WWII veteran donates propaganda book to help combat antisemitism
A World War II Army veteran in Peabody has donated a Nazi propaganda picture book he brought home from Germany to a Jewish foundation that he hopes will help combat antisemitism.
Donald Thomas, 97, found a copy of “Germany Awakens” in an apartment he lived at in 1945 when assigned to Army headquarters outside Frankfurt. A prior resident apparently left it behind.
It was filled with pictures of Adolf Hitler and his sympathizers that were inserted in German cigarette packs and used as recruitment tools. Thomas threw the book in his barracks bag and never thought much about it again until recent years, he said.
But incidents of antisemitism, including a banner hung over Route 114 in his hometown of Danvers, and a swastika found at the town’s high school, moved him to action.
That “was the incentive for me to say ‘This cannot go on,’” Thomas said by telephone from his home at Brooksby Village, a retirement community.
He recently donated the book to the Lappin Foundation, a Beverly-based nonprofit that aims to enhance Jewish identity through education and programming.
Debbie Coltin, president and executive director of the foundation, said the organization is “deeply honored” to have received the book.
‘Frankly, carrying Adolf Hitler around in my barracks bag since 1945, I was glad to get rid of the character.’
DONALD THOMAS, World War II veteran
“The pictures speak a thousand words,” Coltin said in an email.
The book, which is written in German, includes a large foldout photo of a Nazi rally and photos of infamous figures, including Hitler, Hermann Göring, and Joseph Goebbels, Thomas said.
“They’re all there,” Thomas said. “It’s the biggest coffee table book you have ever seen.”
Similar to baseball trading cards in the United States, the pictures in the book were inserted into German cigarette packages. The images depicted people and current events, often accompanied by Nazi propaganda text, one expert said.
“This practice had originated with cards depicting German soccer players and was later adopted by the Nazi Party,” said Raymund Flanez, a spokesperson for the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. “During the Third Reich, the images printed on the cards were of various historical or current affairs subjects, often with Nazi propaganda messages intended.
There were a number of titles published.”
The albums were part of the Nazi propaganda machine, Flandez said, and a number of American soldiers brought these home as souvenirs from the war.
One scholar noted that the books are often sold online for large sums of money.
The “expensive souvenir propaganda books, elegantly produced with cloth covers and gold filigree like this one made a lot of money for (Hitler),” said Anson Rabinbach, a professor of history emeritus at Princeton University.
Rabinbach said he donated a similar book to the university’s library. He applauded Thomas “for donating the book, rather than making a buck off it.”
Thomas said he is relieved to have passed the book on, after hanging on to it for 78 years.
“Frankly, carrying Adolf Hitler around in my barracks bag since 1945, I was glad to get rid of the character,” he said.