Archive for category: Editor

Over several recent blogs I have discussed various categories of postal history and philately comprising the scope of SIP interest. These are listed on our website home page by clicking on “Our Fields”  and then clicking on the individual field you are interested in, following which a screen highlights the nature of that specific area. Not that the 16 listings aren’t adequate to satisfy a gamut of interests, however, today I plan to discuss yet  another source of investigation- international mail to and from the Holyland and its postal history implications.

Postal communications to and from the Levant open up an intriguing number of fascinating postal history vignettes that broaden the philatelic and historical experience immensely. Here are just two such covers that lend themselves to raising the curtain on great stories:

Figure 1  is a WW II communication  addressed to a Mr. Benno Gross in Haifa, Palestine during the time of the British Mandate, sent through the US Army Postal Service from APO 742, the legal division of the US military government in Germany. The mailing is from the Tracing Office of the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) and entered the mail stream in New York City. By doing a Google search and then expanding the story through Ancestry. com and several other easily accessible search engines, a marvelous story develops on the history of the AJDC and its 100 year history as a humanitarian organization serving millions of both Jews and non-Jews in 85 countries since WW I and into the present era. Figure 2 gives you a taste of the nature of work by the AJDC in refugee rescue worldwide. To appreciate the full story read my article when it is published in the SIP journal, The Israel Philatelist, in the near future.

Figure 3 is an envelope posted in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1938 to a Presbyterian reverend in New Jersey using an envelope with a return address on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The address turns out to be the exquisite French gothic, Presbyterian Building (Fig. 4), with a remarkable history of sustainability through multiple reincarnations. The story of the recipient of this letter, Reverend Leath adds to the flavor of this postal history study, and will see the light of day in a future issue of The Israel Philatelist.

Both these envelopes came to me without their original letters; yet, the envelopes themselves- the “covers” as postal historians call them- yield amazing stories available to novice and experts alike through the use of the internet. An added benefit is that many of these covers are readily available at nominal cost through philatelic auctions, dealers and shows. The use of internet search engines are either free, or available with affordable subscriptions. Additionally, the original letters are not infrequently still contained within the cover, adding yet another great discovery.

Well then, international mailings- even more to add to our philatelic experience in the Holyland.

Jesse Spector

In my previous blog I addressed the general approach the postal historian takes to researching a cover, including a number of web sites available at either no charge or a nominal fee. I would now like to hone in on a cover to demonstrate how this research is accomplished and the amazing results that ensue.

Our cover is a special delivery letter to a Mrs. Edith Straus in care of what appears to be the word “Chromos” at Aeolian Hall in New York City. The letter is postmarked February 12, 1918 during WW I. The reverse of the cover includes a purple censor marking from the US Dept. of Justice on Ellis Island. The letter content of this communication is not present, thus all we have to go on is the cover information.

On searching Ancestry I located an Edith Straus in the 1920 Federal Census, married to an Isaac Straus and having four young children. Going through immigration records on Ancestry I found Isaac Straus, born in 1882, having arrived on the SS Amsterdam in 1914. Then I located Isaac in the 1917-1918 Directory in the City of New York, with an address matching that on our cover on 42nd St. Aeolian Hall, Wikipedia informs us, is the name of the building at this location where concerts were held on the 3rd floor.

Google then located Isaac Straus in an article on February 23, 1918 in a magazine devoted to the print business, informing that he was president of Alpha Omega Publishing Co., and had been taken into custody by US Naval Intelligence and was under investigation at the alien camp on Ellis Island. He was alleged to have been acquiring tuluol, the chief  ingredient in the production of the explosive TNT for export to Germany. I then easily located his biography in several Jewish-American publications detailing his birth in Germany, marriage to Edith in the first decade of the 20th century,  and arrival in the US in 1914 at which time he entered the newspaper publishing business, establishing the American Jewish Chronicle advocating close ties with the Russian-Jewish community in the US and Germany. At the same time he established the Chromos Chemical Company with two large plants in Brooklyn.

Dr. Straus, for he held a medical degree from Germany, became one of the wealthiest and most prominent members of the German-Jewish community in New York, as would become evident from articles in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and The New York Tribune as well as in papers throughout the US after his incarceration on Ellis Island charged with sedition. The web site, Newspapers.com- with access to hundreds of newspapers over the past 150 years- vividly detailed his having consumed almost $800,000 of German Government monies during the war years to spread German propaganda in the US and to acquire toluol for Germany; as well as having obtained a military contract to construct gas masks for American soldiers, which he planned to sabotage with a defective chemical that would not protect against inhalation of poisonous gases by allied troops.

Newspaper articles inform that Isaac Straus was kept in detention for the duration of the war at the internment prison of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia after a harrowing transfer from Ellis Island. Crowds at the train station during his transport were bent on lynching him. He was released from detention in early 1919 , remained in the US as evident by the 1920 Federal Census, but then returned with his family to Germany sometime in the first half of the 1920’s, since I located him in the 1924 address book of Directors and Supervisory Board Members in Berlin- access obtained by my upgrade from US to world Ancestry account- where he was reported as dealing with radioactive materials.

Interestingly, while still in the US, The Washington Herald reported that he had been indicted in 1920 by a Washington, D.C. grand jury for nefarious financial transactions and tax evasion, yet there is no evidence of his having been subsequently found guilty of the charges. Finally, going through Ancestry, I found him on passenger lists to the US on steamships from Germany to the US on two occasions in the late 1920s.

I suspect that the advent of the Nazis in the 1930s bode poorly for Isaac Straus based on his religion, despite the service he rendered his native country during WWI. Well then, a cover with a fantastic history indeed. An example of how one can research a cover with the world at your fingertips. Have I wetted your appetite?

When is a collection complete? It could be as soon as all catalogue number items have been found or when the collector says it is complete. This became an interesting question for me in regard to my New Jersey 1937 1st Flight exhibit. This is a cachet cover collection/exhibit I started when I lived in New Jersey and within the last several years has become my exhibit project.

I have put together a two frame exhibit which I have shown several times and for which I have received consistent Silver awards. I like to think it is a work in progress as I aim to raise it to the Gold level.

One of the comments I make in the judges synopsis and on the title page is that it is a complete presentation of all the cachets and covers prepared for the one day flight around New Jersey. While this was true when the exhibit was prepared it is no longer true.

Enter e-bay. I check the site daily for covers related to the flight. I do see covers related to the flight, but they are covers I already have. I had just about given up hope of finding any new covers when all of a sudden a series of covers have appeared on e-Bay. Of course, I chase after them and for the most part have been successful. What I find amazing is that there is competition for the covers. For a long time I felt I was the only collector of these covers, but I am no longer alone.

However I can still continue my assertion that I have a complete collection – at least as of today.

PS I am always in need of articles. If you have sent an article and I have not published it, send me an e-mail to remind me: sipeditor@gmail.com.