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Concentration Camp and Fight for Freedom Mail
The Second World War is slipping further and further into history. In 1945, when all the gruesome details about Nazi concentration camps became known, the world was shocked. Hardly anybody recognised at the time that this dark chapter of human history would be a most interesting field of philately. A few collectors have taken it up since, but unfortunately, the number remains minimal. The mail items from concentration camps and Nazi prisons are scarce and become more valuable as time passes. It is almost a closed philatelic chapter and, in the future, it is bound to become just as exclusive, and the documents as elusive as the balloon post items of the siege of Paris.
Special covers and postcards were printed by the German authorities for the larger concentration camps. Only a limited number of prisoners had the chance to send letters. The relatives of victims treasure such letters but with the progression of time, they may become more available. Such a collection might include letters sent from different prisons where resistance fighters were held, and also kites smuggled from concentration camps, prisons and in transit.
A cover sent to Eugene Gottlieb was opened first by the German censor and later by the British. The initial address of Lisbon has been crossed out and a new address in London recorded. A postcard from Sachsenhausen concentration camp was addressed to Anne Richter in Fonsdorf with the sender’s name Franz Richter clearly evident. A cover from the concentration camp at Dachau addressed to Palera Karel from Theo Karel has also been found. Covers from Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps have also been documented. A postcard from the Jewish Ghetto in Lodz with the sender’s address ‘Der Alteste der Juden in Litzmannstadt’ (The Senior of the Jews in Litzmannstadt) has been recorded along with a letter to Czechoslovak prisoner in Breslau prison.
Every country features on its stamps the most important freedom fighters. The Second World War offers a wide choice of material for collectors in this thematic field. This field has definitely not been exhausted and there are great possibilities for research and discoveries. The fifteenth century leader of the Hussites, Jan Zizka, is featured on a Czechoslovak stamp dated 1952. The USA issued a stamp with a portrait of La Fayette, hero of the American War of Independence. Marshall Suvorov, a great military leader of the Napoleonic period, is portrayed on a Soviet stamp. One of the leading figures of the Russian revolutionary period, Bulcher, is also shown on a Soviet stamp. Another leading Russian hero of the Soviet Union, Sergeant Miroshnichenko, is also seen on a Russian stamp. Karl Friedrich Goerdler, one of the German resistance fighters against Hitler, is portrayed on a German stamp. A French stamp commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Paris and Strasbourg by the Allies in the Second World War has also been issued. In 1964, twenty years after her liberation, France issued a stamp dedicated to the freedom fighters.
History, in many aspects, is clearly defined with the postage stamps of varying countries.
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