Getto Litzmannstadt 1939 - 1945

9 th Gärtner Auction from 18th – 27th February 2009
Lot 10250

The starting of the collection

Getto Litzmannstadt

This significant collection was started when the collector received some postal documents of the Ghetto Litzmannstadt from a Polish friend as a gift.
Inspired by the history the collector started to study the subject. A few years later Mr. Eugen Ihle, a philatelist who lived in the Ghetto at the time and had collected all kinds of important documents from the beginning, offered him his “scientific collection”. As Mr Ihle lived in Lodz, also during the Ghetto, he was interested in all philatelic and historic items from the first hour of the city on (1824). With these 120 items starting in 1824 up to 1945, he had a fundamental and comprehensive basis for his further research and collection.
This collection with more than 1.200 items to the subject Ghetto Litzmannstadt is regarded as the worldwide largest of its kind.

The collection has been shown all around the world in museums under historical and scientifical aspects, but never as a philatelic object. In all the years there has never been a slightest doubt about the genuineness of the items.

Important people to give information, to name a few, where not only Mr. Eugen Ihle, but also Mr Jerzy Tokar (Lodz), the expert on the stamps, Mr. Stanislaw Bulkiewiez, who collected and cataloged the bank notes and coins, Mr. Nachman Zonabend, who, as an eye-witness was imprisoned and forced to stay to the last days of the Ghetto with the labour command.Another important informant was public prosecutor Dr. P. Mnichowski, who managed the post-war trials against members of the German ghetto administration.

The collection offers a wide range of not only historical documents, newspaper articles, geographic documents, announcements, criminal judgements, charcoal drawings but a wide range of postal historic items, started with documents of the postal administration, mail exchange with the ghetto, forms and documents of the change of the city name and german postal service administrations, as well as telegrams, parcel registration cards, money orders, mail suspension directives, Ghetto stamps, essays, proofs and complete sheets, vouchers, bank notes and cash receipts.

The frequent presence of rare material makes this collection outstanding:there are forms of the Ghetto print office, receipts of the time before closing down the Ghetto, the original document of renaming Lodsch to Litzmannstadt on 11th of April 1940 with a cancellation for this special event and signatures of the district president and of the head of the Nazi district.Further documents after closing down the Ghetto (1.5.1940), from the employment of labor, internal documents, postal communications between Ghettos or concentration camps, receipts from the first (17.7.1940 to 16.9.1940) and second ( 5.1.1942 to 8.5.1944) postage embargo, telegrams, package receipt cards and custom certificates , money receipts, life signs, posting receipts, money transfer receipts, records with large checking numbers, records with not accepted cancellations and combinations (end of 1941 to beginning of 1942), cancellations with additionals.

Stamps
Sample I (absolute unique), sample II (very rare), sample II – new discoveries (unique copy),
Sample III – rarities, sample III – small sheet (unique copy), sample III – proof – rarities, issue IVA (unique), issue IVB – single values, blocks of four, and small sheets (higher quality), values IV – in different perforations (rarities), Mark-receipts (very rare), single pieces of Mark-receipts (rare), Mark-receipts on postcards (absolutely rare), banderols for money destruction (rarely with contents), Ghetto money-receipts in different variations as there are proofs, pilot series, different registration types, without registration number, etc. (very rare), coins in silver, copper and aluminium as well as leadcoinage in different types.
The listing of bank notes and coins by Mr. Bulkiewiez is capacious and unique.
Talons for different arrangements like lunch, baths and others (rare).
In addition to the collection there is a farewell-gift from the kitchen employees (1942) with a wooden cover and a silver plate (30 pages handwritings and drawings).

--

Ghettopost: The Ghetto LODZ-LITZMANNSTADT 1940-1945 was one of the largest Jewish Ghettos during The Third Reich. It was used, like the Ghettos in Warschau and Krakau, as an interim solution for Jewish citizens before they were sent to the extermination camps Kulmhof, Sobibor, Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka.

The collection Volume 1 to 19 (with subnumbers; in total 25 volumes) was established on the experience and knowledge of Eugen Ihle, who eye-witnessed all the events in the Ghetto as a german national.
Further information was given by Mr Jerzy Tokar from Lodz (a collector of the first hour) and by Nachman Zonabend, who was imprisoned in the Ghetto and forced to stay tothe last days with the “Aufräumungskommando Litzmannstadt Ghetto” (ghetto labour command).Another important informant was the Polish public prosecutor Dr. P. Mnichowski, who managed the pot-war trials against members of the German Ghetto administration.
Bank notes and coins came from the collection Bulkiewiez.
In addition another 5 volumes with items and material about several Ghettos in Poland as well as 2 more volumes with items especially about the Warschau Ghetto complete the offer.

