The Ghetto Mail Man: Warsaw Ghetto

The letter carrier’s lot is an unhappy one. He rises at five in the morning and works till nine, ten in the evening and in spite of that, he receives no weekly wage, but gets paid by the piece—six groszy per letter, and after subtracting all taxes and contributions to “social insurance” from which he, as a Jew, cannot benefit according to the canons of the occupation authorities, but for which he enjoys the privilege of paying, there hardly remains five groszy net. The delivery of one hundred, even one hundred and fifty letters a day nets him a ridiculous sum, when a loaf of black bread costs between 22 and 24 groszy ….

This is the life of a ghetto postman in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. This was penned by Perez Opacynziki, a talented Yiddish writer, in an essay “The Ghetto Post Man” for the Oneg Shabbat archives. He was a post man by need and a writer by profession. In this article, I use excerpts from his observations and combine them with what we know about the postal system of the ghetto. This provides unique insight into the ghetto postal system with commentary from within.

The Oneg Shabbat group was composed of writers, teachers, and observers who gathered every Friday night (thus the name Oneg Shabbat “Sabbath pleasure”) under the tutelage of historian Emmanuel Ringelbum, to record life and death in the ghetto for posterity. These observations, diaries, notes, and stories were gathered and placed in four milk cans and buried before the ghetto was destroyed. Three of the four milk cans were recovered after the war and now give us insight into life in the Warsaw ghetto.

Opacynziki was one of the first selected by Ringelbum for “both his politics and his prewar accounts of Polish-Jewish poverty and spiritual decline. It was Opacynziki, whom Ringelbum trusted implicitly, to produce what is probably the major corpus of Yiddish reportages in the Warsaw ghetto.”

Poland was the first conquest of the Third Reich. On September 1, 1939 the invasion took place, and within two weeks the country was vanquished. The Nazis created the General Government in the center of Poland, which became a quasi-province of the Reich. The area also became the killing ground of the Reich, where the concentration and death camps were set up.

In order to better control the Jews, the Nazis created Jewish ghettos in each of the cities in the General Government. A section of each city was designated the ghetto area, and all Jews had to move into these areas. Within these ghettos a form of government was set up called the Judenrat, which established city services, including the post office. “Until the ghetto was closed the Jews had access to the main post office, but they had to use only one window and form a line to the left… In December 1940-January 1941 the postal services within the Warsaw ghetto were turned over to the Judenrat.”

On November 28, 1940, Chaim Kaplan observed in his diary, “The police are leaving, and the Jewish police will inherit their place. The same applies to the post office; Jews working for the Judenrat will head it, and all the jobs there will be filled by Jews.”

***

A Jewish postman? Eh, you should be well! Tell me, please, whom do you want? For whom are you looking? We know everyone; you won’t have to search long. Do you see, people, luck is with us—we already have a Jewish postman, just like in Palestine.

***

Post Office and Mailbox Locations

Starting on January 19, 1941, the ghetto post office moved to 19 Zamenhofa Street (see Fig. 1, letter A), the postal cancellation assigned to this post office was C1, where there was a pre-existing post office. Two other sites were set up as postal substations. One at 20 Ciepla Street (Fig. 1, letter C) was set up as a parcel receiving and sorting station, and 32 Krochmalna Street (Fig. 1, letter C) was the letter-sorting and delivery office.

Eight yellow mail boxes placed throughout the ghetto were for the population of almost 400,000. Obviously, the outcry from the population was that there were not enough. These yellow postal boxes were placed by or near buildings used by the Judenrat. They were located

…in the gateway of the Judenrat at 26 Grzybowska [Fig. 1, number 1], on the corner of Leszno and Karmelicka Streets [Fig. 1, number 2], on the corner of Panska and Marianska Streets [Fig. 1, number 3], in the gateway of the post office at 19 Zamenhofa Street [Fig. 1, number 4], in the gateway of 5 Tlomackie Street [Fig. 1, number 5], at 10 Muranowska Street near Muranowski Square [Fig. 1, number 6], on the corner of Franciszkanska and Bonifraterska Street [Fig. 1, number 7], and on the corner of Gesia and Smocza Streets [Fig. 1, number 8].

