Tag: Poland stamp

Communism is a worldwide movement. For the first time in 1978, the regular Soviet backed world youth festivals was held outside eastern Europe and in  a poor brown country. Things got a little weird. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelists.

This really is a great emblem for the convention that captures what happened very well. As the movement expands outward from where it started in Europe, it will naturally change to cope with the sensibilities of the new arrivals. That doesn’t mean it won’t be fun though and you could never tell where or when Fidel Castro would pop up to sign autographs and hand you a cigar. You wouldn’t have gotten that at the previous youth convention in East Berlin. Interestingly, the official emblem for the event in Cuba has been dumbed down. Below is what they display now.

Todays stamp is issue A898, a 1.5 Zloty stamp issued  by Poland on July 12th, 1978. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

The theme of these conventions was anti imperialist solidarity, peace, and friendship. Thousands would gather, mostly eastern European youth, but a few invited westerners, ( the several hundred Americans had to travel by way of Canada to get around the travel ban) and solemnly debate how best to bring the world the good news of communism. Sorry but the Cubans really weren’t interested in that. Those debates were in Havana considered derisive and against the party atmosphere. What they instead had in mind was listening to the Africans such as Oliver Tambo tell them how great they were for being multiracial followed by the grievance porn of what went on in South Africa. Then the delegates and Cubans would celebrate until late at night with street dancing in a Latin Carnival atmosphere. Neighborhood committees of the Defenders of the Revolution had stands set up where they would hand out rum and cigars and offer Samba demonstrations.

The western young lefties seemed to be the biggest problem. Americans wanted to bring up Soviet dissident hassling. They were rightly I think heckled. Weirdly as the whole thing was supposed to be anti imperialist, the young Italian commies tried to heckle the Ethiopians because they wanted former Italian colony Eritrea given back. I am sure that they would add they wanted Eritrea communist, just not Ethiopian. That record wasn’t going to play in Havana. Also in showing what you could and couldn’t do in Cuba, a group of female young French delegates created a stir when they tried to sunbathe topless on a Cuban beach. Shocked local Cubans called the police but the bathers were let off with a warning.

About 20,000 delegates from 145 countries attended the 10 day event in Havana. The Russians still back these lefty conventions and the most recent one was in Sochi, Russia in 2017. It had a record 30,000 delegates from 185 countries. The slogan has been modified a little bit. For peace, solidarity, and social justice, we struggle against imperialism. Honoring our past, we build the future. I think there is a petty strong hint there that they are just doing these for old times sake. Good for them.

Well my drink is empty. If a Cuban offers me a cigar I will indeed ask for his autograph. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2021.

Here we have an issue of the dramatic damage that faced Poland at the end of the war. In issuing the stamp, the new government was agreeing to put it back together. That must have been reassuring and perhaps a little surprising. The building was the historic Holy Cross Church, and the new government was Poland’s first atheist, communist one. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This really is a well designed stamp issue. The cheap paper, simple shading and rare for the  time imperforate issue only magnify the destruction shown in the before and after shots. The hope comes in that by showing the damage in contrast to the before shot, you are telling people that the land won’t just be cleared. It is true though that the Church lost it’s gardens to make way for a new Finance Ministry.

Todays stamp is issue A119, a 10 Zloty stamp issued by Poland in 1946. This was a 6 stamp issue in various denominations showing before and after war shots of important Polish landmarks. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Too low a value, this stamp is interesting and the highest denomination of the set.

As early as the 1400s this site in southern Warsaw was the home of a Christian church. The building was built in the 1680s by Polish King John III Sobieski. The design was gilded ever more over time with the round turrets and statuary added later. The heart of the late composer Chopin was added to a pillar of the Church as a patriotic gesture for Poles during the Russian occupation of Warsaw.

The area around the church included the University of Warsaw and an upscale Jewish neighborhood. During a crowded Christmas Day Mass in 1881, a false warning of fire was shouted and in the stampede that followed resulted in the deaths of 29 church goers. The scheme was by two young pickpockets who intended to ply their trade during the mayhem they incited. The grieving crowd outside the church then took notice of the race of the pickpockets and decided to make the neighborhood pay for what had been done to them. Two days of riots targeting Jews resulted in two more deaths before the then Russian authorities were able to put down the riots. The riots are now known as the Warsaw pogrom of 1881.

In 1944, the Jewish neighborhood again played havoc on the Church. During the Warsaw uprising, Jewish freedom fighters took over the Church. The Nazi occupation decided against leveling the Church and instead sent in two Goliath tracked mines inside to clear it. The Goliath was a five foot long radio controlled rolling mine that could explode once inside. Naturally there would be easier ways to blow up the Church than this pretty far out contraption but the explosion was sized to kill those inside without permanently damaging the stone structure of the Church. Interesting the Goliath in retrospect was not considered an effective weapon. Though it resembled a miniature tank, it was vulnerable to small arms fire  on it’s journey to it’s target and the wire behind it controlling it could just be cut.

