[D9640general] [eFlash_Rotary] Digest Number 1047

[Garry & Anne Krischock]

Runaway Bay Qld


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1. 1917 : Illinois Rotarian confronts racism with Holocaust letters From:
Sunil 


Posted by: "Sunil"
<mailto:sunilkzach at yahoo.co.uk?Subject=%20Re%3A1917%20%3A%20Illinois%20Rotar
ian%20confronts%20racism%20with%20Holocaust%20letters>
sunilkzach at yahoo.co.uk    <http://profiles.yahoo.com/sunilkzach> sunilkzach 


Fri Jul 9, 2010 6:54 pm (PDT) 


A chance encounter at a stamp-collecting event three years ago put Danny
Spungen in possession of one of the world's most extensive
collections of postal memorabilia documenting Nazi atrocities during
World War II. Spungen, an avid stamp collector, was looking to buy an
"Inverted Jenny," a rare U.S. stamp featuring an upside-down
airplane, when a fragment of Hebrew scripture covered with Nazi
insignias caught his eye.
"I thought, what the heck is going on?" recalls Spungen, a
member of the Rotary Club of Lincolnshire (Morning Star), Ill. The
segment of scroll belonged to Ken Lawrence, a philatelist and civil
rights activist who spent 30 years assembling more than 250 letters,
postcards, postal documents, and other materials to counter those who
claim the Holocaust never happened.

Lawrence had planned to sell his award-winning collection to a museum,
but Spungen convinced him to let his family's charitable foundation
purchase it instead. "It's changed my life," says Spungen,
who travels with the items, visiting schools, universities, Rotary
clubs, and other community groups. He also volunteers as a docent at the
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.

Spungen often invites Holocaust survivors to speak at his presentations,
and instead of displaying the collection in glass cases, he sets the
materials, protected by plastic sleeves, on tables so people can hold
them.

The Spungen Holocaust Postal Collection includes a letter from a man in
Prague to his father in the Schwarzheide concentration camp, lamenting
the difficulty of finding warm clothes to send. The stamp was removed by
Nazi authorities to search for hidden messages and the letter doused in
chemicals to check for invisible ink. Another item, a swastika-marked
envelope addressed to a Herr Dachwitz, is displayed with its contents: a
summons to an interrogation. A postcard from a guard at Dachau to his
family was sent in May 1933, shortly after the Nazi government set up
the concentration camp; it bears a view of the Würm River canal
flowing past the compound.

The fragment of Hebrew scripture, which recounts the story of David and
Goliath, is folded and covered with stamps and postmarks. An annotation
explains that it was plundered from a Jewish synagogue and later used by
a Wehrmacht corporal as wrapping paper to send a parcel home to Vienna
in 1942.

Adding to the collection, Spungen has acquired samples of money used in
concentration camps and ghettos. He also has obtained counterfeit
British pound notes, which bear witness to Operation Bernhard, a Nazi
scheme to force Jewish inmates at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
to print fake currency. (It was dramatized in the Oscar-winning 2007
movie The Counterfeiters.)

Spungen, who has hosted several students through Rotary Youth Exchange,
says his conversations with young people have reminded him how important
it is to teach kids about the Holocaust, and about tolerance.
"Racism is not dead," he observes.

Of his collection, Spungen says: "I really believe that each piece
is a witness. It's great to put all these witnesses together in one
room to tell a whole story."

See the collection  <http://www.spungenfoundation.org/collection>
http://www.spungenfoundation.org/collection .

Source : Arnold R. Grahl, The Rotarian - July, 2010 / Courtesy :
eFlash_Rotary

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