Stamp review: Concentration Camps Liberation, 75 Years -- Resurrection (2020-04-21)

בול 75 שנה לשחרור מחנות הריכוז: התקומה
Concentration Camps' Liberation, 75 Years: Resurrection

The "Concentration Camps Liberation, 75 Years: Resurrection" stamp was issued by Israel Post on 21 April 2020. Face valued at ₪8.30, corresponding to the postage rate for an unregistered international 0-100g letter, "Resurrection" features the title page of a report published in September 1945 for the First Congress of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bergen-Belsen. The tab below the stamp shows a group of Jewish children being led out of Florence's Great Synagogue by a Jewish Brigade soldier and several Jewish Agency nurses in September 1944. Blue, gray and orange are the stamp's prominent colors. It was designed by Miri Nistor and Tuvia Kurtz, who have been stamp designers with Israel Post since 2001 and 1998, respectively.

Bergen-Belsen in Germany (Google Maps)

Bergen-Belsen originally served as a Wehrmacht-administered POW camp, first for French and Belgian soldiers and later for soldiers from the Soviet Union. By April 1942, 21,000 Soviet POWs had passed through Bergen-Belsen, of which the Jews were sent to Sachsenhausen and exterminated while 14,000 of the remaining POWs perished on site from disease and starvation. In 1943 the SS took control of part of the camp in order to hold Jews there who could potentially be exchanged for captured Germans. A forced labor unit of five hundred Jews was transported to Bergen-Belsen for the purpose of constructing the exchange camp, and in the summer of 1943 the first transports of ransom Jews arrived. Over the next three years Bergen-Belsen's population swelled and it became a de-facto concentration camp as more and more Jews were interned there and only a few exchanges were ever carried out.

Personalized "Good Luck" stamp sheet
with labels featuring Sebastián de Romero Radigales
(Israel Post; Source: Raoulwallenberg.net)

In one exchange, orchestrated by Chaim Pazner of the Jewish Agency, 222 Jews were sent from Bergen-Belsen to British Mandatory Palestine in exchange for German Templars. In addition, through the persistent efforts of Sebastián de Romero Radigales, a Spanish diplomat stationed in Athens, 367 Jews with Spanish citizenship were transferred from Bergen-Belsen to Spanish Morocco. A controversial exchange that involved a deal between Rudolf Kastner and Adolf Eichmann led to the transfer of 1,670 Hungarian Jews to Switzerland via Bergen-Belsen. Chaim Pazner has a street named after him in Jerusalem. Sebastián de Romero Radigales had the title of Righteous Among the Nations bestowed upon him by Yad Vashem in 2014. Rudolf Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv in 1957.

"End of the Second World War and
Liberation of the Camps" minisheet
(Israel Post, 1995)

British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. Recalling the sight of thousands of unburied corpses strewn all throughout the camp and of emaciated prisoners so barely clinging to life that they could not understand they had been liberated, Major Dick Williams remarked, "This wasn't a death camp, but a camp of death."¹ Of the 120,000 prisoners Bergen-Belsen accommodated over the course of its operation, between 53,000 and 60,000 -- of which more than half were Jews -- lived to witness the British troops' arrival. However, of those, the condition of 14,000 was so grave that they succumbed within a short time of being liberated. Eleven of the camp's staff, including Commandant Josef Kramer and chief physician Fritz Klein, were executed in December 1945, after a British military tribunal convened in nearby Lüneburg sentenced them to death.

"Anne Frank" stamp (Deutsche Bundespost, 1979)

To today's reader, the name most familiar from the list of Bergen-Belsen's victims is Anne Frank. Ten years old when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Anne Frank turned 13 shortly before her family was forced into hiding in Amsterdam. While in hiding, Anne kept a diary, which a close friend of the family held on to until after the war. In August 1944 police raided the Frank family's hiding place and subsequently deported the father, mother and two daughters to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In November the Frank sisters, Margot and Anne, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they perished from disease in the winter of early 1945. Anne Frank was 15.

"Anne Frank" stamp (Post Nederland, 2020)

Germany's Deutsche Bundespost was the first postal administration to issue a stamp in tribute to Anne Frank. Designed by Elisabeth von Janota-Bzowski and based on a 1941 photo from the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, the stamp was entered into circulation on 17 May 1979. Second to issue a stamp for Anne Frank was the Netherlands on 25 April 1980 designed by Walter Nikkels, followed by Israel on 19 April 1988 with a stamp designed by Ad van Ooijen. Various other countries, including the Netherlands again in 2016, have since issued stamps in tribute to Anne Frank. The Netherlands is the country to most recently have done so, issuing a limited-edition gold stamp on 23 March 2020 based on a 1942 passport photo with the words Lieve Kitty -- "Dear Kitty" -- superimposed on the photo.

