When I lived in Savannah I happened to visit the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force located in Pooler. It was quite impressive and I mentioned it to two of my colleagues who were driving with me to Macon the next day. Both colleagues were Jewish and one just tore into the museum for having the gall to display a Nazi flag. It was displayed along with a lot of other war loot that had been brought home by returning GI’s,. The museum was the usual multimedia and artifacts, guns, jeeps, aircraft, uniforms, training manuals, and video kiosks. They were just getting started on an expansion at that tine and I am sure it’s an even more impressive museum today.
I didn’t want to argue with my colleague, but I had to point out that as disturbing as it was to see a swastika on a large flag on the wall, it was not there as an endorsement, it was there as an artifact of the actual events that took place, at that point, roughly 60 years earlier. It was an actual Nazi flag as had been displayed by the tens of thousands throughout the course of the war.
To argue that it should not be displayed was rather insane, I thought. I think likewise of this teacher’s effort to draw some interest into the topic by display of replica flags.
I know the flag you are talking about.I supplied a ton of the parts the B17 was missing to the museum and thought how the flag was appropriatley displayed and was a war prize afterall.
Your answer to your Jewish friend (and I am Jewish) could have been, “Look, it was better that we, the Allies, captured this Nazi flag and defeated them, then to have them keep it and fly it over our country”.
Sometimes you just have to logically bitchslap the kneejerkers with reality.
BTW, the Monacacy Battlefield in Frederick, MD has a battle flag from the 16th VA I believe. They keep it upstairs in a case on the wall you have to open.
Most people don't even know it's there.