Holocaust through letters and cards of the victims
A very popular collecting area for stamp collectors is souvenir cancels, which commemorate an event. For many events, the postal authorities create a special cancel just for that event. Collectors will have a cover cancelled for their own collection or to send to other collectors. The following is an example of a souvenir cancel from Der ewige Jude.
This souvenir cancel, from when the exhibition was in Berlin, is dated November 13, 1938. In this case the collector had the stamp cancelled and placed the cover in his collection, rather than sending it through the mail.
It is very unusual to see mail from Jewish inmates in the concentration camps; they were seldom accorded the privilege to write letters. We can identify these inmates and their mail by the Sara and Israel middle names.
This cover from Dachau contains the Israel middle name: Richard “Israel” Springer. The letter is dated February 4, 1940. The preprinted instructions inform the sender of what can be sent to the inmate.
This letter, also postmarked in the mid-1920s, is another example of a label containing anti-Semitic propaganda. The label reads
The Berliner Tageblatt, the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Vossische Zeitung, the Berliner Zeitung am Morgen, the Vorwärts, are all almost exclusively written by Jews for Jews, and are thus Jewish newspapers.
An interesting observation: The backwards swastika appeared here before it was formalized as the logo for the Nazi party.
This cover contains an example of the Israel middle name: Max “Israel” Schlesinger. This letter was sent from Vienna to Shanghai, China, on July 11, 1941.
This cover was addressed to a collector and has a souvenir cancel dated August 26, 1938, when the exhibit was housed in Vienna, Austria.
At Auschwitz 2, or Birkenau, several distinctive camps were established. The family camp established by the Nazis was modeled after the Theresienstadt ghetto. It was supposed to be a model camp where the International Red Cross would visit and the see how well the Jews were treated under the Nazis. This never came to fruition.
On September 8, 1943, the first residents of the Family Camps were transported to Auschwitz: 5000 Czechoslovakian Jews. They set up a model town with schools, a government, and postal system. The Nazis asked them to write post cards to their friends and relatives on March 9, 1944. The next day all the people in the family camp were gassed. The Nazis kept sending out these cards months after those who wrote them were killed. The Nazis parlance called this a Brief Aktion. Brief means “letter” and Aktion by Nazi definition is the German word for an “action” or campaign. When used by the SS or Gestapo, it often meant the roundup or murder of Jews.
This postcard was sent to Pislen, Czechoslovakia, with the return address Arbeitslager Birkenau, where the family camp was located. It was distributed through the Jewish Association in Berlin.
In September 1939 some 900 stateless Jews (stateless because their citizenship was revoked by the Nazis) were arrested in Berlin and placed in barracks 37, 38, 39 in Sachsenhausen. Within several months of the prisoners’ arrival at the camp, the barracks windows and doors were sealed up and the inmates were engaged in strenuous physical activity for hours on end. These tortures increased an already-high death rate in the camp.
This postcard was sent from Copenhagen, Denmark, by Arnold Cohn to his brother Simon. Both were veterans of the German army and fought in World War I. Simon resided in the Theresienstadt ghetto, but Arnold was fortunate enough to get out of Germany and escape to Copenhagen. Arnold sent a return-receipt postcard to his brother; when Simon received it, he was to sign the pink card and send it back to Arnold, letting his brother know he was still alive. Unfortunately the card was returned in its entirely; Simon apparently was deported to the East.
This postal card was cancelled in Copenhagen and stamped Zurück. Unbekannt, meaning “Return. Recipient unknown.” The rest of the stamp reads “By the Committee for the Jewish Problem in Bohemia and Moravia.” Note that the pink return-receipt postcard is still attached to Arnold’s card.
Mail into the concentration camps is even rarer than mail sent out by Jews because after it was delivered to the inmates, it was collected and destroyed. The cover shown has the Israel middle name and was sent into Buchenwald. So how did this item survive? My theory is Max “Israel” Steinhauser was arrested on Kristallnacht in November 1938 and was released in June 1939, the same as the cancel on the stamp. Hitler released thousands of Jews a few months after their arrest, requiring them to leave the country. I believe that Mr. Steinhauser was one of those individuals and was able to sneak the letter out of Buchenwald when he left.
