Postcards from the Shoah

A sticker has been affixed to an envelope postmarked October 19, 1926, an envelope used for literal back-of-the-envelope calculations. At first glance it is innocuous, then the swastika catches one’s eye. The heavy Fraktur font reads: Kauft nicht bei Juden und nicht in ihren Warenhäusern. “Don’t buy from Jews or shop in their businesses.”

Back of an envelope, affixed with a “don’t buy from Jews” label.

A closer look reveals that the monument at the far right is the Niederwalddenkmal, situated above the village of Rüdesheim on the Rhine river. Built in the 1870s and topped by the statue Germania, under the Nazis this monument became a symbol of pan-Germanic nationalism.

Positioned at the traditional French border, Germania was a symbol of German resistance to invaders. (The song the Nazis sing in Casablanca, “Die Wacht am Rhein,” is about this statue.) To the left of the river, the ruin of Schloß Ehrenfels gestures to Germany’s idealized feudal past, the ship to its mercantile present, which the party would “Aryanize” by seizing Jewish businesses or forcing their sale.

As Justin Gordon notes in his book, Holocaust Postal History, “the growing hatred of the Jews was reflected in the anti-Semitic labels that people placed on envelopes sent through the mail.” Holocaust Postal History explores how stamps and the paper they traveled on create a historical record of the Holocaust, capturing, for instance, “the exact historical moment when one person reached out in desperation to another in the hopes of receiving help, encouragement, or simply news that a loved one was still alive.”

A mother’s postcard to her daughter interned in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“My dear, good child!” Emilie Singer in Slovakia writes to her daughter Margit Singer, using the address for the Frauenlager, the women’s camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. “I haven’t had any news from you in a long time. Are you in good health? I’ve been reading your card countless times a day.” Singer worked in Auschwitz’s Gestapo office, along with some 80 German-speaking Jewish women who were chosen to work as secretaries. As Gordon notes, “The SS preferred using Jewish women as secretaries because they were well-educated, knew a number of languages, could type, and would never see freedom again and thus would not be able to divulge any secrets.” From the ghettos to the camps, these slips of paper may be “the only remaining fragments” of a person’s life.

Comments

  1. asmith

    I have received a number of comments from readers talking about their own postcards from the Holocaust. With their permission, I will be posting them below.

    Natalie Reed wrote about her mother, Gloria Schliefer, and a postcard her family received:

    "My mother (who died two years ago just shy of her 100th birthday) came from Poland in 1929. While her father’s family was then almost entirely in the States, almost all of her mother’s family was in Poland.

    She remembered a postcard coming to Brooklyn in 1939, saying in essence: 'The Germans are attacking, and we are getting ready to fight.' That was the last they heard until the only two survivors made it
    to the States, found their relatives, and told their stories."

  2. asmith

    Carol Silberfarb wrote that her grandparents were in internment camps in France before being deported to Auschwitz. She sent several postcards from them from the years 1939 to 1942. They can be viewed by accessing the links below.

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1a.jpg

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1b.jpg

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2a.jpg

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2b.jpg

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/3a.jpg

    https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/3b.jpg

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