The mail boxes were emptied between 4 and 6 PM. The letters were censored overnight and handed to the Deutsche Post Osten, the governmental post office, in the morning.

Postal Workers

The ghetto post office was run by a committee of the Judenrat and had 94 employees, of which 64 were letter carriers. The agreement regarding mail service for the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto was concluded between Jewish Council Chairman Adam Czerniakow and the director of the post office. Office C1 in the Warsaw ghetto was opened on January 15, 1941. Among other things, it stated that the council would handle all outgoing and incoming mail, using persons authorized for this work (Postempfangbeauftragte); that the German post office would arrange a special exchange office (Postaustauschstelle); and that the Jewish Council would pay for the maintenance of this office while making a cash accounting on a daily basis.

The battalion people are a special chapter in the life of the Jewish post office. They were Polish speaking, the heirs to the shmendriks. It was they who brought with them the military order of the German work gangs, where they formerly were section leaders…. The battalion people absolutely refused to utter a single work in Yiddish.

They had their set of morals. Being approximately sixty of a total number of one hundred letters carriers, the power resided in their hands. They posted their men at the door where packages of mail were issued. The distributor of the packages, too, was of their men, and naturally favored the battalion men by giving them packages for the richest streets, houses with easy stairs to climb, clean apartments and good tips, while the others received packages for distribution in the poorest streets and alleys with houses having stairs in poor repair, dark cellars, damp attics impregnated with typhus germs.

Payment of Postal Carriers

The postal carriers in the ghetto were paid for each piece of mail they delivered:

Who… could have thought that the Jewish post office was for the Germans a “storehouse for mail,” that the real post office was located on Napoleon Street, outside the limits of the ghetto, and that the community did not receive from the Germans a groszy in support of the Jewish post office… The Judenrat had to cover all the expenses connected with the operation of the postal services in the ghetto. Therefore there were extra charges or surtax on all postal services (sending and delivering of letters, packages, and telegrams) which were intended to make postal activities in the ghetto possible.

Postal employees were employed on a piece-rate system, being paid, according to some sources 6 groszy a letter… others indicate the postal workers received 10 percent of the surcharge… not only the number of delivered letters was important but also the district where they had their route—at more prosperous areas they could count on tips.

All monies collected by the ghetto post office went to the Deutsche Post Osten. This was the surtax that Opacynziki complained about above in the opening paragraph.

This table shows the surcharge on each of the items delivered.

Letters and postcards, ordinary, inland	20 gr
Letters and postcards, ordinary, foreign	30 gr
Registered mail	30 gr
Special Delivery	50 gr
Ordinary inland packets	20 gr
Ordinary foreign packets	30 gr
Repacking of damaged packets	20 gr
Printed matter	10 gr

A rectangular handstamp (Fig. 2) including the date and R.Z. w.W. R.Z.w.W. stands for Rada Żydowska w Warszawie (Warsaw Jewish Council) and S.P.D.Z. on the second line stands for Skladnica Pocztowa Dzielnicy Zydowskiej (Postal Repository of the Jewish Quarter). A second cache (Fig. 3) is applied to the cover or card that indicates the amount that is expected at delivery (surtax).