In January 1945, the Church received more damage as Warsaw fell to the Soviet Army during their Vistula-Oder Offensive.  Between 1945 and 1953 the exterior of the Church was rebuilt to a simplified style under the direction  of architect B. Ziborowski. The even more heavily damaged interior took longer. The Main Alter reconstruction went on till 1972.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the post war Communist regime for putting the Church back together. It would have been much easier  to clear the rubble and blame the Nazis. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

The 4 battles of Monte Cassino were disastrous. The abbey was destroyed and the Allies took 3 times the casualties of the Germans but took the abbey ruins and then Rome. Among the Allies were Americans, New Zealanders, French Algerians, British, and free Poles, whose story we will tell. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp remembered the Polish participation in the Battle of Monte Cassino 40 years later. There would not have been a stamp on the 10th anniversary. The first position of the communist government was not to honor the service of the free Polish forces in the later campaigns against the Germans. The free thing was the issue, many of these veterans did not return to Poland ruled by communists. Eventually a good story will be told though and many nations tried to climb that hill over several months and it was the Poles who made it to the top.

Todays stamp is issue A826, a 15 Zloty stamp issued by Poland on May 18th, 1984 on the 40th anniversary of the taking of the ruins of the abbey. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The abbey of Monte Cassino was built in 529AD. In 1943, Italy was occupied by Germany after the Royal government deposed Mussolini and changed sides. The allies had landed in Sicily and were slowly pushing north. The Germans set up a defensive Gustav Line that took advantage of mountains and a river in order to defend the approaches to Rome. The Abby itself was not occupied by the Germans, it was already an historic site, and the Germans had assisted in relocating the abbeys treasures to Vatican City. As a stone edifice at the top of a high mountain it still became a symbol of what stood between the Allies and Rome. First the abbey was heavily bombed by the allies but at that point it only held Italian civilians seeking refuge. That does not mean the Germans were not elaborately emplaced with strong artillery support. The first two assaults were carried out by Americans who suffered horrible losses. At that point the Americans were poorly lead and had little fighting experience. The third assault was by the British and as per their usual, many of their troops were from their Empire, including New Zealanders and Gurkhas. The Free French in the form of their colonial Algerians and Moroccans took part. Some progress was made but the British did not follow through on gains.

By now the Germans were evacuating Rome and withdrawing their army intact to the new Spengler line further north. It fell upon the British and the Poles fighting alongside for the final assault on the Monte Cassino abbey. The mountain had now been fought over for many months that spring and allies looking up at it marveled at the red poppies that sprang fourth every morning with the dew. This inspired the Polish song written the night before the final assault by Alfred Shutz and quoted in translation in the title of this piece. The assault cost the Poles 1000 men but they were the first to reach the summit. Only 20 Germans were captured that were too wounded to move. Rome fell without a fight to Americans a few weeks later.

I mentioned that many of the Polish veterans did not return to Poland under the communists. Alfred Shutz was among them settling and marrying in Munich post war. When he died without heirs, the rights to the song passed to the German state of Bavaria. That was awkward, but the state than gifted the song to the modern Polish government in 2009.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the soldiers on all sides who fought near Monte Cassino. The allied assaults were poorly planned with little follow through with the bombing of the Abbey itself a militarily useless tragedy. The Germans for there part commited their reserves too early that made it harder to hold Rome. The Italians themselves were no shows. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019

In this period stamp issue, we can get a great sense of how the government decided to play the 1979 visit of John Paul II. If you can put yourself into their position, I think they did a pretty good job. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe. take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

As a frequent stamp issuer, tied in to the collector market, Poland could not have let such an important event go by without an issue. The stamps that came out were oversized, included a souvenir sheet. The presentation was respectful to the man, but treated him as a man. At least it was not done as a foolish man wearing funny clothes spouting old superstitions.

Todays stamp is issue A723, an 8.4 Zloty stamp issued by Polans on June 2nd, 1979, the first day of Pope John Paul II’s eight day visit. With lead times this meant the stamp designers had to imagine what his trip would look like. Interestingly the period American news articles I read made no mention of the Pope visiting an Auschwitz Memorial as shown on the stamp, though I have no doubt he did. Both of the stories were in Jewish owned papers, so it was interesting omission. This was a two stamp and  souvinir sheet issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents, cancelled to order.

The officially atheist communist regime had been in power for thirty three years in 1979. Pope John Paul had grown up in Poland experiencing the early pre war state, the wartime occupations and the early years of the then current regime. He had then spent many years based in Rome. What the Polish regime was very worried about after his rise in 1978 was that he would become a troublesome figure promoting disloyally and even insurrection toward the stagnant state.

