MARCH 2016 NO:- 124 EDITOR: garygoodman@talktalk.net Website for previous issues Index GEMS FROM MY COLLECTION BY SEYMOUR NUSSENBAUM Ludwik Zamenhof and Esperanto Ludwik Zamenhof - 1859-1917Bialystok, Poland was an oculist by profession. He believed that an international language would increase understanding among the nations of the world and thus further peace. He invented such a language based on Latin roots but with a simplified grammar and called it Esperanto (Hope). He introduced it in 1887 and by 1905 it was popular enough to hold the first international Esperanto congress. It was very popular between the two World Wars and many nations issued stamps and pictorial postmarks honouring Zamenhof and Esperanto. Above is an example of a post card from A. Ploussu, a delegate from Grenoble, France to the 10th International Esperanto Congress to another delegate from Norway. The card is imprinted for use by Esperanto speakers and has a poster seal attached which publicizes the Congress. The message on the back of the card (illustrated below) is in Esperanto. The material available makes Esperanto a collectible topic on its own. 1
Anne Frank: Inspirational Teenager by Jeff Dugdale The story of Anne Frank is too well known to readers of this journal for me to need to retell it in detail here, but what possibly you don t know is how even today what an inspirational figure she is to UK teenagers and in particular girls, who still study her diary or the play or the film of it in school. What captures their imagination, in my experience, are some of Anne Frank s words, written in her diary (whilst aged 13 and 14) in such frightening circumstances, which still resonate across the decades, for example, many to commemorate Famous Men and Women of the past century. Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness Boys will be boys and even that wouldn t matter if only we could prevent girls being girls The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside. Somewhere where they can be quiet alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be. The good news is that you don t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is Despite everything I feel that at heart. people are really good There are three classic stamps commemorating Anne who died in Bergen-Belsen early in March 1945 and some rather trashy purely philatelic ones issued more recently. The former come from West Germany in 1979, The Netherlands (1980) and Israel (1988). These stamps use all (or almost all) of the stock photographs available and reused by other stamp issuing territories, so for example the portrait used on the Dutch stamp appears also in the 1998 Montserrat souvenir sheet, one of The above maxim card picks up the second element in the Israeli issue design and shows tourists presumably waiting their turn to visit the narrow canal side office/apartments in Amsterdam, where the Frank family and some friends lived in secret from July 1942 for two years before being betrayed. The card right uses an etching of the office front and an image of the Anne Frank statue, on Westerkerk plaza near the Anne Frankhuis. 2
In 2008 Guinea issued a number of sheets celebrating cats and dogs owned by celebrities! Needless to say, the Stanley Gibbons catalogue regards these (along with literally hundreds of other stamps issued by this territory between 1982 and the present) as surplus to needs or not available to the public in reasonable quantities at face vale. Yet these philatelic issues are quite expensive to purchase at around 5 a piece if you can bear to. One sheet and two stamps within another reference Anne Frank and her cats. In her diaries Anne writes about three cats: Moortje, her own cat which she was unable to take into hiding and longed to see again, writing in July 1942 "I miss Moortje every moment of the day and no one knows how often I think of her; whenever I think of her I get tears in my eyes. Secondly, there was a cat called Mouschi and owned by Peter, (her boy friend who also lodged in the flat) a spritely and friendly lean black tomcat which became a second office cat when the family left their hiding place. Finally, there was Moffie the official warehouse cat a big fat black and white tomcat sometimes aggressive and nicknamed Boche with reference to the German forces in the city. Since I do not have these sheets but only low resolution scans I cannot say which stamps reference which cat. A 2015 issue also philatelic comes from Guiné-Bissau, commemorating 70 years since the death of Anne Frank, with a minisheet (shown on cover right) showing her in the context of the bombing of the city whilst a single stamp in the related souvenir sheet shows Anne pen in hand. A further relatively new personal issue from The Netherlands shows the Anne Frank School. The 6th Montessori School, which Anne Frank attended before being forced into hiding is now called the Anne Frank School. In 1983 the American artist Harry Visser painted a quotation from Anne Frank s diary on the walls. In the school hall there is a memorial board with the names of the 130 Jewish children who were forced to leave the school during the Second World War. Most of them did not survive the war. 3 The Diary of Anne Frank, commemorated here in a stamp from a Sierra Leone 1991 Films of the Second World War set, was an Oscar winning 1959 motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play inspired by the original diary. Anne like many young girls fantasised about being a film star. This is a photo as I would wish myself to look all the time. Then I would maybe have a chance to come to Hollywood writes Anne in October 1942.