List of the essential contents of the single volumes:
Vol. 1: Geography of the Ghetto (maps, photographs and early documents up to formation of the Ghetto)
Vol. 2: Constitution of the Ghetto postal administration
Vol. 3, 3a, 3b: International mail exchange, items before closing down the Ghetto (May, 1st 1940), during the mail suspension, and within the Ghetto. The original document of renaming Lodsch to Litzmannstadt on April 11th 1940 with a special cancellation and signatures of the district president (Uebelhoer) and of the head of the Nazi district (Greiser)
Vol. 4: Documents of/about the Ghetto life (economy and administration)
Vol. 5: Telegrams and pakages (family affairs, transport and custom receipts)
Vol. 6 and 7: Postal money orders, payments, money transfer receipts
Vol. 8, 8a – d: Self-censorship and name stamps in all variations (encyclopaedic order) instructiorial markings
Vol. 9: Mail suspension directives
Vol. 10: Mail suspension directives in connection with the Ghetto liquidation
Vol. 11: Stamps and postal stationery of the Jewish mail, specified in samples and types with essays, proofs and complete sheets, various expertised (BPP-photo-certificates), many absolutely rare or unique
Vol. 12: Vouchers (Mark-receipts), to keep up money transactions
Vol. 13, 14, 15: Bank notes and coins (Ghetto money)
Vol. 16, 17, 18: Mail of the RAB-Lager (Reichs-Autobahn-Bau; Reichs-highway construction)
Vol. 19: Talons and vouchers for food, pharmacy, clothing, coals, colonial products, etc.
The 5 volumes “Ghettos in Poland” contain documents about various Ghettos in Polandwhich are documented by at least one item (letters, postcards, documents). The different volumes show as follows:
Volume 1: Belchatow, Bendsburg/Bedzin, Brzesko, Brzeziny/Löwenstadt, Busko-Zdroj, Chelm Lubelski, Chmielnik, Ciechanowiec, Cmielow.
Volume 2: Dabrowa Gornicza, Denkow/Ostrowiec Kielecki, Drohobycz, Dzialoszyce, Glowno, Hrubieszow, Izbica, Jedrzejow, Jordanow, Kalisch/Kalisz, Kamiensk, Kielce, Kock, Konskie, Koprzywnica, Kosow-Lacki.
Volume 3: Krakau, Krasnik, Landstett, Legionowo, Leczna, Litzmannstadt (hier nur exemplarisch - siehe Hauptsammlung), Lowicz, Lublin, Jedrzejow, Macienowice, Miedzyrzec Podlaski, Mielec, Modliborzyce.Volume 4: Olkusz, Opatow, Opoczno, Opole Lubelskie, Ostrowiec, Ostrowiec Kielecki, Pabianice, Parysow, Piaski, Piotrkow, Plaszow, Pruzana, Przedborz, Pustkow, Rabka, Radom, Radomsko, Rejnowiec Lubelski, Rozprza, Rzesow, Sambor, Sanok.
Volume 5: Siedlce, Siedliszcze, Sobolew, Sosnowice, Stanislau, Stopnica, Tarnow, Tomaszow Mazowiekie, Tschenstochau, Tuchow, Wadowitz, Warta, Wodzislaw, Zabianka, Zaklikow, Zamosc, Zelechow, Zelow.
Various documents are contained: writing of the council of elders from Chmielnik to the district school inspector concerning confiscation of the libraries (1942), Red-Cross-cover from Tel Aviv to the Ghetto Dabrowa (family-greetings, 1942), Registration-file fort he citizens of Kielce (27.5.39 – before the occupation through the outbreak of war), penalty order to a Jewish man for not wearing the Yellow Star (24.4.1940), police regulationabout residencial zones for Jewish citizens in Lowicz as well as 2 Forms classified as secretly, about the deprivation of German citizenship (each with cancellation KZ Waffen SS Lublin). The collection also containes a number of letters concerning the Schwarzenbaum-connection (sorted under the particular Ghettos).

The “Warschau Ghetto” is documented in 2 volumes with covers, cards, postal stationery, package receipts and other items.
Volume 1 containes the correspondence leaving the Ghetto (also European destinations)
Volume 2 containes the correspondence into the Ghetto.
Both volumes are slanted towards postal history and give a good impression about the postal conditions at the time

The collection has been shown in several museums around the world.Not only for the importance and uniqueness of its documents is this collection the largest of its kind about “The Ghetto Litzmannstadt” (32 volumes in 4 cartons)

>>>>> http://www.japhila.cz/hof/0476/index0476a.htm

Milan Cernik