Postal Evidence of the Holocaust: Postcards from Auschwitz

From the Museum's "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps" online exhibition and the Spungen Family Foundation's Postal Collection:

Compared to later conditions, treatment of prisoners during the first year was relatively humane. A printed announcement from the camp commandant on the back of this December 16, 1940, formular post card stated, "Each prisoner may have a packet weighing one kilogram sent to him by relatives for Christmas, but not as a packet with money order. Permitted: bread, Christmas pastries, winter sausage, tobacco products, toilet articles. Forbidden: enclosures of money, canned jelly, stamps, photographs, letters, and flammable materials such as lighters, matches, etc. For delivery the packet should have the most correct address, including the birthdate and prisoner number. The packet must be sent in the period from December 10, 1940, to January 5, 1941. All incoming packages that do not conform to camp regulations will be confiscated for the benefit of prisoners who receive no packet from home."

Below are partial descriptions of more postal artifacts from Auschwitz on display at the virtual Museum of Family History. All can be found by visiting the exhibition and clicking on the Auschwitz-Birkenau link.

--A February 28, 1942, formular envelope mailed by prisoner number 205 (first transport) to Tarnów. Boxed red censor mark on the back.

--An unmailed post card published by the Auschwitz Museum after World War II shows the camp crematorium in 1943, location of an unsuccessful prisoners' revolt in 1943.

--Enclosed inside this March 11, 1944, prisoner's formular lettersheet was a printed notice to the recipient...

--Despite the ban on Easter parcels for prisoners in 1944, one inmate received this colorful hand-painted Easter card from a relative after it had passed the camp sensor.

--November 23, 1944, insured railway express receipt for a 10-kilogram parcel of food and clothing shipped from Beatrix Wiesner at Prague to prisoner Richard Wiesner at Auschwitz.

--This October 13, 1942, telegram from the Auschwitz camp commandant to Lublin states: "Your husband died today in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Details from the commander of the security police and the SD in the Lublin district."

--On this August 2, 1943, message-and-reply postal card from Zichenau, Franz Zawacki queried the Auschwitz administration about the fate of prisoner Egon Konstanty Zawacki.

--Very few letters or cards addressed to Auschwitz prisoners have survived, for obvious reasons, so the March 27, 1943, postal card from a mother in Warsaw to her daughter at Birkenau is exceptional. The postage fee official mail parcel waybill from the printing facility of the Auschwitz central administration to the Flossenbürg concentration camp administration probably accompanied a shipment of formular stationery for prisoners.

--A March 27, 1943, air mail letter and an April 24, 1943, special delivery letter from a French forced laborer at the Auschwitz West Buchenholz labor camp operated by I.G. Farben to his parents in Meaux, France. Both were censored at Frankfurt.

--The message on this May 31, 1944, prisoner's post card from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to Kolozsvar, Hungary (today Cluj, Romania)….

--This page and the two that follow document the tragedy of Arnold Singer, a German Jew of Luckau whose brother, Walter Singer, had escaped to Sweden and was trying to help Arnold leave Germany and join him.

More such postal artifacts can be found not only within this exhibition for dozens of camps, but also within the two other new exhibitions, "Persecution and Flight: the Nazi Campaign Against the Jews" and "The Jewish Ghetto." Please make a thorough visit to these three Museum exhibitions at your convenience.

An Introduction to "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps"

The Museum would like to encourage you to visit its three new online exhibitions about World War II and the Holocaust.

One of the exhibitions, "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps" is filled with photographs taken in and of the camps, Survivor stories, postal artifacts and archival film taken by the U.S. Army during Liberation.

Such film clips include the liberation of Arnstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Breendonck, Buchenwald (and two of its subcamps Ohrdruf and Penig), Dachau, Flossenburg, Hadamar, Hannover, Mathausen (and Gunskirchen, a subcamp), and Nordhausen.

You can also see what instructions were given to camp 'inmates' and others for what was allowed to be said and sent when corresponding.

More will be posted soon on this blog, discussing the many postal artifacts that are now part of this exhibition.

Within this exhibition you should use the list of links provided to access the material on display about any of the camps mentioned, or just follow the "next" links at the bottom of each page. You can find the aforementioned exhibition here.

Update on Two Upcoming Exhibitions at the Museum of Family History

The Museum of Family History is readying two new online exhibitions about the Jewish "experience" in Europe before, during and after World War II and the Holocaust.

These two exhibitions (and a third one to come later this year or early next) will, after the exhibition is finished, be partly integrated into the Museum's "World War II and the Holocaust" wing.

These two exhibitions will deal mainly with the Jewish ghettos that were formed in Europe during World War II as well as more than three dozen concentration, extermination, labor and transit camps that much of the Jewish population of Europe were incarcerated in.

The third exhibition, entitled "Persecution and Flight: The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews," will similar in nature to the other two exhibitions, though it will mostly deal with the period before the Second World War.

