

 

Amazing story to that box!
I think that some camps were easier, if such a place can be, than others. The Russian POW's here were used to work the fields and do building work etc. Some, unfortunately, were worked to death building Hitlers 'Atlantic Wall' along the West coast. the Gun batteries there still survive, some with their guns still in situ.
But here, the Russian workers had the possibilty to trade such small items with the locals for extra food, cigarettes, milk etc.etc. and gernerally, they were fairly well treated here. A far cry from Neuengamme, or Bergen Belsen, which my father was amongst the first allied soldiers into in April 1945.

By the way, the Soviet POW's when they were repatriated, then had to undergo a trial by their own side, and many of them spent years in Gulags, because they had allowed themselves to be taken prisoner, rather than dying gloriously for Stalin!

 

It will be interesting to hear what they have to say. They may have a different opinion on when it was made or who would have made it.

 

Of course as soon as I posted this I took my phone camera to it with max zoom and...

 

And only someone really looking would see the mark.