 

The letter carrier had to collect the surtax then hope that he would get a tip. Opacynziki commented on the different types of people in the ghetto and their wiliness to give a tip:

The attitude toward the Jewish letter carrier could be classified according to population groups. He was best received by the simple folk, worst by the intellectuals and the Hasidim. The simple folk not only paid the service charge but also gave the letter carrier a few groszy as a tip. They did it naturally, without compulsion, in the understanding that each of us wants to live…

On the other hand, the demeanor of the bourgeois intellectuals, particularly the doctors, vis-à-vis the letter carrier bordered on hostility…the letter carrier racked in importance as a government employee. They never gave a tip…

The Hasidim, though, were mainly tradespeople, and if they were not merchants, as such, they had learned the laws of buying and selling, and none of them would offer one groszy above the established price. If the Hasid did differ from the intellectual it was by the demand that the letter carrier speak Yiddish, but even this, it seems, was more politics than genuine impulse, more appearance than Yiddishness…

Packages in the Warsaw Ghetto

Packages are a whole story in themselves; they were the lifeline toward ghetto survival. It can be assumed, however that the majority of the packages that reached the ghetto were not tailored to aid people in severe distress. Packages containing up to four and half pounds of food arrived through the mails from locations both within the General Government and abroad. The small packages sent from location within the occupied usually contained flour, bread, cooking fats, grains, etc., while packages that came from abroad, particularly from neutral countries, were filled with coffee, chocolate, rice, sardines, condensed milk, etc. The latter were item of great value in the ghetto and were usually bartered for quantities of more basic foodstuffs.

The packages from Russia arrived not only well wrapped in linen and sealed with seven seals to prevent pilferage, but they contained food which was here highly prized. The relatives from Russia sent rice, tea coffee, chocolate and, at the beginning, even whiskey and tobacco, too. They sent smoked meats, salami, bacon, cheese and butter and even caviar. When a Warsaw Jew received such a package, he could sell a part of it, as, for example, tea, coffee, tobacco, and whisky, for good money which was enough to live on for several weeks… At the homes where the packages arrived regularly they experienced no want. 

Censorship

The question of postal censorship in the ghetto is interesting and not completely clear. The censor office was at 27 Grzybowska Street; as one might expect, its task was to control correspondence between the ghetto and the external world so that it did not violate the restrictions imposed by the Germans.

Cards and letters went through 27 Grzybowska Street and were read by the censors. If they passed a small boxed censor marking was applied to the cover. “As a rule Jews were allowed to send letters within the General Government, to states under the control and political influence of the Reich, and to neutral countries. Each was censored with a small rectangular marking stating the words ‘Judenrat Warsaw.‘

There were five different two line censor markings applied to the upper left of the upper of the card, to the left of the mid line above the sender’s address. Figs. 4 and 5 show examples, and the table below categorizes each of these censor markings.

 

Type	Letter Case	Approx. Size	Color
1	all capitals	12 × 6 mm	red or black
2	all capitals	9 × 8 mm	red
3	initial capitals	11 × 6 mm	red
4	initial capitals	14 × 6 mm	black or purple
5	initial capitals	15 × 9 mm	red or purple

Source: Simon, Sam. 1973. Handbook of the Mail in the Concentration-Camps, 1933–1945, and Related Material: A Postal History. New York: Port Printed Products Corp., p. 114.

Mail in the Last Days of the Ghetto

Mail continued to be sent out of the ghetto until about July 23, 1942. Every single piece was censored. In my personal observations of pieces of mail coming out of the Warsaw ghetto, their destinations were all over the world.

Records kept and reported in the Gazeat Zydowska (Jewish Gazette) indicate that “from July 1 to 22, 1942 there were 99,042 letters and postcards, 1881 registered letters, and 9,292 letters abroad sent… In October after the end of the extermination Aktion, 6060 letters and cards, and 114 registered letters were sent out of the ghetto…”

***

When the letter carrier returns home at night to his wife and children and a cold house, with his meager earnings of the day, he was in a state of irritation from the endless arguments. He was haunted by the scenes of poverty and misery which he witnessed throughout the day. All this depressed his spirit and gave him no peace.

***

Tisha B’av 1942 was when the Germans started the initial deportations to Treblinka. Beginning January of 1943 the deportations increased and the armed resistance started.

The nightmare in Jewish Warsaw becomes thicker, the hopes-become slimmer. There are no more letters from Russia, no more packages from Russia. There are only brick tenements, red, monotonous, cold ghetto-tenements, like disheartening prisons. Who cares about the Jewish post office, who worries about the Jewish letter carriers….

