Sunday, October 13, 2019

Poland: Auschwitz Concentration Camp

On 4th October I got a postcard from Poland.

It shows the main gate of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a complex of over 40 concentration, extermination and labour camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It operated between 1940 and the liberation in January 1945 and became an international symbol of humanity's cruelty to its fellow human beings and especially of the Holocaust. During the war 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, of which at least 1.1 million died. Many of those prisoners not killed in the gas chambers died because of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions and medical experiments. Approximately one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp, but the prisoners were not only Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of diverse nationalities and gay men. Already in 1947 the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was established, which is today among the most visited museums in the World. Since 1979 is Auschwitz-Birkenau on the UNESCO World Heritage List.


With a matching stamp:
Never again! (issued 27-01-2018)
Independence Anniversaries of Israel and Poland (issued 05-11-2018)
It is a joint issue with Israel. 


I sent this card to myself during my recent visit to Kraków. As I did not visited Auschwitz myself, I just got the cards I found in the city. Apart from the card above, which I got at the Galicia Jewish Museum, I only found one other card.


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