I was sorting through some of my items earlier, and started to think about the stories and history of the pieces themselves. It always interests me to hear about other people’s items, and the events and people that they previously belonged to, so I have started this thread in the hope that we can create a nice read, with some interesting militaria too of course.

I found it very hard to single out just one piece, as so many have their own story to tell, but I will go with the identity card shown below. It belonged to a Czechoslovakian man, who was a prisoner at Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora, a camp that provided forced labour workers for the nearby V-2 Rocket factory in the nearby Kohnstein, near Nordhausen. Approximately 20,000 perished at Mittelbau, half of whom died of exhaustion. Tunnels in the mountain were actually used to house the workers, until the camp was completed late in 1943. One of the tragic aspects of the R.A.F. raid on Nordhausen, on the night of 2nd April 1945, was the Boelcke barracks, that had been used by the SS to house seriously ill or weak prisoners, was destroyed during two raids, killing 1,500 prisoners. The museum at Dora today only has two structures remaining, one of which, the former crematorium, is utilised as the museum’s main building.

The owner of this identity card actually survived.

Regards,

Carl

Click to enlarge the picture