Hi everyone,
To celebrate Remembrance Day here in Canada, a co-worker brought in some items her father, a Canadian solider that fought in WWII, brought home with him after returning from the Netherlands. Included in the collection were these two items, neither of which she knew much about. Unfortunately her father died a number of years ago, and she wasn't able to ask about them. The scanned documents are here: http://imgur.com/a/knyeJ
The first item appears to be a Nazi ID card, but the odd thing is that it's dated 1946, after the war ended, but it's covered in Nazi stamps. The other odd thing is that both her father, and her mothers name are listed on it. We're guessing it was just a left over ID card that was found, filled out, and kept as a memento, but any insight would be appreciated.
The second item is some sort of instruction book that was given to Dutch citizens. Her Dutch is shaky, and Google translate isn't really working out. I've posted in /r/netherlands hoping for a translation to give us some insight into it.
Thanks guys!
This looks like they were both from an exhibiton held in 1945/46 in Amsterdam, called 'Weerbare Democratie', the resilient democracy, an exhibition that apparently dealt with dutch resistance against German occupation. The card reads, essentially, as far as my very limited dutch will carry: "This is proof that the dutch citizen(s) [Name] [Born] [ID] have visited the exhibition over the resistance 'Weerbare Democratie' on [date]. It has not been possible during the occupation to educate him/her to a National Socialist or Fascist orientation."
The combination of the stamps makes no sense, I'd venture a guess that they are either war trophies or props for the exhibition to make the visitor feel like someone having their papers checked and stamped by the German occupiers. They read (front): Labour Exchange Karlsruhe/Baden; (back) Labour Exchange Münster/Westphalia; The Chief of Police, Karlsruhe; The German Work Front (the labour union of the NS-state), Gau-Bureau, Baden [mid, faded], Labour Exchange Karlsruhe/Baden [again]; and finally a field postal address (a kind of zip code for units at the front), 21535B, which apparently belonged to II/JG 52, the second group of Jagdgeschwader 52, a fighter unit; plus a bunch of dutch stamps.
The second item seems to be a humorous recollection of the ways the dutch people outwitted their occupiers and collaborateurs, such as taking a diamond ring from a soldier, then buying aid packages for dutch PoWs with it and sending them via the Red Cross; marking the progress of the war on maps (this was often done by listening to stations like the BBC, which was heavily punished), hiding and supplying fugitives and the like.
These are to very interesting artifacts, thanks for posting! I would myself be pretty interested in a translation (I can make out the gist of it, but no more).
I'd like to point out that the majority of the Dutch community on Reddit has moved from /r/netherlands to /r/thenetherlands after mod on the former sub went rogue and decided to ruin things for everyone. You are much more likely to get a decent answer at the current sub.