friends:
i reprint two letters i sent to friends just a little earlier this morning. i am not going to add anything more to what is written there.
i will tell you that the second letter gets to the point of all this, and explains why i am just a little shaken by all this.
john jay @ 01.26.2011
p.s. please understand, that despite what i say in the first letter, this rifle will be reassembled, and never altered, a copy of this post attached to it. very sobering, the things recounted in the second letter. caveat: i will caution, that other letters to the chat room challenge the assertion that it is accepted historical fact that fritz walther, founder of the world famous walther arms company, was involved in the nefarious happenings described in letter number 2, though it would appear very likely that fritz walther availed himself of jewish slave labor in aid of the nazi war machine. further observation: also keep in mind that my rifle was made in 1942.
first letter.--
friends,
a couple years ago my brother gave me an old mauser 98, pretty rough looking.
manufactured "42" manufacturer's code "bcd." i had no idea who that was. so, i googled it, and got a link to this site.
http://rockislandauction.com/view_item/aid/48/lid/3433
turns out, that my rifle is made by gustolf-werke, weimar and that it appears to have been fitted with an fn [fabrique nationale, in belgium] barrel as well.
my rifle's receiver is serial numbered 1166, marked model 98 in the right spot. the barrel has a circular proof with an f and another letter looks like an o to me, but appears the same as the proof at the link shown above. (put your cursors on the pictures above the description, and you get a magnified enlargement, toot sweet. my barrel is marked ch 327, and has the little german eagle proof as well, the numbers appearing the same as described in the link.)
and, my stock has a little c in the barrel channel, and is laminated of a similar appearing wood, running 20-22 laminations an inch.
unfortunately that is as good as it gets.
it is a frankenstein rifle from here on out.
the bolt does not match, and does not have a gustolf-werke mark, having a proof saying im 211, as near as i can make out. the serial number is 932, and someone has very thoughtfully stenciled in 1166 with a mechanical stencil. the extractor is a funky looking brown as depicted in the picture, but that is about it. no proofs on the magazine/trigger guard housing, though come close on the serial number, that being 991, which looks "about right" when you glance at it. it is proofed WaA855, which is also not a gustolf-werke proof.
no proofs on the butt cap.
the bayonet assembly and the collar for the barrel guard are obviously not milled, and the latter looks cast with a weld seam in it. no proofs.
at the link, the guy though he said the rifle was a rare find, was asking $1,000 to $1,500 and that is not a very high premium for "rare" militaria."
when i first looked at it, the receiver ring was machined, ... , well, pretty bad. it was just horrible, with machining marks, and the ring is discernibly a little smaller, confirmed by touch, until it comes back to the front of the recoil lug. at that point the ring is uniform in dimension to the face of the breach area.
but, that is just the way the ring is in the picture above, so my initial expectation that the receiver was forged and the rest of it added from the bone yard doesn't appear to hold up. it just must have been the way they set up the machining, and once they started it that way, they never changed.
not quite up to the standards of my 1908 brazilian (7x57mm) and my 1909 argie (7mm rem mag.)
it is in nice shape, after all that. no rust. amazing. a little cosmoline in the barrel channel. but, no rust, no pitting below the stock line or under the wood. the parts to the trigger, and some other things look like they were made yesterday, further confirming the frankenstein impression. and, my front sight is different, no cleaning rod.
and, some yahoo scraped away whatever has been painted on it recently to see what the finish and wood looked like, and sanded down to the wood to confirm his suspicion that the stock was laminated. wonder who might have done that.
so, i am gonna "fix it up." laughing. it doesn't have enough "value" to "preserve" for me, as far as i am concerned, so i am gonna make it shiny, the way i like 'em, and see how shiny i can get a stock laminated out of "only god know's what."
but, all in all, kinda fun. and, fun figuring out how to get the bayonet thing off. it was pretty easy once i made the mental calculus, hey, it's not like the germans to leave an unsightly gap between the little spring hickey and the cover over the bayonet lug fixture, and once i said, nah, that's there on purpose, the rest of it was easy. somebody before me hadn't figured it out, and the little housing was marred on the receiver side where somebody tried to "coax it" with a screwdriver and hammer, but, that was on another rifle, because the barrel underneath on this one was not dinged: whatever dinged the housing, dinged the barrel it was on, too, ... , trust me.
well, good night.
i was almost sorta rich, until i got to the other proofs. laughing. john
second letter.
dear friends:
note: i will blog this tomorrow, and will send you the link when done.
my brother bought me an old wwii rifle a couple years ago, and just this night i started looking at it, and took it apart to apprise myself of its general condition.
on the receiver was stamped the manufacturer's code, "bcd." all things are known by google. i looked up the code, and found that it was for "gustolf [gustloff]-werke, weimar" and that had the rifle more matching serial numbers it might have been worth quite a bit, financially.
i continued researching the code, and something interesting, very interesting and quite disturbing, came to light. the rifle was manufactured by jewish slave labor, brought into the factory every day from buchenwald. 6,000 day laborers, to make rifles for the nazi war effort.
the machinery to make the rifles had been confiscated from two brothers, jewish, by a nazi gauleiter who appropriated the arms plant to his own purposes. another person involved in this transparent robbery was fritz walther, the founder of the prestigious and "respected" walther arms company, prospering and doing business in germany and america this very day. he, amongst others, complained to hitler that the owners of the company, arthur simpson and julius simpson, were driving other german armaments makers out of business in that area, a claim seemingly utterly fantastical given that war production had been going full bore in germany in some time by the time the theft of the business from the brothers was effected.
