Bobstamp

15 Nov 2022
11:35:16pm

re: Canadian postage dues

Those "incredibly boring red postage dues" are what got me out of using proprietary stamp albums. I just couldn't see wasting time and money obtaining stamps that I did not like. So I just quit using that album, removed all of the stamps, and started designing and printing my own pages. I never did manage to transfer all of my collection to DIY pages, and in fact started storing my Canadian stamps in Lighthouse stockbooks, where they sit to this day, at least those that I kept. Completeness is not an issue for me. I've tried to obtain complete sets of stamps I like, and pretty much ignored everything else.

When I say that I "like" a stamp (or a cover), it's not necessarily because it's conventionally attractive and artistic. It could be a stamp or cover that is "boring" to look at but deeply interesting, to me anyway, because of it provenance. Here's an example from my collection:



This German "President von Hindenburg" stamp is probably Scott 431, although because it's on piece and I can't determine whether its watermark is type 125 (lozenges) or type 237 (swastikas). I assume that it's the latter — the stamps watermarked with the lozenges was issued in 1933, the year that Hitler became chancellor, and were replaced the same year with the stamps watermarked with swastikas, no doubt as a way to further "prove" to Germans , at least those who even knew what a watermark was, that the Nazis were now in control, and were used throughout the war. But identification of the stamp is not important in this context. What's important to me is the Krefeld postmark:

I first learned about Krefeld and its role in the Second World War from the book The Nazi Terror — Gestapo, Jews & Ordinary Germans, by Eric Johnson. Krefeld is a medium-sized city near Dusseldorf in eastern Germany.

Johnson did extensive research in three German cities, one small, one medium-sized (Krefeld) and one large one. In each city, he combed Gestapo records to learn how the Gestapo (German secret police) identified, arrested, and deported Jews.

Krefeld was an ordinary city in the sense that its ethnic make-up was similar to that of most German cities, mostly “Aryan” Germans with many Jews. By the end of the war, no Jews remained in Krefeld and none returned; they had all arrested and deported to concentration camps by the end of the war. None of them ever returned to Krefeld.

Johnson documents the lack of response to the arrests by “ordinary Germans” in Krefeld, as well as the successful attempt by wives of arrested Jews to have them freed, briefly, before they, along with their families, were arrested once again. Included in the book is a chilling interview that Johnson had with a retired Gestapo member who volunteered for the Einsatzgruppen, a paramilitary group that was sent to the eastern front to murder Russian Jews in occupied Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. He completed his service, and after the war returned to his old job in Krefeld and eventually retired with a full pension, including credit for his time with the Einsatzgruppen. He showed no remorse for his wartime crimes.

Bob

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