"Congress of Jewish Prisoners in Bergen-Belsen /
Report of the first She'erit HaPleita congress in Germany"
Source: Kedem Auction House (2015)

The "Resurrection" stamp's release notes convey the complexity of much of European Jewry's situation after the Holocaust. Those with no place to return to lived as refugees in displaced persons camps, where they faced frequent food shortages, suffered acute emotional distress, and in some cases continued to endure antisemitism from other refugee groups. Through it all, they strove to rebuild their lives physically as individuals and collectively as a community.

After the annihilation of six million Jews, some three million Jews remained in Europe, including concentration camp survivors. [...] However, the liberation of Europe and of the concentration camps from the Nazi regime did not bring about the freedom longed for by Jews seeking to escape from the horror and establish new lives for themselves.
[...]
Despite the harsh conditions and while struggling against occupying authorities, the Jewish survivors created an autonomous authority of sorts and turned the displaced persons camps into centers of widespread social, cultural, educational and political activity.²

By the summer of 1945, 20,000 Jews were living in displaced persons camps in the British-occupied zone of postwar Germany. Bergen-Belsen, with between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews, was both the largest DP camp in the British zone and the camp with the most active Jewish leadership. The British, to whom the Jewish survivors could not but be grateful for rescuing them from certain death, were in a difficult position. With two million refugees and DPs in their territory and a drained economy at home, their top priority was to close the camps and bring back their troops. At the same time, they were still in possession of the Palestine Mandate and still restricting Jewish immigration to the one place in the world where it was most natural for the Jewish survivors to expect to go.

Second Congress of Liberated Jews in the British Zone,
July 1947
(Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Bergen-Belsen's post-liberation timeline attests to the willpower and resourcefulness of the camp's survivors. By day three of the camp's liberation a committee was formed to represent the Jewish survivors, and shortly thereafter the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bergen-Belsen was established, which became the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British Zone. A Jewish school was opened in July, and later an orphanage and a yeshiva. The Central Committee published a newspaper, Unzer Sztyme, and on 25-27 September convened the First Congress of Liberated Jews in the British Zone. At that congress and at its follow-up in 1947 the British government was called on to lift its restriction on Jewish immigration to the territory of the Palestine Mandate. However, in these efforts the Central Committee was unsuccessful; it was not until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that Jewish survivors were free to realize their dream of a new life in their ancestral homeland. The Bergen-Belsen Jewish DP camp was finally closed in September 1950, after the majority of its inhabitants resettled in Israel.

"A Jewish Brigade soldier escorts children
to school in Florence, Italy after the war"
(Source: Yad Vashem Photo Archives 4620/2710)

The scene depicted in the tab below the stamp is from a photo of Jewish schoolchildren who survived the Holocaust being led out of the Great Synagogue in Florence by a Jewish Brigade soldier and several Jewish Agency nurses. Although the release notes for "Resurrection" do not indicate who photographed the scene or when, a nearly identical photo hosted on the website of Israel's National Photo Collection is credited to Zoltan Kluger and dated 16 September 1944:

Jewish refugee children in Florence, Italy
(Zoltan Kluger, 16 September 1944)
Source: Israel National Photo Collection

The German invasion of Italy on 8 September 1943 led to the deportation of 8,000 Jews from the north and center of the country to Auschwitz and other camps. After the war Italy was home to 70,000 Jewish refugees and DPs, scattered around thirty-five DP camps. Instrumental in the recovery efforts of the Holocaust survivors were soldiers in the Jewish Brigade Group, British Army units comprising Jewish volunteers from Palestine who enlisted in the war effort against Nazi Germany. They, along with envoys from other Palestine-based organizations, played leading roles in education and resettlement, and their presence inspired hope that a better future was possible.

Concentration Camps Liberation -- First day cover

Bottom line: 5/5 -- Strong buy. In an age where computer graphics have become the standard method of stamp design, it is refreshing to see a stamp that showcases hand-drawn art. The slight imperfections and asymmetries in the main image add to its character and are a reflection of the modest tools the artist had at his or her disposal at the time. The image is at once dense with detail and rich in symbolism, yet it does not feel cluttered and the surrounding light blue has a calming effect on the viewer. Israel Post issued its first Holocaust-themed stamps in 1962 and has since issued roughly fifteen stamps with that theme. "Resurrection" succeeds in being among the most memorable of these.