Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
01:05:49pm
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It was a semi-postal issued to recall Majdanek, a concentration camp of World War II near Lublin (note from Scott).
Evidently not too many people used that stamp for postage. Scott gives it a 2015 catalog value of $4.00 MNH / $1.50 unused / $18.00 used. Note the italics indicating in this case uncommon as used, and beware of CTO copies that would be worth only the unused value.
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This was an April 1946 issue from a country already under Soviet domination, and soon to have a communist government. It was entirely in their interests to remind people at home that they had been liberated from such evil by the Soviets. Majdanek was a concentration camp not hidden away, like some were, far from a population centre, but actually within the Polish city of Lublin. Even before the war ended the Soviets had begun an investigation into war crimes there, and a museum was swiftly opened. Directing the residual hatreds of a wretched Polish population towards the absent Nazis and away from the present hard-line communists was a clear and necessary policy. The Eastern bloc produced many stamps in the following decades to remind their populations of Nazi crimes - though few, perhaps, with the grim power of this one.
It would have no doubt been wise to be seen to use these stamps in support of the Soviet-Polish drive to expose the evils of Nazism and extol the virtues of the new socialist state. But no, you wouldn't put one on a birthday card to your little niece.
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01:54:06pm
Thanks very much guys for your information! I will note that down!
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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Mahatma Gandhi.
15 May 2015
01:05:49pm
Got this weird stamp block in my collection! Wonder who would've send a letter with this kind of stamps recalling the horrors of the death camps during WWII in eastern Europe!?
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01:19:04pm
re: 1946 POLISH ISSUES ON DEATH CAMPS
It was a semi-postal issued to recall Majdanek, a concentration camp of World War II near Lublin (note from Scott).
Evidently not too many people used that stamp for postage. Scott gives it a 2015 catalog value of $4.00 MNH / $1.50 unused / $18.00 used. Note the italics indicating in this case uncommon as used, and beware of CTO copies that would be worth only the unused value.
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re: 1946 POLISH ISSUES ON DEATH CAMPS
This was an April 1946 issue from a country already under Soviet domination, and soon to have a communist government. It was entirely in their interests to remind people at home that they had been liberated from such evil by the Soviets. Majdanek was a concentration camp not hidden away, like some were, far from a population centre, but actually within the Polish city of Lublin. Even before the war ended the Soviets had begun an investigation into war crimes there, and a museum was swiftly opened. Directing the residual hatreds of a wretched Polish population towards the absent Nazis and away from the present hard-line communists was a clear and necessary policy. The Eastern bloc produced many stamps in the following decades to remind their populations of Nazi crimes - though few, perhaps, with the grim power of this one.
It would have no doubt been wise to be seen to use these stamps in support of the Soviet-Polish drive to expose the evils of Nazism and extol the virtues of the new socialist state. But no, you wouldn't put one on a birthday card to your little niece.
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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Mahatma Gandhi.
15 May 2015
01:54:06pm
re: 1946 POLISH ISSUES ON DEATH CAMPS
Thanks very much guys for your information! I will note that down!
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