Third Reich : Rare Nazi Hilfswilliger 'HIWI' Identity Disc.

Alloy oval disc stamped 'HIWI 36 / L36990'. The Hilfswilliger or voluneer assistants were drawn from the Eastern Occupied Territories and were frequently used to do the Nazi's dirty work. In one instance, the SS and police inducted, processed, and trained over 5,000 HIWI guards before the end of 1944 at the SS training section of the Trawniki concentration camp set up at the village of Trawniki, southeast of Lublin. They were known as the 'Trawniki Men' and were former Soviet citizens, mainly Ukrainians. Trawnikis were sent to all the main killing sites of the Holocaust and took an active role in the executions of Jews at Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek, Lublin, Warsaw, Lvov, Częstochowa, Radom, Kraków, Białystok, as well as Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Trawniki itself.