Within these exhibitions you will see photographs taken in Europe before, during and after the war. You will also see and hear testimony from some who survived the War. Most interestingly, perhaps for some, will be the many pieces of postal mail that will demonstrate to the Museum visitor some of the types of mail that were sent between those imprisoned (as well as from some who worked in the ghettos and camps) and the outside world. I would suspect that most who will visit these two exhibitions have never seen such examples, or at least very few at best.

There is still time for those of you who might have interesting period photographs, audio and video clips, written testimony, that might fit in well with the theme of these exhibitions. If you do have such material and wish for the Museum to add it to the exhibitions, please contact the Museum at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com with the following phrase in the Subject line of your e-mail "World War II and the Holocaust Exhibitions."

The first ones to view these two new online exhibitions will be those who have signed up to receive the Museum's e-newsletter "Perspectives," which to date has only been published twice, the last time quite a while ago. This is a perk of signing up for the newsletter, i.e. you get a chance to preview selected new exhibitions before the general public.

Perhaps three or four weeks subsequent to the sending out of Perspectives, a general announcement will be made to the public of its availability. Thus if you have not already done so, you might like to sign up for Perspectives. You can do so by clicking here. Please read the entire Perspectives signup page before signing up.

Instructions for sending letters, material and money to concentration camp inmates

I have received a number of translations of instructions for senders of material, money, etc. to camp inmates. These instructions were imprinted on postal cards used at concentration camps such as Auschwitz. They are instructions for those who would receive these cards from those who were incarcerated in a camp. One such translation, from an Auschwitz card, is shown below. It should be noted that such instructions were standard, as I have similar or the same exact instructions imprinted on cards from other camps such as Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, Sachsenburg, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt et al.

I have been informed that the Sachsenburg concentration camp was the first concentration camp to provide printed lettercards for prisoner correspondence, beginning in 1935. Of course, letters that came into and out of the various camps had to pass through censors. Often times the actual stamps on the cards were removed by the censors to see if there were any secret messages hidden under the stamps.

Below then is a translation from an Auschwitz letter card, though as I've stated, the instructions are similar or the same for other camps. By the way, I have examples of such instructions from the mid to late thirties through at least 1944. You can see other examples of such instructions at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/cc/cc-instructions.htm . Here then is the translation from the Auschwitz letter card:

The following orders must be observed at letter exchanges with prisoners:

1) Each preventive detention prisoner is allowed to receive and send each month two letters or (post)cards from his relatives. The letter to the prisoners must be readable, written with ink, and can contain only fifteen lines per sheet. Only normal sized letter sheets are permitted. Envelopes must not be lined but simple. A single letter can contain only five stamps of 12 Pfg (= Pfennig). All others are forbidden and will be seized.

2) The sending of money is not allowed.

3) It is important that in the sending of post or the transfering of money, the exact address must consist of the name, the date of birth, and prisoner's number. If the address is not exact it will be returned or destroyed.

4) Newspapers are allowed but must be ordered at the post office of the K.L Auschwitz only. ( K.L = Konzentrations Lager).

5) Sending of parcels is not allowed since prisoners can buy anything in the camp.

6) Requests to the direction of the camp to free from preventive detention (ie. imprisonment) are pointless.

7) Permission to speak or to meet with prisoners in the Concentration Camp is absolutely not allowed.

The Commandant of the Camp.

Call for Material: "The Jewish Ghetto" and "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps"

Many new online exhibitions are being planned for 2010 at the virtual Museum of Family History. Two such exhibitions are entitled "The Jewish Ghetto" and "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps."

"The Jewish Ghetto" will feature information about and photographs of many of the ghettos that once existed. There will also be first-hand testimony given by some of those who were forced to live in these ghettos during the Second World War, not only in written form, but also as short audio-visual clips.

The Museum depends on people like you for material to build its exhibitions. So, with that in mind, the Museum would like to send out a "call for material" to all of you for any material you possess that you think might fit in well with this exhibition. It is preferred that you not send any original material and that you send what you have as jpegs or Word documents by email.

Have you photographs of any of the ghettos? Written testimony from someone who lived in a ghetto (or perhaps you yourself lived in one)? Have you either audio or video testimony, where you recount your experiences in the ghetto? Are you the translator of a Yizkor book that contains testimony of those who lived in a ghetto?

If you have any questions, please contact me (Steve) at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com .

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Another exhibition in the works is an augmentation of an ongoing exhibition of the same name that currently contains photographs taken within the last ten or so years of the former concentration camps of Europe, which today mostly serve as memorials and museums. The new exhibition "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps" will be similar to the "Ghetto" exhibition in that it will tell about many of the concentration, labor and transit camps in both first- and third-person.

