An Object Lesson on the Nazi Genocide

Torn, old, defunct, inferior, substandard, broken down pieces of clothing or fabrics; used for cleaning; collected and recycled back into garments; a sign with poverty, filth, and precarious social status – rags are invariably associated with dirt and simultaneously mobilized in a fight against it. In this paper I am going to trace the use, reuse, requisitioning, recycling and representations of rags in Nazi Germany, with the goal to demonstrate how the use and meaning of a specific object was implicated in and informed the genocidal ideology of the Nazi regime.