Anne Frank: Covers and Postal Stationery Since there is a limited number of stamps about Anne Frank you may wish to look for covers to expand the theme. As you see here some reference the ground plan of the apartments the Franks lived in whilst others relate her to other famous people HANUKKAH FIRST DAY COVER TO BE ISSUED BY JUDAICA THEMATIC SOCIETY Towards the end of 2016 the U.S.A. will be issuing a newly designed Hanukkah stamp featuring a menorah. The Judaica Thematic Society will issue a Limited Edition issue of 20 numbered Society covers, with a designed cachet on the cover. Members who have a standing order for these Hanukkah covers will have one reserved automatically. However, I do have a few spare vacancies within the 20 for those that wish to join this standing order. Despite now having over 150+ members, the limited edition of these Hanukkah covers has remained at 20. Contact:- garygoodman@talktalk.net FREE TO GIVE AWAY! Glad to give away "Judaica Philatelic Journal" collection. Dec.1974 Winter 1996. Just refund me for mailing cost. Rabbi I. Aizenberg, isidoroa@nyc.rr.com. ********************************************************* I have copies of The Judaica Collector free to give away, (up to 15 different issues) just for the cost of postage. Contact:- Gary:- garygoodman@talktalk.net (Please state how many issues required) *********************************************************************************************************** 4
THE URUGUAYAN SCIENTIFIC IDA HOLZ BY ROBERTO BRZOSTOWSKI The Uruguayan mail issued a series of two stamps, in October 2015, one of them dedicated to the Jewish Uruguayan scientist Ida Holz. Born in 1935 in Montevideo, Uruguay, daughter of Jewish parents born in Poland. The mother had 10 brothers, 9 of whom were exterminated by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Orphan of father at age 3 spent a very difficult childhood. She started working at age 14 and later activated in the Hanoar Hatzioni (Jewish Youth Movement). She recalls that when the Uruguayan soccer team won the final of the 1950 World Cup at Maracana (Rio de Janeiro) to Brazil, she celebrated it by going to a concert by Yehudi Menuhin in Montevideo, where the interpreter it touched the Uruguayan anthem and said Uruguayans, I congratulate you with great emotion of the attendees. She was subsequently elected to travel to Jerusalem to study and lived some years at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosa. She participated as a member of the IDF in the 1956 war in the Sinai. She subsequently returned to Uruguay where she studied at the IPA (Artigas Teachers Institute) and the engineering in the University of the Republic, belonging to the second generation of engineers. She married the painter Anhelo Fernandez, one of the great masters of the Uruguayan plastic that had integrated the group of Torres García. She began her relationship with the University in 1968, joining the staff of its computation Centre, where she earned selection in second place among 300 applicants. In 1974, forced by the dictatorship she went into exile in Mexico. In this country, she worked in the Directorate General for Economic and Social Policy. Later at the National Institute of Statistics, of which the Mexican Government was to provide direction, when she decided to return to her native country. In 1986 she contested by the direction of the Central Service of Informatics of the University of the Republic and obtained the position. From there, Ida Hold has led the development of the Internet in the country. Thanks to her initiative, it was awarded international UY domain for Uruguay. She was one of the driving forces behind the Plan Ceibal, which distributed computers among all students in the country. In 2009 she obtained the award granted by the Internet Address Registry for Latin American and the Caribbean (LACNIC). In 2013 she was the first Latin American woman to enter the Hall of the Fame of the Internet Society, and in 2014 the Moña Honor Award was given by the Council for Primary Education in Uruguay. 5
IDA HOLZ - COMPLETE SHEET OF URUGUAYAN STAMPS TO MAINTAIN THE VARIETY OF ARTICLES EACH MONTH, ARTICLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE URGENTLY WANTED FOR FUTURE NEWSLETTERS PLEASE CAN YOU HELP? Looking for good quality scans of Judaica stamps, FDC, pre-stamped cards and envelopes. I use it for educational purposes - topical presentations. Will be glad to share my collection of Judaica stamps duplicates and scans. Please contact:- Vitaly Charny, USA. email :-vcharny@aol.com *********************************************************************** 6
UN-RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS BY GREGG PHILIPSON (Austin Texas) I would like to bring to the attention of the Judaica Thematic Society members some information that may be of interest as a follow-up to the February 2016 article entitled Righteous Among the Nations. The 2009 stamp from Italy featuring Giovanni Palatucci (aka the Italian Schindler) may in fact be an elaborate scheme and a fraud on the part of his family to cast him as a Righteous Gentile. Palatucci was an Italian police officer who was credited with saving the lives of many Jews during the Holocaust. In 2010 the Italian post office honored Giorgio Perlasca, who was also recognized as a Righteous Gentile. His story is indisputable. However, Palatucci s tale takes a new spin. Was he a Nazi collaborator? Was he an Un-Righteous Gentile The Jewish Press in June of 2013 wrote: After a review of hundreds of documents, the Centro Primo Levi Italian research center wrote the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington that not only is there no evidence that he helped save Jews from the Holocaust, he also helped the Hitler regime identify Jews and sent them to death camps. Until now, Palatucci s image has been built him into a hero who falsified documents and visas of Jews, ostensibly deporting them to death camps but actually sending them to a Catholic bishop, who was his uncle. After the Nazis occupied Italy in 1943, he supposedly helped Jews avoid the clutches of the Nazis until he was exposed. Supporters of Palatucci as a Righteous Gentile have written that he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died before the end of World War II in 1945. The whole story seems to be a myth that was bought by Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem, which honored him posthumously on 1990 as a Righteous Gentile among the Nations. