30 September 2008

Illinois: 250 Holocaust documents to go on display

More than 250 World War II postal documents — cards, letters and stamps — have been acquired by an Illinois foundation from a private collector and will soon be on permanent display in a museum in suburban Chicago, according to this AP story on Fox News.

The collection belonged to longtime postal memorabilia collector and activist Ken Lawrence of Pennsylvania, and was called "The Nazi Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe." Former vice president of the American Philatelic Society, he collected the documents for more than 30 years in answer to claims that the Holocaust never occurred

The Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation of Northbrook, Illinois bought the collection and added to it.

The faded papers hint at stark details in the lives of Nazi concentration camp inmates.

Letters secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland, during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 card from a Dachau camp commander outlining strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943 letter from a young man, who spent time in Auschwitz, to his parents.

The collection will be housed at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, when it opens. It includes a handwritten Bible scroll in Hebrew that was used by a German soldier to mail a package. There are also documents sent to a Nazi doctor on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

The exhibit will go to Billings, Montana in December, followed later by Santa Barbara, California.

Read the complete article at the link above.

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