Asking for food behind a stamp – Holocaust IV

“Enjoy” a run of posts, a sequence of bad memories on paper that we certainly have to remember… 

Asking for food …the hard way! 

Although mail between concentration camp prisoners and their families was limited to one or two letters or cards per month each way, and Nazi censors checked all incoming and outgoing mail, some inmates occasionally managed to slip secret messages past the censors, risking severe punishment. The following piece belongs to Spungen Family Foundation.

Lorenz Janowski concealed a note to his wife beneath a pair of 6-pfennig stamps on this August 16, 1942, letter. Written in Polish, the secret message acknowledged receipt of clothing and asked for bread. The normal letter inside, written in German as required, contained only the permissible platitudes. Prisoners were allowed to request parcels from their loved ones, but they were not permitted to request specific items. 

The ingenuity and perseverance of the prisoners was unthinkable! Although bans and strict custody by Nazis, they have always found a way to communicate!

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Bad Memories on Paper we Have to Remember – Holocaust Part III

“Enjoy” a run of posts, a sequence of bad memories on paper that we certainly have to remember… 

Concentration Camp Dachau, SS takes command

In June 1933, SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke became the Dachau commandant. In 1934, as the elite Nazi SS [Schutzstaffel – literally, protection squad; originally Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards] took control of the Gestapo and all the concentration camps, Eicke was placed in overall command of the camps. On the night of June 30-July 1, 1934, known to history as “Night of the Long Knives,” elite, ruthless Nazi SS men purged SA storm troopers in a grisly spree of mass assassination. Eicke personally executed SA chief Ernst Röhm in his cell at Munich. Promoted to SS-Gruppenführer, Eicke centralized administration, introduced torture and exemplary cruelty as deliberate methods of control, and propagated rules for the entire concentration camp system. From then until the defeat of Nazi Germany, all concentration camp guards were specially trained SS personnel. Central authority was headquartered at Dachau until October 1938, when it was removed to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Oranienburg. The 2 following pieces belong to Spungen Family Foundation.

Above: A cover mailed from the office of the Dachau commandant on February 18, 1935, to former prisoner Maier Schloss at Ingolstadt. Below: An October 3, 1934, inmate’s postcard from Schloss to his wife before he was released.   

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Bad Memories on Paper we Have to Remember – Holocaust Part II

“Enjoy” a run of posts, a sequence of bad memories on paper that we certainly have to remember… 

Concentration Camp Dachau established, 1933

Dachau, located 15 kilometers from Munich in Bavaria, was the Nazis’ first major concentration camp, built on the site of an abandon World War I munitions factory. Heinrich Himmler announced its creation at a March 20, 1933, news conference. The first prisoners – Communists and Socialists – arrived on March 22.

At the beginning, Dachau had a capacity for 4,000 inmates. By September 1944, the prisoner population had grown to about 100,000.

Dachau was the only camp that lasted for the entire 12 years of the Third Reich; it was liberated by the United States Army on April 29, 1945.

On May 5, 1933, (as we read on the postcard’s cancellation: Dachau 5.MAI.33)  Josef Haff, who had been a Nazi since 1929, wrote to his family as he sipped beer during his mid-day break, his third day of duty as a concentration camp guard. He found life at the camp to be pleasant.

The picture side of his postcard is a view of the Amper valley from the south, with the Würm river canal flowing past the west side of the prison compound.

The larger item is an official document attesting to Haff’s satisfactory service as a Dachau guard from May 3 to September 16, 1933. These pieces belong to Spungen Family Foundation.

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Bad Memories on Paper we Have to Remember – Holocaust Part I

Many findings of postal or just of paper history are worth mentioning. A huge label is the WWII and the terrible actions that took place during this dark world period. We believe that the Holocaust is an extermination period of Jews but also of other groups such as the Communists, the Gypsies and the handicapped who were persecuted by the Nazis both in Germany and in Europe. We want to try to demonstrate showing pieces of that period in a sequence of posts not only the depth and range of the Nazi persecution but also the resourceful imagination of the inmates as tortured human beings in their desperate agony to communicate with the outside world. “Enjoy” a run of posts, a sequence of bad memories on paper that we certainly have to remember… 

The back side of the letter-card

From the earliest days of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, the Gestapo had the power to impose “protective custody” on anyone, to prevent “undesirable” political activities, to monitor the activities of suspects and to wiretap their conversations, without accountability to any court or other government authority, but regular police retained their traditional role subject to law as regulated by courts. Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler of the elite Nazi SS had taken control of the Gestapo and all the concentration camps in 1934. In June 1936, he became chief of all the German police, thus subordinating all state power to the Nazi apparatus and to the party’s political imperatives.

 

This form letter-card front is a summons to an interrogation.

Three values of Hindenburg Medallion definitive stamps with POL perfins, plus one Nazi Swastika Official stamp, correctly paid the 46-pfennigs rate (40 pfennigs for legal service of a document through the post plus 6 pfennigs local letter postage in that combination). This piece belongs to Spungen Family Foundation.

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Operation Bernhard

Trying to make a tradition in eCharta blog we’re publishing a paper story once a week. Your paper stories are welcome!

This time I’d like to go through a really exciting and known story. All 2nd World War enthusiasts I’m sure they heard about it!

Adolf Hitler had been warming up his engines, both before and during World War II, in order to exterminate certain groups of human beings considered as persona non-grata on this planet. But some other stories occurred during this holocaust dark period of our modern history.

In the concentration camps you could find many capable people for any job that you could take advantage of their talents!

So, in the summer of 1942, the Germans undertook Operation Bernhard, in which a skilled group of Jewish prisoners was gathered at Sachsenhausen to forge British banknotes. Under a lot of time pressure -and not only – they made pieces of art! Notes like these £ 20 or 10 are considered the best fake British money ever made, and were successfully passed off around the world, even circulating in England. These notes passed the test even in Bank of England!

Their story was featured in a recent film, “The Counterfeiters.”

A strong paper story…

20 British pounds made by Operation Bernhard in 1942 with date: Aug 15, 1935

10 British pounds made by Operation Bernhard in 1942 with date: April 16, 1935

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