Some German Insulators with a Sad Mission 

Three of the Albers clan are looking forward to another month long trip to Europe in June, 1981. This is the same type of trip I have been on before, led by Father John Brock of Jackson, Mississippi, where I went as a chaperone and each time included a couple of my children as part of the student group. My youngest daughter, Mary, and my husband have never been before, so they will join me this time. The itinerary will include Luxembourg, Cologne in West Germany; Berlin, Dresden, Meissen, Leipzig, Weimar and Potsdam in East Germany; Warsaw, Krakow and Zakopane in Poland; Prague in Czechoslovakia; Vienna in Austria; Venice and Rome in Italy; and Zermatt, Switzerland. All of these places are repeats for me except Vienna; but it's like seeing a good movie several times -- you always pick up something you missed before. While in Weimar we will take a side trip to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and just outside of Warsaw, Poland, we will see both Auschwitz (Camp I) and Birkenau (Camp II). I have been to all three camps before (1975 and 1977) -- they are museums now -- and believe me, I will never ever forget such a moving experience. 

I have another story to tell you. I debated a long time before deciding to do it, because I didn't want to offend anyone who might have lost relatives at any of these or similar camps, or tell a grisly story some of you may not be able to handle. I promise to play it as low key as I can, but I've got to share it with you. It's not a pretty story, but then I never promised to tell only pretty stories. Collecting insulators is more than just being able to look at a fine piece of glass or porcelain on a shelf. It's knowing the history behind it, where it came from, and how it was used. I do promise you an interesting story! Are you ready?

Last March, Brent Burger, a young man of nineteen from Redmond, Washington, wrote me a letter, a part of which I will quote:

"I have been keeping an eye out for anything you might be able to use in future articles or research you might be doing (on foreign insulators). 

"In my constant search for insulators I happened upon a farm house with insulators all over the house and yard -- Muncie, big tiered Thomas and Pinco porcelains and about three dozen white porcelain foreign items. There were three basic styles (of foreign) with glaze and marking variations within the styles. One style is a transposition, the other two are similar open line insulators, one with ears, one without. Some have a wide green stripe around the skirt. These insulators are large. The tramps are about 5" tall and the others are 5-1/2" to 6" tall. The pinholes and threads are just a touch smaller than a standard size pinhole (Brent included some sketches, too). 

"The owner of these told me he took them out of Germany right after World War II. Now this is what I find to be so odd -- he said the pinholes were filled with human hair to protect the threads, and that the hair had come from the Nazi concentration camps. He showed me several with what indeed appeared to be human hair still intact inside the pinhole.

"I would really like to know what you think of these. Value? The hair? and anything else you might be able to tell me about them." 
Thanks --
Brent

I had quite a strong reaction to his letter and sat right down to answer. I told him right off that they were either power or railroad telegraph insulators. I had seen these used on lines supplying power to sky lifts in both Switzerland and Germany; but it was difficult to give a value, especially with something like this. What the farmer offered to sell them for was not out of line, however. I went on to relate what I had seen on my trips to Buchenwald and Auschwitz. In the museum part of the camps one can see films of the actual prisoners, and there are pictures of them everywhere on the walls. Everything has been left pretty much as it was found when the camp was freed. The clock over the main gate at Buchenwald is stopped at 2:45 P.M., the exact hour the Allies took over the camp. But during the war, the first thing that happened to a prisoner when he arrived there, was to have his head shaved. All the hair was saved and collected in a huge bin (still there today), later to be woven by the prisoners into cloth, then made into shirts for the German Army. There was so much of it they obviously looked for other uses, too, one of which was to stuff it into insulators to "snug" the iron pin up into the pinhole. The pin was always smaller than the pinhole, so they had a choice of cementing it in, wrapping the pin with string or strips of cloth, or inserting a plastic or metal thimble to hold it tight. I can't imagine the hair worked very well, but at least they tried it.

