WW II Poland

Postwar Jewish Organizations In Poland

Throughout World War II, the large Jewish external aid organizations such as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS; in New York), HICEM (formed by a merger of three organizations; based in Lisbon during WW II), the Comite pour I ‘Assistance a la Population Juive frappe par la Guerre (RELICO; based in Geneva) and the American Joint Distribution Committee (JOINT) did whatever they could to help the victims of the Nazi oppression, but local Jewish organizations could only function within the closed ghettos themselves. It is always quite amazing to read the chronicles of the ghettos that were written at the time, hidden and recovered after the war. They tell contrasting tales of tremendous communal charitable work, but also of the greed of some richer inmates. However, these wartime stories, documents and covers will be left for another article.

WAR AFTERMATH

In the aftermath of World War II in Poland and the near annihilation of the nation’s substantial Jewish population, the surviving Jewish population began to organize themselves. In many ways, this was not only because of the need to find each other, but also for self-protection as persecutions began anew and many Jews decided to leave Poland. The external organizations continued to function and generate significant aid; however, the major problem was locating the survivors, especially in the smaller locales.

The internal Polish organizations were generally spontaneously formed in locales where there were enough survivors to find each other, but they existed for only of a short duration. In over twenty years of collecting the postal history of Poland, I have never come across an article about these organizations. Hence, this article is designed to record what I know personally of these organizations, as gleaned from return addresses and the occasional printed organizations’ titles

CITY OF WARSAW

The City of Warsaw in 1938 had a Jewish population of 368,000 out of its total population of 1,265,000. Following the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, it has been estimated that 2,000 of its inhabitants survived deportation to concentration and labor camps in western Poland. Another 20,000 survived hidden in Polish areas of the city. Many of these people had escaped the ghetto through the sewers. Many of them fought in the Jewish uprising of 1943 and the general uprising in the summer of 1944.

After the Germans were defeated, thousands of Polish Jews began to congregate in Warsaw, ultimately reaching 15 – 20,000, with most of them not belonging to the prewar community. Most emigrated to Israel with only 2,000 remaining in Warsaw today’.

WARSAW ORGANIZATIONS

Of the national organization that appears to have been the biggest and best organized is the one in Warsaw, the CENTRALNY KOMITET ZYDOW POLSKICH2 (the Central Committee of Jews in Poland [CKZPJ). In 1945, it was located in Warsaw – Praga at Szeroka 5 (Figure 1). By 1947 it had moved to ul. Sienna 60 and used a pre-printed return address on its envelopes (Figure 2).

Figure 1

Letter from the CKZP on the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva mailed from the Warsaw 16 post office.

Figure 2

1947 letter from the CKZP located at ul. Sienna 60. It was sent registered, but is underpaid.

Another branch of the Central Committee of Polish Jews was based in Lcdz and used a rubber stamp with purple ink to apply its return address to correspondence. It name was the CENTR. ZYD. COMISJA HYSTORYCZNA, or Central Jewish Historical Commission, which sent a letter in 1947 to the Society of Polish Jews in Sweden (Figure 3). Many Polish Jews were able to escape to Sweden and spent the war there. Being the closest strictly neutral country to Poland, it was a haven for organizations and operations. The Association of Polish Jews in Sweden must have been a very active organization as I have a second cover addressed to them from an unidentified sender.

One of my most prized possessions in my WW II collection is a handmade reply postcard sent to an emigre Rabbi in Sweden early in the war. The sender was a tailor who stitched together two postal cards, since the General Government did not print reply cards, placed stamps on them both and sent his message. The rabbi must have replied using a less obvious method or the entire object would not be in my possession

Figure 3

In 1947 the Central Jewish Historical Commission of the CKZP sent a letter tot he Association of Polish Jews in Sweden.

Figure 4

ThLetter from the Board of the Democratic Zionist Students Union (based in Lodz) to the World Union of Jewish Students in London, sent registered air in December of 1946.