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency in June of 2013 wrote: Research showing that Giovanni Palatucci, the Italian Schindler, was a Nazi collaborator rather than a hero has spurred several Jewish groups to remove honors in his name. Historians at the Centro Primo Levi at the Center for Jewish History in New York confirmed last week that Palatucci, an Italian police chief credited with saving thousands of Jewish lives in the northern Italy town of Fiume, was a Nazi collaborator. In response, the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington removed the case study exhibit on its website and plans to remove any mention of Palatucci s name from its physical exhibition. The Anti-Defamation League in a news release said it revoked the Giovanni Palatucci Courageous Leadership Award that the organization has granted since 2007 to Italian and American law officials with exemplary leadership service. The ADL said it plans to bestow the same honor in a different name. 7
The ADL also voided its 2005 Courage to Care Award given to Palatucci. The Yad Vashem Holocaust center in Jerusalem said it would examine the research and reconsider the Righteous Among the Nations status it awarded to Palatucci in 1990 for his supposed rescue of Jews. The Vatican also is looking into the matter. I checked the Yad Vashem web site and he is still listed among the righteous. There was no mention of him on the Houston Holocaust Museum s web-site, but Perlasca is mentioned there. Information can be found on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum s website about Palatucci but they do not recognize him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. They do mention that Yad Vashem had given him this honor. There is not much else about him on the USHMM site. From a June 2013 Reuters article: In 1990, Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial honored Palatucci as a Righteous Among the Nations, the highest recognition for those who helped Jews during World War Two. But earlier this week The New York Times reported that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington was removing mention of his exploits from an exhibition after officials learned of new evidence that purports to show he was a Nazi collaborator. This once again sheds a light on just how many facts and stories will never be known or corroborated from the ashes of the Holocaust. This is just more proof that we must always focus on, and remember, the victims first and foremost. The one fact that remains constant is that six million of our brothers and sisters met a violent and needless death. These are the people that need to be written about, remembered and memorialized. Sources: The Jewish Press Jewish Telegraphic Press The Times of Israel The New York Times Yad Vashem USHMM Holocaust Museum Houston Reuters etc. etc etc. *********************************************** LETTER TO THE EDITOR (1) FROM ARNOLD LEWIS In last months newsletter, I noticed that in the section on "Righteous Among the Nations" you have included Janusz Korczac. Janusz was fully Jewish and a truly wonderful man but the designation as being one of 'Righteous Among the Nations' is normally reserved for Gentiles not Jews, so he should not be really included in that category. ********************************************* 8
LETTER TO THE EDITOR (2) FROM CHARLES WILDSTEIN With reference to Irving Osterer s article in last months newsletter. A Jew can't be named Righteous among the Nations, so Janus Korczak is not. The same with Sir Nicholas Winton of Jewish descent. Members may be interested in some other Righteous on stamps:- Belgium:- Queen Elisabeth France:- Pastor Boegner. Issued 1981 Germany:- Bishop Hofnerr, issued on 09/11/2006 Poland:- also a Postcard for Zofia Kossuk Italy:- a Perlasca cancellation 05/05/96 Belgium:- for Yvonne Nevejean, issued in 1996, there were three different First Day cancellations. Also a Miniature Sheet, which were not on general sale, but a gift to all the subscribers of the philatelic services. RECENT JUDAICA NEW ISSUES REPORTED BY GARY S. GOODMAN ************************************************************************* Vatican City issued on 1st. February 2016 a set of 2 stamps titled Jubilee Of Mercy. The stamp on the right, from the set of 2 depicts a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew sharing water from a well.. The Jewish person is seen wearing a white yamulkah. France have issued 2 Judaica related issues. The first shown on the left was issued on 25th. January 2016, featuring the work of American Painter Mark Rothko, who is of Russian Jewish descent. Below the design it states Mark Rothko 1903-1970. France issued a second Judaica related stamp (depicted on the right) on 29th February 2016 to commemorate Nobel prize winner Georges Charpak. (1924-2010). He was a Polish born French physicist, from a Polish Jewish family. He was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1992. On 9th.February 2016, Greece issued a stamp, as a Joint-Issue with Israel. They both issued practically an identical stamp to commemorate 25 Years of Diplomatic Relations with Israel-Greece. However, Greece also issued this attractive single sheetlet on the left It amazes me the amount of Diplomatic Relations stamps that Israel has issued in recent years, by teaming-up with fellow countries. This is certainly a way for Israel Post to create more revenue, from the pockets of the stamp collector. But I am curious to know, which country approaches whom first, to arrange these joint issues. (probably Israel!) I am often amazed at the countries that Israel creates a Diplomatic Relations jointissue with. - Yet, I am sure we could all name countries, that have supported Israel financially etc., and with ties to the country, more so than the countries that they have issued stamps with. Crazy!. ( And see more in next months newsletter!) ********************************************************************************** 9