The Museum is looking for testimony for this exhibition as well as that of the "Ghetto" exhibition. The Museum also needs current-day photographs (ie. within the last two decades) of many of the former concentration, labor, and transit camps. The Museum has a limited collection, but is in need of more, i.e. photographs of former camps not included within its current collection. If you have any such photographs, please contact me at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com first before you send them, in order to make sure that they are needed.

Liberation of the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, as told by a G.I. who was there....

Every day that he served overseas, for fifteen months, (with a very few days exception due to conditions and movements in the Battle of the Bulge), Carl Henry used the office typewriter from his desk job as Warrant Officer Junior Grade and then Chief Warrant Officer to write to his wife - one, two, three or four pages a day. The letters are preserved in books assembled by his wife Edith, one book for every month of his service overseas.

These letters are typed on onion-skin paper and with very few excisions from the censors, since he knew how to censor himself, contain detailed, sometimes intimate, record of the experiences, sights, and feelings of a literate and affectionate man. His somewhat obsessive personality serves to increase the detail of the description, both about war-shattered Europe and his own feelings and those of his buddies. From “Somewhere in England” to “Somewhere in Germany”, here then is an enthralling document of the Third Army’s liberation of Europe.

The first letter to be presented to you is dated April 11, 1945, a week after the camp was liberated. Henry describes the horrific scenes he witnessed.

The link to this letter is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-rm009-ohrdruf-henry.htm. The Museum hopes to present more such interesting letters in the future.

Multimedia Presentations at the Museum of Family History

One of the unique features of the virtual Museum of Family History is its multimedia aspect. Many sound and video clips can be found at the Museum which make a "day at the Museum" a most pleasant experience. Here is a sampling of what can be found within the Museum that contain audio and/or video:

• Great Artists Series: "The Immortal Al Jolson" is an exhibition that could only have been created with the cooperation of the International Al Jolson Society, which has over one thousand members.
  Within this some thirty-page exhibition, you will find seventeen video clips and more than forty sound clips of Jolson, some where he's singing, others where he's being interviewed. You will also find video clips from his films, from newsreels, and even from a home movie (set to music, of course).
  You can also hear sound clips from a number of Jolson's old radio shows--even guest star Fannie Brice appears, singing "My Man." There is one webpage, entitled "The Jewish Side of Jolson," where you can hear Jolson sing four songs including "Hatikvah," "Kol Nidre" (beautiful) and "Chazzan Oyfn Shabbas" (in English, "Cantor on the Sabbath").
  You can also read about Jolson's personal (as well as his professional) life. This exhibition is highly recommended.
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm
  The website of the International Al Jolson Society can be found at http://www.jolson.org/ .
  
  
• Also another exhibition found within the Museum's Great Artists Series is "The Great Richard Tucker," who many of us know as a fabulous tenor, but did you know he was also a Cantor too? Within this exhibition you can read about Tucker's family life as well as hear him sing two arias from "Tosca", the aria "Vesti la giubba" from "I, Pagliacci" and "Nessun Dorma" from "Turandot."
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/rtucker.htm
  
  
• Screening Room: The Jewish documentary most often thematically deals with the many aspects, events and experiences of Jewish life that exists or existed within the Diaspora. These films attempt to honor and preserve these significant events that have become indelibly etched within the collective Jewish consciousness. It is for this reason that the Museum has created the "Screening Room." The Museum is honored to be able to share with you short previews of twenty such films, in the hope that you will want to see the film in its entirety somewhere, and when you do, consider what the filmmaker is trying to say; why he or she felt it was so important to make their film.
  Lastly, the Museum urges you to support the Jewish documentarian and the work they do in whatever way you can.
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/screeningroom.htm
  
  
• World War II and the Holocaust: If you have the stomach for it, you can watch a one-hour film produced by the U.S. Department of Defense as the U.S. Army liberated a number of camps at the end of the War. The camps include Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Leipzig, Penig (a subcamp of Buchenwald), Ohrdruf (another subcamp of Buchenwald), Ahlen, Arnstadt, Nordhausen; Breendonck (Belgium) and Mauthausen (Austria). Also included are scenes from Hadamar, the psychiatric hospital in Germany that was used by the Nazis to perform mass sterilizations and mass murder of 'undesirable' members of Nazi society, specifically the physically and mentally handicapped.
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/cc/ccamps-us.htm
  
  
• "Seeking Justice! The Nuremberg Trials": A film of one hour and a quarter about the Nuremberg trials.
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-rm012a.htm
  
  
• There are many more video and sound clips that can be found within the virtual realm of the Museum of Family History. Just visit the Museum's Multimedia page which contains links to separate pages that list its audio and video collection.
  www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/multimedia.htm

You should be forewarned that, depending on the media player(s) you have on your computer, you may or may not be able to play some of the videos. Also depending on your Internet connection, your download time may be short or long. The Museum, of course, regrets any incovenience or dissapointment that this may cause you.