Ukrainian Nazi Cigarette box

[HughMunguz]

Would like to know more about this.

The inscription is Ukrainian for "Vinnytsia" which is a town in Ukraine. It's dated 1942 and 1943. The town of Vinnytsia has a WWII museum in it now, and almost all of the Jews were killed there during German occupation, most by Native Ukrainians who succumbed to Nazi ideologies, and generally sympathized with the Nationalist unification and "liberation" of the country. Hitler also had a secret bunker right outside of this city which I also think is interesting.

You can actually see a few strands of tobacco caked into the corners of the inside of the box.

What do you guys think of this? Does this have any monetary value?

1aforumbox.jpg (78.69 KiB) Viewed 635 times

1aforum2box.jpg (55.78 KiB) Viewed 635 times

[John G.]

I usually have great reservations about anything coming out of "Eastern Europe" but I actually like this for what it is... crude, with poorly executed swastika, no "overkill" .... looks like legit "soldier art" IMHO. That said, wouldn't have significant value except maybe to a "Ukrainian specialist" or the museum you mentioned. I'd offer under $50. US if it walked into my flea market... as a dealer.
John G.

[wm]

I'm not an expert on this - at all, but I wonder why is Vinnytsia written in Russian, I suppose an Ukrainian nationalist would use Ukrainian language and letters.
And why he used a swastika, those people didn't have any emotional attachment to the Nazis and they symbols, they had their own - and they didn't want any dawn of Nazism like that on the box.

That reminds me the story of flat irons of Danzig. The had lots of old, pre-war irons there but they sold poorly, so they started stamping "Danzig" on them and German tourists bought them all almost immediately. I'm afraid this may be another such a case.

Vinnytsia is known for the 1938 massacre of over 10,000 Ukrainians by the Soviets - in case someone wondered why they fought on the German side...

[HughMunguz]

I'm not an expert on this - at all, but I wonder why is Vinnytsia written in Russian, I suppose an Ukrainian nationalist would use Ukrainian language and letters.
And why he used a swastika, those people didn't have any emotional attachment to the Nazis and they symbols, they had their own - and they didn't want any dawn of Nazism like that on the box.

That reminds me the story of flat irons of Danzig. The had lots of old, pre-war irons there but they sold poorly, so they started stamping "Danzig" on them and German tourists bought them all almost immediately. I'm afraid this may be another such a case.

Vinnytsia is known for the 1938 massacre of over 10,000 Ukrainians by the Soviets - in case someone wondered why they fought on the German side...

Yes, a lot of people also don't know that thousands of Red Army troops defected from their posts in Ukraine and fought on the German side. Ukraine at the time was ruled under the Soviet Union, and in very poor shape. There were only about 10k Einsatzgruppen SS Germans in Ukraine at this time, while about 218,000 Native Ukrainians formed their own Nazi supporting militias, and a lot of them formed their own Wehrmacht ranks. A ton of Soviets also joined the Nazi's. It's pretty interesting. Since this was under Soviet rule, the town could have very well be spelled this way at this time since it was part of the USSR. There were also Soviet Gulags in Ukraine with Soviet and Ukrainian prisoners. Many of the Gulag guards even defected from their posts to join the Nazi's. Almost the entire Ukrainian police force also joined the Nazi's ranks. I didn't know that so many Soviets actually joined the Nazi's until I started reading about it. I also looked over this with a magnifying glass and there's actually tobacco caked into the interior walls lol.

[wm]

Vinnytsia was in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Because it was an Ukrainian one, the official languages were Ukrainian and Russian, they taught Ukrainian in schools, and used it in official documents.

It's easy to find on Internet pre-war Soviet documents with Vinnytsia in them, and those in Ukrainian use Вінниця not the Russian Винница - for example this map of Vinnytsia from 1927.

Another problem is that the Ukrainian nationalists weren't Nazi allies but rather Nazi co-belligerents, at the beginning of 1943 they ended the cooperation and became another Nazi enemy - at the same time a large number of Ukrainian policemen deserted, and joined the Ukrainian underground.
So in fact the alledged Ukrainian nationalist who made that box not only used the language of an enemy, he used the symbol of another enemy - the swastika.