The regime pointed to the then recent example of Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious Iranian leader who preached insurrection for years from a Paris exile. His return to Iran in 1979 was leading the successful revolution.

These type thoughts have a great deal to do with the image on the stamp. It portrays what happened at Auschwitz as a moral failure not just of the  occupying perpetrators but as a moral failing of the local Catholic religious in not preventing it. This makes sense if you remember that the Polish communist regime was very heavily under the influence of secular Jews. They understood that the vast majority Catholic country needed to become more secular to be more compatible with the regime imposed on them and a major moral failing of Catholics was a good thing to remind, over and over.

A Pope is used to playing nice with a regime with which it has major disagreements He was received and appeared with communist leaders who in tern tied their respect for the Church to the respect they held for all their countrymen including believers. The Pope did get in a few mild jabs that man was not just a means of production and when venerating war losses, he mentioned Poland being abandoned by their Soviet ally when Warsaw rose up against the Nazis. This culminated at the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where a Polish military band tried to play a military march while the crowd was moved to sing Ava Maria.

Well my drink is empty and I will get to pour two more to toast Pope John Paul II for how he handled himself and the communist regime for taking the chance and letting the visit happen. Come again on Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Fifty years, well with a six year interruption, was a long time for an airline to last. It was not the first Polish airline rather  a merger of two former airlines under government control. This continuous government ownership has allowed LOT to have now lasted over 90 years when so many other countries lost their flagship airline. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist,

The stamp makers made some interesting plane choices for the stamp. The airline started out with German and Dutch airliners but the stamp chose to feature the one Polish made airliner the airline used in it’s first decade. Understandable, but the 1979 chosen aircraft was a Soviet made airplane. LOT then operated Polish made small turboprops but wanted to show off a jet. The LOT emblem has remained unchanged throughout and you can barely make it out on both planes. I would have liked to see it more prominent.

Todays stamp is issue A714, a 6.9 Zloty stamp issued by Poland on January 2nd, 1979. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.

LOT formed in 1929 in a merger between the former Aerolot and Aero Polish airlines. The national government held an 86% stake with the rest owned by the city of Poznan and the province of Silesia. The new emblem that is still in use was the result of a national design competition won by artist Tadeasz Goronowski. The first year saw the first international service to Vienna. The first airliners were Fokker Trimotors and Junkers F.13. In 1933 there was a competition to replace the F.13 that was one by the locally made PWS 24. LOT was the only customer for the PWS 24 and only used them until 1937 when they were passed to the Polish Air Force as staff transport. One of the 11 built evacuated to Romania in 1939 where it was briefly used by the then Romanian flagship airline LARES.

In early 1945 LOT was reformed completely under the new national government and had a fleet of DC3s some of which were the Soviet copy. The first jets did not come into service until 1968 in the form of the Tupolev TU-134. The later TU-154 featured on the stamp has a bad place in Polish history. Much later in 2010 a VIP transport TU-154 of the Polish Air Force crashed killing many Polish dignataries traveling to the site of the 1939 Soviet Kazarin Forest massacre of young Polish cadets. There weren’t many old Soviet airliners still operating in Poland in 2010 so the irony was not lost. Since 2010 the Polish Air Force has allowed another TU-154 to rust in peace at Minsk airport.

In 1989 the airline began to convert to western airliners including the Boeing 767. The airline had high hopes for new direct service between Warsaw and Krakow and the midwestern American cities that once hosted large Polish communities. These mostly didn’t pan out. The airline has also suffered from Poland’s poor relations with Russia complicating flights to China. On fairly bright spot financially is the otherwise rare service it offers to Hanoi in Vietnam. The airline has so far avoided being privatized but came close with negotiations a few years back with Turkish Airways. The airline currently has 98 planes serving 120 destinations.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast T. G. the logo designor. He is of course long gone but his work is still viewed daily in 120 destinations. Not a bad legacy. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

I like a good communist 5 year(well in this case 6 year) plan stamp that tells the people what their leaders will be doing for them. Promises can be measured against results. At the end of this 6 year plan, Hilary Minc, the architect of it, was tossed out of the Politburo, so there were consequences for failure. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelists.

This stamp presents an understandably misleading picture of the 6 year plan. Constructing of urban apartment blocks was actually slowing under this plan. The last plan had been about rebuilding. This plan was about redeveloping industry and a communist dream city in Crackow. Chemical factories and utopias for bigshots might be a little too honest to put on the stamps.

Todays stamp is issue A193, a 30 Groszy stamp issued by Poland in 1951. It was a 6 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The first 3 year plan from 1947 -1949 had gone reasonably well and concentrated on rebuilding the cities after the damage of the war. For the next one, more ambition was shown. Much assistance from the Soviets would be involved and Stalin personally picked Hilary Minc to lead the effort. He was a Jew that had gone east to avoid the Germans during the war and joined fellow travelers in Russia in forming the Union of Polish Patriots that sought to replace the prewar Polish regime with a Jewish, communist one post war.