I don't recall seeing at any of the camps the type of insulators Brent described, but I did see that the entire compound, in each case, was completely closed in by a massive electrified fence. This fence was pretty well covered with some smaller white porcelain insulators similar to a CD 179. This was very effective in keeping the prisoners from escaping, because to touch it was instant death! Every once in a while the guards would find that a prisoner had chosen death and thrown himself against it, rather than endure the pain and sickness, the cold, the starvation, the inhumanly hard labor, and the complete and utter hopelessness that he felt. At Auschwitz today in the museum there is an abstract metal sculpture of a prisoner who is hanging by his arm from the electric fence. At the very top of it is one small white porcelain insulator. I was a very enthusiastic beginning collector when I first saw it. You can imagine the impression it made, and, yes, I took a picture. I took a lot of pictures while I was there, but I will spare you those. Just believe me, everything you saw in "Holocaust" is true, plus a lot more they didn't show you! To see it on TV is one thing -- to actually stand in a gas chamber is quite another! There was not a dry eye among any of us as we went through.

I had asked Brent if he would try to get some of the insulators for me; and, finally on June 10, having worked out a deal with the farmer, he sent a large box to my house with eight of the most pathetically dirty insulators you ever saw -- all different in either marking and/or shape, but all intact. The kind of thing somebody has to appreciate -- like guess who? But nobody would let me bring them into the house! 

By wearing rubber gloves and using an ice pick I pulled coils of hair out of seven of the insulators and put them in a glass jar labeled "Exhibit A". How do I say this except to just say it? Some is blond, some is quite dark ......etc. [page] 

The eighth one had some sort of papery substance in the pinhole. I pulled this out and unfolded it. It was roughly a circle about 4" in diameter. Then I got very pale because it suddenly hit me what it was, but I had to be sure. I called our family doctor, who is also a good friend, and had him take a look at it. He asked if he could send it and some of the hair to a pal of his at the "lab", who would test it and give us the answer. I was to call back in a week. It didn't take that long. The doctor called me and reported that the hair was human and the papery substance was human skin! Now take a deep breath get up and walk around the room and come back. 

This is an awful story, but I had to share it with you, and maybe you've learned something you didn't know before. But there's an encouraging note, too. In Germany today's Boy Scouts hold induction ceremonies at Buchenwald by the stump of a tree where Goethe used to sit and meditate long before there was ever a camp there. Goethe was Germany's most famous writer. He was from Weimar, close to Buchenwald. Their Boy Scout motto is "Never Again" (will anything as inhuman as this take place). 

The pictures you see were taken after the insulators spent several hours in oxalic acid solution and then Clorox and water. We're not sure just where in Germany these came from. A couple of the markings we know, but the others we do not at this time. For information on R.I.G. (Rosenthal Isolatoren) and the logo that looks like two S's facing each other with the cross between them (Kronacher Porzellanfabrick), please refer back to Matt Grayson's article on German insulators in the June 1979 issue of Crown Jewels. 

The green stripes around the insulator skirts are a mystery to me. Can you help? They vary in width from 5/8" to 3/4" to 1-1/8" Though there are varying degrees of differences in shape, the following sketches show the four basic styles.

Carolyn Theesen (Lawton, Oklahoma) wrote me in April to ask about an insulator from Germany with the AE marking she'd found -- also included a picture. Hope we can come up with the answer soon, Carolyn.

I just received a letter from Gene Calman (San Diego, California) who is vacationing in Europe. He is unaware I have found these particular insulators, but oddly enough he has come across one with a green stripe and says it came from a railroad telegraph line by a narrow gauge steam train south of Dresden, East Germany. Hope he will have an answer for me when he comes back. 

Art Kottman (Blue Point, New York) had written in September of 1979 to tell me about a similar insulator his brother-in-law had brought him from the little town of Hitzacher, right on the border between East and West Germany. It was from an abandoned railroad telegraph line. When the steel pin was removed he noticed some sort of "packing" inside the pinhole, but didn't give it much thought. Art was at the National Show in Herkimer, New York, so I showed him the little glass jar with the hair inside. He turned a little green, but was eager to get back home and take a closer look at that "packing". What did you find, Art?? 

Thanks to all of you who wrote, and especially to Brent Burger for adding a valuable chapter to the story of German insulators. Brent specializes in Californias and keeps a side collection of E.C.&M.Co.'s, Cal. Elec. Works, and C.E.W.'s. He says he got started in 1970 when a kid brought a shoe box full of glass things to the bus stop when he was in the second grade. He didn't know what they were, but he was fascinated. Later that year a lineman for General Telephone gave him his first glass -- a Hemingray 53 and a 56. Brent has been hooked ever since. He writes that he will be going to Warsaw, Poland, in September with a friend and will be staying with him and his family. He intends to tour Auschwitz Concentration Camp himself.