Lest I Forget

Plantation Room souvenir card.

The back of a souvenir card.

Cover inscription from the Plantation Room, Hotel Dixie, Inscriptions on the photograph frame read: “Good luck Vernon (our ‘Henry Fonda’). If you are as nice as Bob, you must be ‘tops’ too! Kaye.” “Was it your words that make me dream? Safe journey and come back Vernon. Diane”

Souvenir photo frame.

1000 Marks Reichsbanknote, 1910, inserted in frame.

Banknote reverse, 1000 Marks Reichsbanknote, 1910

Reichs Mark note (1) from the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald was liberated by the Third Army, to which Goetz’s unit was attached. Goetz hid these notes behind the German banknote.

Reichsmark notes from the Buchenwald concentration camp, located on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany. Buchenwald was liberated by the Third Army, to which Goetz’s unit was attached. In an oral history interview, Mary Cobuzzi, daughter of Captain John Van Mameren, the commander of Goetz’s company, explained that her father had told her that his unit had been involved in the liberation of Buchenwald, and that they forced the Germans who lived in the vicinity of the camp to march through it despite their claims that they did not know what was going on inside. Van Mameren made clear to his daughter that he did not accept the veracity of these claims since the smell of burnt bodies permeated the air for miles around the camp. Interview with Mary Cobuzzi, April 2016.
Goetz hid these notes behind the 1000 Marks Reichsbanknote, above.