Hilary Minc

Who he was had a great deal of influence on what was in the plan. There was a special emphasis on getting old German industry in the former German territory working again but without Germans. The chemical works that had once belonged to IG Farben and the synthetic rubber plant Buna Werke. These plants had been closely associated with forced mostly Jewish labor from Auschwitz during the war. It was thus very important that the previous crimes there be revenged by Jewish ownership. Understandable until you remember Poland is a large majority Catholic country. The Soviet help was still industrial but at least more aimed at the people with help with steel mills and car factories, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/11/philatelist-2-parter-polish-pontoon-today-versus-tomorrows-german-fintail/  .

A six year plan should also include a vision of a better future. The area of Crackow known as Nowa Huta was singled out for redevelopment. The model city was designed to resemble Paris. Remember the Union of “Polish” Patriots had lived much of their life in exile, and lefty exile in Europe means much time in Paris.

The 6 year plan was not much of a success. Poland was falling behind economically. They even had to reintroduce some rationing because agriculture was being neglected and mismanaged. The formerly German industry was no longer using Jewish labor, just Jewish management. In October 1956 workers rose up in strike and protest demanding a more Polish route to socialism. The protest centered on Wroclaw, the former German city of Breslau. In response there was a purge in the higher ups of Polish leadership. It was marketed as a repudiation of Stalinists, but hit pretty hard on the Union of “Polish” Patriots. Hilary Minc was even forced out of the communist party.

Well my drink is empty and I will ask that my stories be judged as a body of work and that I not be purged. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The new Poland of 1919 had only a small outlet on the Baltic Sea. Yet that outlet put the Polish people as part of the Hanseatic maritime tradition of the area. Part of the embracing of this was Poland acquiring a sailing ship, the Lwow, to train a new generation of Polish mariners. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The Poland of 1980 had a much longer coastline than the Poland of 1920. In fact at the Gdansk shipyard, there was a new Polish tall sailing ship under construction to continue the training of sailors for the navy and the merchant marine. This would be the first constructed in Poland and still serves as the Dar Mlodziezy. It makes 1980 a great time for a stamp issue to remember the ships and men that came before and built the tradition.

Todays stamp is issue A753, a 2 Zloty stamp issued by Poland on July 21st, 1980. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The Lwow was built in 1869 at Birkenhead in England as the commercial vessel. She was made of steel and had diesel engines in addition to her sails. In 1893 she was sold to an Italian firm and renamed Lucco. In 1898 she was caught in a bad storm off of the Cape of Good Hope where she lost several of her masts and nearly sunk. She was able to make it to Durban in South Africa but was then stuck there awaiting repairs. The ship was eventually bought by a Dutch firm there, repaired and put into use as the Nest, now out of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. The ship then retired to Holland in 1915 still in good condition.

It was in Holland where it was spotted by Poland and acquired cheap. The ship became the Polish Navy training ship Lwow. She was to be based out of the newly constructed seaport at Gdynia. The Poles were building this port opposite the then free state of Danzig as though they were supposed to have port rights in Danzig, the German dock workers there would always go on strike when there was a Polish ship to service. The first Captain of the Lwow as seen on the stamp was Tadeusz Bonifacy Ziolkowski. He was a Pole from the Polish part of Pomerania who had previously served in the Imperial German Navy. The ship was used heavily to teach navigation skills but it also had to earn a living taking cargo around the Baltic.

A naval tradition built quickly around the ship. One of it’s later Captains was Mamert Stankiewicz who later became famous. He was another Pole from Courland in modern Latvia who first served the Czar of Russia’s Baltic fleet. After serving the Polish Navy he was made Captain of the ocean liner MS Pisudski. The ship had been built in Italy and then bartered in exchange for Polish coal. After the war broke out in 1939 the ship made a quick conversion to troopship in England. On her first voyage as such, she was torpedoed by German U boats though there was no record of it on the German side. Captain Stankiewicz was the last to leave the ship after trying to save his crew in the best naval tradition but later died of hypothermia from being in the cold waters. There are armchair quarterbacks who argue the ship instead hit a mine and could have been saved by a more experienced crew. Armchair quarterbacking is pretty much what we do here at The Philatelist but is it really so terrible to let Poland have her heroes.

The Lwow was retired in 1930 and scrapped in 1938. She was replaced by a German made tall sailing ship called Gift of Pomerania in Polish service. Soon enough the rest of Pomerania itself would be gifted to Poland.

Well my drink is empty and nobody is going to sea these days here in the USA or in Poland and so I might as well have another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.