Coins, Historical Medals and Antiquities

FRANCE, Aux Héros et Martyrs de la Déportation, la France Reconnaissante, c. 1950, a bronze medal by Josette Hébert-Coëffin for the National Committee for the Memorial of the Natzweiler-Struthof Deportation, half-length facing portrait of a concentration camp victim, legend around, rev. flames around a monument, body of emaciated prisoner lying in foreground, 67mm. Extremely fine and rare, a poignant study £60-£80

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Art Medals formed by Dr Edith Greenwood (†1987).

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The Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, a Nazi facility located high in the Vosges mountains on territory annexed from France in 1940, operated from May 1941 to September 1944. Some 22,000 prisoners died there, either from exhaustion or execution, including 86 Jews murdered on the orders of the anatomist August Hirt