Souvenirs From German Charity Campaigns During World War II

Hello everyone. It is January 2014. Some of you will remember a video that I posted last month. It pertained to the Nazi Third Reich's Winterhilfswerk Winter Charity Campaign as part of my Historic Soldiers Christmas Series. The winter season extends into the month of January and as you will see in the upcoming video, it was snowing as I was filming the introduction.

One can imagine wintertime in Germany during World War II ... an individual collecting for the WHW Campaign holding a can such as the one I am holding while citizens place one pfennig coins inside of the can. I tried to recreate that moment:


The Third Reich organized several charities. One, as I had mentioned, was WHW, another was the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz  (the German Red Cross) and one involving the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) was another.

I have six souvenirs to present in the upcoming video and jpeg collage. They were distributed to people who donated to these three charities.

This video was filmed yesterday and prepared today ... it will give you details about these three German charity campaigns:

The url for the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJuwdENj0I4

Here is the collage:
 

A description is as follows ...

First is Winterhilfswerk (WHW). The first souvenir is Mittel Deutschland. That translates as Middle Germany. The other is Oberdonau. That translates as Upper Danube ... that is from the Upper Danube region of Germany. These two are part of the Wooden German Farmhouses series and they were sold on the 21st and 22nd of November 1942.

The next two are part of the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Campaign. These are city gates. The first is Danzig Krantor. It translates into Danzig Great Crane Gateway. The next one - Augsburg Rotes Tor. My Mother was born and raised in Augsburg and this gate right here, the Red Gate, was close to where my Grandmother lived. I am not completely sure as to the dates these souvenirs were sold. I do know that there were very similar souvenirs that were sold on the 27th and 28th of June 1942.

The final two items are from the DJH: Deutsches Jugendherbergwerk. This translates into the German Youth Hostel Association. This Association was merged with the Hitler Jungen, the Hitler Youth, in 1933.  You see a dagger and a bugle with a banner featuring the letter S ... very similar to the SS. These were sold on the 10th and 11th of May in 1941.

When I was working on my video and blog entry for the WHW topic, I discovered that not all of these souvenirs are from the WHW Campaign. This is why I sought to make another video and blog entry showing the other charity campaigns that were organized and run by the Nazi Third Reich. No one should be upset if they purchase what they think are WHW items and they turn out to be from the DRK or the DJH because they are from the World War II Era. They are authentic German World War II artifacts.