Once, during a visit to my grandparents in the GDR, my father whispered „ … try to find me a shovel in the shed ! „. Then he took it to the rear of the house and was just about to start digging, when suddenly my grandad appeared on the scene and said, obviously annoyed „You won‘t find anything there !“.
Later my father explained to me, that he had seen his dad, just before the Soviet troops appeared, burying his party membership book, and the awards and medals he had. My grandad wasn‘t at the front, nor had an active role in any fighting organisation, as he was working for the BEWAG (power supplier), so being „indispensable on his job“, but that status certainly was somehow coupled to his membership, and the latter not a very good recommendation back then. Burying such items didn‘t seem a good idea to me back then, but with hindsight, burning medals just in your fireplace probably wouldn‘t have destroyed them neither, so hiding them actually may have been a suitable way to get rid of them.
And though I had several family members, who may have had similar disposal problems, on family meetings I never heard anything about the NSDAP, or the Nazis in general, except that it was a „riesiger Sauhaufen“ ( big mess).
I don‘t think, that evidences about a closer, than absolutely necessary affiliation to the government back then were kept by too many people. … and that‘s, what makes them expensive items on fleamarkets today !