STUDENT’S ORGANIZATION

One other national organization that I have recorded is a student organization, AKADEMICKI ZWIACEK SYJONISTOW DEMOKRATOW (the Democratic Zionist Students Union; based in Lodz). They sent a registered letter to the World Union of Jewish Students in London in December of 1946 (Figure 4). Doing on-line searches for this organization, I have not been able to find any information. Presumably, as it was a Zionist organization, the students wanted to emigrate to Palestine and would have done so ultimately. The imposition of the Communes government in Poland served as an impediment to emigration beginning in 1947-48 and persisted for several decades.

LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS

The local organizations are really quite difficult to find, as in most cases there is no printed or stamped return address. For these covers, it is necessary to decipher sometimes-difficult handwriting. Judging from its printed postcard, the local organization in Lodz must have been a good size and well organized. The evidence committee, WydzialIlwidencji, of the WOJEWODZKI KOMITET ZYDOWSKI W LODZ (Provincial Jewish Committee of Lodz) sent a card to New York in June of 1946 (Figure 5). This is the only communication on printed stationery that I have seen from a local committee.

Figure 5

Card of WOJEWODZKI KOMITET AYDOWSKI W LODZ (Provincial Jewish Committee of Lodz) sent to New York in June of 1946.

Figure 6

The ID of one of the 900 survivors of the ghetto who was able to emigrate and become an Israeli citizen.

When the ghetto was formed in 1940 it had over 160,000 inhabitants and when the war ended there were 900 survivors. Despite these small initial numbers, it became the largest post-war Jewish center as somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 Jews who had survived the Nazi camps, or in Russia, returned to Lodz. In the fall of 1945, the city had 20,000 registered Jews and 40,000 temporary residents.’ (The total number of Polish Jews surviving WW II and living temporarily in postwar Poland is believed to have been between 180,000 and 240,000). Figure 6 shows the ID of one of the 900 survivors of the ghetto who was able to emigrate and become an Israeli citizen.

LOCAL COMMITTEES

The next class is local committees with a handstamp. I have only seen one cover. It has a boxed return address in two lines on the back of a letter from Powiatowy Komitet Zydowski w KAMIENIOGORZE (the Jewish Committee ofKamienna G6ra) to New York (Figure 7).

Kamienna Gora is the name given to Landeshut in Lower Silesia when it was incorporated into post-war Poland in the voivodeship of Wrodaw.3 The Jewish population of Landes hut was only 14 in 1939, due to emigration, and it is presumed that they were eliminated’.

Figure 7

Letter from the Jewish Committee of Kamienna Gora in 1948.

HAND-WRITTEN RETURN ADDRESSES

A similar case to the last one is a registered envelope with a handwritten return address from the small town of Dzierzoniov sent to New York in 1948. It is also a former German town, Reichenbach in the same area, which had only 19 Jews in 1939. All have perished.’ In this case it is a letter with Dzerzoniow Polny Slysk Komitet Zydofski (Figure 8).

I have not been able to find-any information on where the post-war Jewish population came from. It is known that about 10,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Wroclaw (Breslau) immediately after the war, as did many Poles from the Lwow area of Galicia (now Ukraine). They probably were part of the migration from the western Ukraine when it was taken over by the Soviets. It is believed that as many as 50,000 to 170,000 Polish Jews were repatriated from the Soviet Union.

Figure 8

Letter the Jewish Committee of Dzierzonlow to New York.

Figure 9

Post card from the Jewish Committee of Szczecain to New York.

Finally, Szczeczin (Stettin), in the north, is a large German city that became Polish after the Potsdam Conference. In this case, a card sent from a Jewish organization to New York with the name of the organization in manuscript. It obviously is the writing of an old lady who is trying to find her sister. She sent the card in June of 1946. The’ card has a return address of Polska. M. Szczecin (sic), Niebussowo Komitet Zydowski, which is the Jewish Committee of Szczeczin, but the intermediate word does not translate, perhaps because I cannot read her writing very well. However, it appears to be related to the Polish word for German (Figure 9).