i give to you, the following letter(s) at the chat room which explains these circumstances (i have absolutely no idea who "standard modell" [or “hambone”] is [are], of course.
the link to the chat room.-- http://forums.gunboards.com/archive/index.php/t-167842.html?s=46e23c5200bdb734ce97778ddeb5915f
standard modell
04-19-2010, 06:48 PM
Buchenwald concentration camp 1937-1945: a guide to the permanent ... - Google Books Result
Harry Stein, Gedenkstätte Buchenwald - 2004 - History - 320 pages
Albert Speer to Heinrich Himmler re SS arms production in Buchenwald, Mar. 25, 1943; 2 DIN A 4 sheets; Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bestand Personlicher Stab ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=3892446954...
Hambone
04-19-2010, 10:53 PM
Buchenwald concentration camp 1937-1945: a guide to the permanent ... - Google Books Result
Harry Stein, Gedenkstätte Buchenwald - 2004 - History - 320 pages
Albert Speer to Heinrich Himmler re SS arms production in Buchenwald, Mar. 25, 1943; 2 DIN A 4 sheets; Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bestand Personlicher Stab ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=3892446954...
http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/bale_and_kermit.gif
standard modell
Well, I guess it is safe to conclude that none of the experts have any idea about identifying Buchenwald assembled K98s. In a 1945 Red Cross report on activities at the Fritz Sauckel werke in the camp amongst other equiptment it mentions 3.7 cm anti-tank guns and carriages as primary goods and on a long list - milling rifle receivers at the bottom. Like Steyr, k98s were not a high priority. And no reports of runes.
standard modell
04-14-2010, 08:19 AM
The Nazis made an example of the Simson Company. ‘ ...Wilhelm Gustloff ... was an ardent Swiss Nazi shot dead in Bern by a Jewish student named David Frankfurter on 4 February 1936. To honor Gustloff, the Nazis had given his name to one of the first “Aryanized” companies of the Reich, in this case a firm formerly owned by the Jews Arthur and Julius Simson. The Simsons’ company, the Suhler Weapons and Vehicle Works, had received the dubious privilege of being the only Jewish firm to receive contracts from the German army after the Treaty of Versailles. That Jews should be entrusted with defense contracts, of course, enraged the Nazis. The national press had pilloried the Simsons since the 1920s, accusing them of embezzlement and demonizing them as the spearhead of a world Jewish consipracy to emasculate the German armed forces. By 1935, the Gauleiter of Thuringen, Fritz Sauckel, finally succeeded in throwing the Simson brothers in jail and appropriating their company.’ --The Business of Genocide, p. 191.
During the war, Gustloff Werke, which was under the management of Fritz Walther, opened a factory at the Buchenwald concentration camp to manufacture carbines, and later machine guns, using slave labor.
Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, who was in charge of the Nazi slave labor program, was hanged for war crimes in 1946. Fritz Walther lived on to revive the Walther company in the ‘50s and died in 1966. Arthur Simson died in Los Angeles in 1969. The Simson family eventually received partial reparation for their losses from the German government.
standard modell
04-14-2010, 08:32 AM
. In March of 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor, the Association of Zella-Mehlis Gun Manufacturers, led by Fritz Walther, sent Hitler a letter complaining that Simson held a monopoly that was forcing them out of business.
Because he was a Jew, Arthur Simson (the grandson of the company founder, Moses Simson) and several of his employees were eventually jailed by the Nazis in 1935. After seven months in prison, Simson was forced to admit evading income taxes and to sign the rights to his company over to Nazi Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel. A few months after his release on bail, Simson and his family fled to Switzerland and eventually to the United States of America. Sauckel renamed the company Berlin-Suhler Waffen- und Fahrzeugwerke (BSW), but after the assassination of the Swiss Nazi Party leader Wilhelm Gustloff, Sauckel renamed it Gustloff Werke.* The Parabellum machinery in the Simson factory was removed to the Heinrich Krieghoff Waffenfabrik, which was also located in Suhl.
When I was in the 5th grade living in Germany (this was 10 years after WWII), there was an old weapons cache/dump of captured German militaria left in piles to rust. There were no munitions there, but there were swords, daggers, bayonets, helmets and busted up rifles. Well, MOST of the rifles were busted up, heated with their barrels bent etc. However, there were a few really good finds if you dug deep enough. The place was fenced off, and topped with razor wire, but there were a few places you could sneak through the hurricane fence. And we did.
Few of us found anything worth keeping, but I found a Waffen SS helmet and an old bayonet but they got lost in the many moves of an Army brat.
You have a treasure, not worth anything to anyone but you. I wish I still had my "treasures" for their militaria value.
I still have the Nazi banner that dad pulled off of the wall of a German HQ as the 102nd Inf. Division fought towards the Elbe.
Posted by: GM | January 27, 2011 at 11:48 AM
george:
thank you for this letter.
it is one thing to know something intellectually. it is quite another to hold the reality of it in your hand.
not many know the insidiously cruel distinction between the extermination camps, such as triblinka, and the slave labor camps such as buchenwald.
this rifle speaks to me with many somber voices, many disquieting messages.
eloquent reminders, of those who died, and the precious nature of what we still hold.
john jay
Posted by: john jay | January 27, 2011 at 12:25 PM