On Passover April 19, 1943 / 12 Nissan, 5703, the Ghetto Fighters challenged the most modern, mechanized Army in the world with no more than a few hand guns and rifles, and of course molotov cocktails.

Illustrations

The following correspondence illustrates the concepts discussed in the previous section.

Figure 6 shows a post card that was sent to Grzybowska Street in the Warsaw ghetto. It has a boxed receiving cancel to mark its arrival in the ghetto and the circular handstamp with the surtax. It was postmarked March 11, 1941, in the Warsaw ghetto post office.

The postal card in Fig. 7, sent from the ghetto with the C1 postal marking, is dated June 21, 1941. It went to Belle Harbor, Long Island, New York. The small rectangular Judenrat Warsaw marking all in capital letters (Fig. 8) was applied at 27 Grzybowska Street, also the German censor marking was applied (Fig. 9).

Fig. 10 shows a postal reply card, which is usually attached to a governmentally issued postal card to be used for a reply from the person receiving the card.  This card  was sent from Buenos-Aires, Argentina. It was canceled with the C1 cancel on October 18, 1941. The JUDENRAT WARSCHAU censor marking (Fig. 11) appears in capital letters, as well as a Nazi censor marking (Fig. 12).

 

 

The card shown in Fig. 13 is very interesting and unusual. An aid organization called RELICO sent packages to the ghetto residents, each with a package receipt card. The card shown was canceled April 4, 1942, at the C2 postal station outside the ghetto. Since no postage was applied to the card, it’s likely that the ghetto let it through without a cancel. In Geneva, a Swiss postage due stamp was applied to the card and it was cancelled. The card was censored with a Judenrat Warsaw handstamp (Fig. 14) and the Nazi censor marking (Fig. 15).

 

 

 

Figure 16 shows a very unusual postal card sent from a work camp (Arbeitslager) in Siedliszcze, canceled July 9, 1942, to a refugee camp (Flüchtingslager) in the ghetto. The cover includes a five-line, signed handstamp from the work camp (Fig. 17) and a receiving box hand stamp entering the ghetto (Fig. 18).

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Engelking, Barbara. The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City. New Haven and London, Yale Press, 2009.

Glatstein, Jacob ed. Anthology of Holocaust Literature. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1962, 5729.

Gordon, Justin. “Ghetto Posts of the Holocaust Era.” Toronto: World Philatelic Congress of Israel Holy Land & Judaica Societies: 20th Anniversary Publication, 1986.

Gutman, Yisrael. The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto: 1939-1943. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

HiIberg, Raul. The Warsaw Dairy of Adam Czerniakow. New York: Scarborough Book, Stein and Day/Publishers, 1982.

Kahn Henry F. “The Third Reich, Concentration Camp and Ghetto Mail System Under the Nazi Regime,” Judaic Historical Philatelic Society: Monograph No. 1-February 1966.

Katsh, Abraham ed, Scroll of Agony, The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan. New York: McMillan and Company, 1965.

“Polish POW and DP Camps,” Philatelic Study Group Bulletin; Vol 2, No 12. September-October 1976.

Seidman, Dr. Hillel. The Warsaw Ghetto Diaries, Southfield, MI: Targum/Feldman Press 1997.

Shapiro, Robert ed. Holocaust Chronicles: Individualizing the Holocaust Through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts. Hoboken, NJ, KTAV Publishing House, Inc. 1999.

Shay, Arnold. “Warsaw Ghetto Mail.” Polish POW and DP Camps Philatelic Study Group Bulletin; Vol 2, No 12. September-October 1976.

Sloan, Jacob ed. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelbum. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.

The Holy Land Philatelist, Vol. 5-7, (Nos. 50/51-81/82) Dec. 1958/Jan 1959-Aug/Sept. 1961.

Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat. New York: Scarborough Book, Stein and Day/Publishers, 1977.