Arischer Zahnarzt translates from German as ‘Aryan dentist’. Although IWM doesn’t know too much about the exact story of this sign, made most likely at some point in the 1930s or 40s in the city of Karslruhe, the meaning of the object is pretty clear – it once hung on the door of a place where only those identifying as Aryans could get their teeth seen to.

For me, it’s an important object as it’s one of the first things I helped to acquire for a museum, in the early 2000s. I was a research assistant at the time, working to support The Holocaust Exhibition at the Museum and we acquired this at auction in Germany. In a way, it looks like a pretty unassuming object, and next to some of the physical artefacts of the Holocaust, it’s comparatively workaday, as a remnant of business administration rather than as a tool for meting out terror. But what it stands for is filled with injustice and hatred. When it arrived and was unpacked at the museum, I can remember the chill that went through us all in the room.

Image, thanks to IWM
Collection number: FEQ 525