Sprache:
Polnisch
Erscheinungsjahr:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
Zagłada Żydów; studia i materiały
Angaben zur Quelle:
16 (2020) 523-553
Schlagwort(e):
Rumkowski, Mordecai Hayim
;
Postcards
;
Postal service
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Litzmannstadt-Getto (Łódź, Poland)
Kurzfassung:
Rollowing the announcement of the decision to establish the ghetto in Łódź, in February 1940 de German post office stopped delivering mail to Jewish addresses. The Eldest of the Jews, Mordechaj Chaim Rumkowski, established the Department of Mail within the framework of the administration in order to ensure uninterrupted delivery of correspondence to Jewish addresses. This article discusses the Department's operation in as many dimensions as pos ble and systematizes our knowledge on its topic. It characterizes the rules which regulated the post office's operation, the types of mail and addressees. It also discusses the censorship, that is the rules and criteria which the censors used when withholding ghetto residents co respondence. The reflections on the topic of the censoring practice are based on an analysis on correspondence as a source for Holocaust research. It only signals the topic of treating correspondence in the form of postcards as a source for Holocaust research, as a testimony to the living conditions in the ghetto, to how people communicated with one another, and to how and what about ghetto residents informed others, and predominantly a the victims. An important part of the article is a description of unsent postcards stored at the State Archive in tódź in the fonds called "Przełożony Starszeństwa Zydów w Getcie Łódzkim (Eldest of the Jews in the tódź Ghetto). The collection consists of over 22,000 postcards, vas majority of which are postcards written by people detained in the Łódź ghetto which were not mailed by the post office. They were withheld on the basis of a decision made by the ghetto censorship or due to a temporary suspension of Postsperre (mail stoppage) during the period when Jews were being deported to death centers.
Anmerkung:
With an English abstract.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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