BY AIR MAIL

I have no covers from a Jewish Committee in Wroclaw, but have come across a letter addressed to them. This beautiful item was sent registered airmail (75 mils) from Ramat Gan in Israel on 23 February 1946. The trip for the cover was remarkably rapid as it was back stamped in Tel Aviv on 25 February and in Wroclaw on 14 March 1946. On the way it received a second type Polish censor mark. The envelope is addressed to the Jewish Committee at an address of Wallstrasse 9 in Wroclaw (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Registered airmail envelope sent from Ramat Gan in Palestine to the Jewish Committee in Wroclaw (Breslau) in 1946.

Closing Comment

These are the sum total Jf what I have been able to find after 20 years of looking at the return addresses of covers in dealer’s stocks all over the United States and England. There must be more covers out there. Hopefully, this article will encourage the readership to check the return addresses of covers in their collections from 1945 to 1948. I give this short range as emigration to Israel became possible starting in May of 1948 since appropriate IDs became easily available after that date. Presumably, the Jewish population in Poland became so low that the organizations were no longer needed, although new ones have been springing up in recent years.

POSTSCRIPT

Remarkably, additional information on Aid Organizations related to Polish Jewry can be found in the strangest places. In my collection of the British Mandate period in Jerusalem is a cover, which seems relatively uninteresting to begin with! It is a reused envelope with a wartime economy label over it from the Official Press Bureau of the Government of Palestine. It was sent from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv on 31 October 1945 (Figure 11).

The Press Bureau hand stamp is not all that common, but on the back is an extremely rear “hands stamp” (Figure 12). Because of the nature of this rubber handstamp, it seems unlikely that it was placed by the Government, but probably was applied when the envelope was first used – from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on the 12th of October. A dealer who could read Hebrew spotted this one. When translated into English it reads:

HELP for

The survivors of Stanisiawow (West Ukraine)

in the diaspora

Organized by the people coming from Stanislawow

and its environs in Eretz Yisrael

By the Organization of Polish Immigrants in Eretz Yisrael

Tel Aviv, 15 Lilienblum Str., 3rd floor

Telephone 4250

Figure 11

Reused envelope from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, October 1945.

Figure 12

Slogan cachet on the reverse – Help for the survivors of Stanislawow.

References

1. Shmuel Spector, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, Before and During the Holocaust, Yad Vashem and New York University Press, 2001.

2. Wikipaedia entry – Centralny Komitet Zydow Polskich (CKZP) Central Committee of Polish Jews – Political representative of Jews in Poland instituted 12 November 1944, as a successor to the Tymcaszowego Centralnego Komitetu Zydow Polskich,Temporary Central Committee of Polish Jews, instituted a month earlier, whose purpose was to represent them to National Authorities and to organize assistance and care for Jews that had survived the Holocaust. Existed to 1950 when along with the Zydowskie Towarzystwo Kultury (Jewish Cultural Society) it became the TSKZ. Its composition was set in June 1946, according to a compromise between recognized Jewish organizations. Six places were held by the Jewish Communists coming from Zydowska Frakcja Polskiej Partii Robotniczej (Jewish Faction of the Polish Labor Party), four by the Bund, four by the Ichud, three by the Poalej Syjon – Lewica (leftist), Poalej Syjon- Prawica (rightist) and one by Haszomer Hacair. Directors from 1944, Emil Sommerstein from Ichud, from 1946, Adolf Berman, from Poalej Syjon – Lewica, from 1949, representative of PZPR along with CKPZ’s Hersz Smolar.

3. G.K.Kay, Postal Place Names in Poland, Edinburgh, 1992.

The Israel Philatelist, February 2009,Professor Paul Phillips