What to do with 1936 Berlin Olympics porcelain bell -w- swastika?

April 20, 2020 10:27 AM

Mrs. LDS inherited a bell collection many years ago. We recently sorted through it and discovered a little '36 Olympics bell, complete with text in the Fraktur font and a small swastika. We're stumped as to what to do with it. More under the fold:

Based on prior eBay sales, I think it might be worth around $400. Not doing anything which might further Nazism is vastly more important to us than the value of the bell, but ideally there would be some ethical way to get rid of it and net some cash or increase the good in the world. What should we do?

N.B. The bell collecting relative was probably gifted the bell and was not a sympathizer AFAIK.

posted by Larry David Syndrome to Grab Bag (20 answers total)

Sell it for everything you can get, there are plenty of Phat Olympic collectors out there. Then if you feel bad, donate it to the ACLU or some other organization which forwards human rights.
posted by Oyéah at 10:39 AM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would destroy it now and never tell anyone anything about it again, even my friends.

Any exchange of value makes the bell seem treasured or powerdul because of what it represents.
posted by sol at 10:43 AM on April 20, 2020 [18 favorites]

Send it to the Olympic Museum or some other organization that will value it as part of sport rather than political history?
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:50 AM on April 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

You can donate it to a Holocaust or WWII Museum. There are several. Here are a few options:

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/donate-to-the-collections
https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/pages/exhibitions/collections/contribute-to-the-collection/
https://hmh.org/collections#
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/common-world-war-ii-donations
posted by juniperesque at 10:51 AM on April 20, 2020 [40 favorites]

A story... I worked next to a USF&W office in San Diego for a while. One day an employee showed me a vintage leopard fur coat that somebody had been trying to sell on Craigslist. Even though it had been made when it may have been legal, it's illegal to sell them now because it encourages a market for such things.

The parallel here is that even if you sell it and donate the money, you're participating in a market for Nazi memorabilia and perpetuating the idea that these items have value. I would destroy it, though I like juniperesque's suggestions as well.
posted by rouftop at 10:57 AM on April 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

See if the Jesse Owens Museum wants it.
posted by zamboni at 11:03 AM on April 20, 2020 [18 favorites]

I concur with juniperesque. Contact relevant museums and see if anyone is interested in acquiring it. If they don't (and, having worked for museums, it's not impossible that they all already have a dozen identical bells), destroy it.
posted by kalimac at 11:06 AM on April 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

Centuries from now I bet there will be archaeologists who will salivate over all kinds stuff we today find useless, worthless, and even evil. I just can't imagine consciously destroying something if a place can be found for it where its historical value will be appreciated. Those museums look like good bets to me.
posted by Fukiyama at 11:06 AM on April 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

Another place to check about donating it: The Museum of Tolerance, run by the Simon Weisenthal Center.

My bona fides: I asked this question about what to do with a length of beautiful African fabric I'd bought in Zaire...which featured dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Long story short: that fabric now resides in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History after being acquired (for free) by the Department of Anthropology, African Ethnology.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:39 AM on April 20, 2020 [36 favorites]

Not a satisfying answer, but what my mother (an antique dealer) does with these items is lock them away in a box and never touch them. She doesn't want to destroy them because she doesn't want to destroy evidence of evil.
posted by 8603 at 12:04 PM on April 20, 2020 [8 favorites]

Donate as above or throw into the fires of Mount Doom. Here in Germany the market for Nazi stuff is barely hidden, thriving and nasty.
posted by runincircles at 12:13 PM on April 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

Consider that if you destroy it, you are making the other ones worth more.
posted by tracer at 3:00 PM on April 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

Consider that every time an artifact like this is destroyed, history is being erased.

And THAT is what leads to history being forgotten - and history that is forgotten is REPEATED.
posted by stormyteal at 3:26 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sell it and donate the money to a good cause.
posted by Slinga at 4:33 PM on April 20, 2020

Please don't sell it, unless to a museum. Please don't destroy it, unless no museum wants it. The bell is evidence of how the evil happened in Nazi Germany. To sell it is to participate with the group of people who see the Nazi swastika as a positive thing. To destroy it is to hasten the forgetting of the Holocaust. If you don't take a dime for it, but make sure it serves the purpose of remembering the evil that was done, you have met your goal of furthering the good in the world.
posted by KayQuestions at 4:46 PM on April 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm disagreeing with some of the above posters -- I don't think it will serve the purpose of being a memorial to evil, or of being something useful in the teaching of history.

It's a small monument made by evil people in celebratory gloating of their power. There's no context it could be presented without the risk of someone looking at it to say "Whoa that's neat." There's nothing inherent to the object that recontextualizes it -- all of the museum donation suggestions are just asking you to shift that burden of transformation on to someone else.

I also disagree that it has an educational value. There's no one so unclear about the veracity of the Holocaust who is simultaneously so trusting that they would see it and say "Well, I doubted the mountain of physical and historical evidence of genocide, but this bell sure convinced me!"

It's literally hate speech cast into metal. Melt it into slag and make a menorah out of it.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:32 PM on April 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

The world is full of crappy memorabilia. It won’t miss this piece. Take a picture as evidence of the evil, then smash it with a hammer and dump it in the trash. Take pictures of that too.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:54 PM on April 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

all of the museum donation suggestions are just asking you to shift that burden of transformation on to someone else.

I want to note that this is quite correct, but also that this is an enormous part of the purpose of museums. It's a burden they are (well, should be) suited to bear.
posted by kalimac at 9:28 AM on April 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for their answers. I feel that I was quite explicit in my question that I was prioritizing ethics over "netting some cash" and I apologize if the question in and of itself was somehow disrespectful or offensive. We will most likely donate it to the Illinois holocaust museum if they are interested or destroy it.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 2:47 PM on April 21, 2020

Destroy it, and enjoy the act of destroying it.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:54 PM on April 21, 2020