Wallingford police look into complaint about Nazi, Confederate items sold at flea market
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Published: July 9, 2015 | Last Modified: July 10, 2015 10:39PM
By Mary Ellen Godin Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD — Local police received a complaint when a shopper discovered Nazi and Confederate merchandise at a popular flea market last weekend, according to Chief William Wright.

An officer responded to the Redwood Flea Market on South Turnpike Road Sunday to investigate the report and found Nazi and Confederate memorabilia for sale. He told the complainant, who is Jewish, there was nothing police could do because the merchandise was on private property.

“There was a table set up with this material,” Wright said, unsure of the exact amount, but speculating several showcases. “It’s not criminally illegal, but obviously it offended this person. It causes some people a sense of being uncomfortable. Certainly the owner could preclude this merchandise.”

The complainant, a town resident, feared possible backlash and asked to remain anonymous. He told the Record-Journal that in addition to several showcases there was Nazi merchandise, including German helmets with swastikas, images of Hitler, and Jewish stars of David, in a truck.

“I was shaking and almost vomiting,” he said. “I had to run. My grandmother had numbers,” he said, referring to the Nazi system of tattooing numbers on prisoners.

He also saw Confederate items that he does not believe were authentic Civil War weapons or flags. He said the seller told him “he was selling so much he can’t keep it in stock.”

The Confederate flag has come under scrutiny and debate in recent weeks after a white gunman shot and killed nine African-Americans as they studied the bible in a predominately black church in Charlestown, South Carolina. Authorities later found pictures of the alleged gunman wrapped in a Confederate flag posted on social media and other websites. The killings fueled a state and national debate over the racial significance behind the flag.

Ken Dubar, who owns and manages the flea market, disputed the man’s account of how much anti-semitic and Confederate merchandise is at the weekend venue.

“There may be some of those items, some collectibles and some might be counterfeit,” he said.

Dubar also emphasized police found no evidence of any crime.

Jason Teal, president of the Meriden-Wallingford NAACP, said he was not familiar with the flea market and had not heard any complaints about the merchandise being sold there.

“It’s difficult because it’s on private property and it’s considered free speech,” Teal said.

The man also contacted Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., who immediately asked Wright to determine if any laws were broken.

“I had to check with the chief over what is actionable and what isn’t,” Dickinson said. “Unless something violates state or federal law, there’s no jurisdiction for government to do anything. We had to ask, is it something controlled by law?”

Joshua Sayles, assistant regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Connecticut, said selling Confederate and Nazi goods isn’t a moral issue if the merchandise consists of authentic war pieces purchased by a serious collector. But too often, they are cheap replicas and used as symbols of hate.

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard of this,” Sayles said. “It’s unfortunate that under the law people have the right to sell these things; but it doesn’t mean they should sell these things. It’s not a crime but I would call it hate. People look at the situation in Charleston and say it’s down in the South. But this stuff is here in Connecticut.”

mgodin@record-journal.com (203) 317-2255 Twitter: @Cconnbiz

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/wallingford/wallingfordnews/7490124-129/wallin...

Have you tried reaching into your lady bits and pulling out your balls?


--Steve

Well, I've seen polite disagreement called negativity.
Hate,  that's what you do if you hurt my feelings. Really?
Grow up.. I'm pretty sure everyone knows which political ideology these whiners hold up As The Answer
Disdain, thats the feeling I have for these whining britches.  No r intended.
Buy I'm bad if I want those who share the restroom with me to actually be men, and those who share facilities with my wife and daughter to not stand to see. Call me whatever, I've about run out of tolerance. And
The Tolerant Ones are the first to DEMAND others change..

No irony there.

This little wimp can best be described as a Politically Correct Bully ...     He is probably a narcissistic nonentity who is in all probably looking for some attention.  

That would be tolerance.

I saw a flag, I hadda run. My great Grammy was a slave.

Today is today. The relics of history or Chinese knock offs of them appeal to some, some, because they ideologically agree, some, because they feel owning something that represented a defeated enemy's ideology, some people just like having war memorabilia. Selling the stuff? Not for me.
A guy abandoned his belongings here. Asked if I'd let him store his stuff, while he went to see family, then he'd come back, get a place, take his stuff.
No problem, I have storage,,he never came back. I got a coffee pot,a small circular saw, bits and pieces of braces and wood from furniture before it fell into the burn Pitt..

And, an arm band, with the swastika. I'd never seen anything like that,, I wouldn't have bought it, but, it was something that represented a time in America's history, a time when EVERYBODY was a part of the war effort.
I kept it, looked at it once in a while, but, kept it put away... I asked myself many times why I kept it. It was intriguing, and kinda creepy, then one day I showed it to a close friend. It hit him deep. He cried. I'm talking about a grown man, kids older than some of us. I grabbed a gallon of diesel, it's gone. But does that mean someone can't sell them? No. The MARKET will either support the business or not.
I wonder what the sales figures are for American WWII memorabilia are in Germany and Japan....
I wonder why there isn't a political movement now by Japanese descendants of the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in WWII, just because of their heritage.
If that was RIGHT, then since we are fighting people who are from a certain part of the world,   ,,,well, you do the math...

And, I was Taught WHY we went into Nam. Eventually, that lie was uncovered. Dehumanizing the Enemy is part of Manufacturing Consent and maintaining the Moral High ground. There are reasons to question the official story...I don't know what happened. I was not there. Was it brutal, inhumane,wrong, I'm able to get that, inhumane conditions, slave labor, starvation, diseases, horrible, no doubt.

So, you've got a war  to fight, manpower and equipment, FUEL for the equipment, and you're going to utilize how many people and how much equipment and fuel to kill and dispose of people when you could just let them starve? Has anyone actually Considered the manpower and time and whatever chemicals and everything that killing six Million people would actually take ? I'm not suggesting some weren't killed, but the number I question.

Look up the Liberty. We had sailors who survived the attack. The History books still teach that it was a case of mistaken identity. Casual study will expose what a lie that is.
So, while we Know that we have been lied to repeatedly, and our hearts are tuned to care for the downtrodden, and to want to lift up the victims, I , for one, have been forced to step back and look more closely. I don't know what happened. I wasn't there. I'm also certain that I've been told things that are not true. . So, if you believed, as I did, that we invaded Nam because they attacked us in Tonkin bay, then you have been lied to also.


The point is, we have been taught in school and test answers were
Six million killed in the showers.
If you fully accept that as fact, okay, might be right on,, but I am not sure that sufficient evidence exists.

Serowbot wrote on 07/12/15 at 12:57:57:


Magnitude of what.......
The past?
To allow the past, to dictate the present, is to deny reality.......

Yes, yes, I know, all the butt hurt makes good theater, heck, I guess I could ask you to leave and go back to Great Britain, as you are treading on my great hunting grounds, and take your diseases and pollution with you, please...

Yes, I am American Indian and I have to run when I see any paleface....

Gee, this could be fun, victimhood  

Serowbot wrote on 07/12/15 at 15:25:12:




Sure, that's what I really meant. That is why I spent all that time typing,,because I'm too stupid to just say it so simply. Such a well thought out response.

Serowbot wrote on 07/12/15 at 22:44:27:


Yes, indeed, this was the reasoning for the Crusades too, as well as many other movements in history where folk had a real concern for those who didn't even know they were missing something....

Strength is saying no, and not enabling a person, letting them the satisfaction of being able to provide for himself and the satisfaction it derives....
Not the selfish act of giving what you can't really give and then patting yourself on the back to build your own self esteem....