Third Party Press

Holocaust postcard

Peter U

Moderator
Staff member
Recently I added this postcard to my collection, ghetto - and concentration camp mail isn't really that rare but because it is censored the texts on these letters and cards are usually not very interesting, this one is different because it somehow got passed the censor with a warning for the family in the text.
Also because of several holocaust research programs we know not only the story behind this card but we can also put a face on the names and they aren't longer anonymous victims.

Karl Löwy (°1875) and his wife Irma (°1880) are Czech Jews from Sudovo Hlavno, just like everywhere else in Nazi occupied Europe Jews are also prosecuted in the "Protektorat Bohmen und Mähren" and Karl & Irma end up in the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt.
In 1942 the Nazi's decided to take their prosecution of the Jews to the next level, the final solution, the extermination of all Jews living under their rule.
They decide to execute their mass murder program in occupied Poland and especially for this program they build extermination facilities with gas chambers in Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Madjanek and Auschwitz plus an operation with gas vans in Chelmno.
Not all Jews from outside Poland are directly transported to these extermination camps, a lot of them first end up in transit ghettos in Poland.
This is also what happens with Karl & Irma Löwy, at the end of April 1942 2.000 Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto are transported to the area of Zamosc, 729 will be sent to the ghetto in Komarow, they belong to this group and on May 2 1942 they arrive there.
The next day to make room for the Czech jews, 2000 local Jews are deported to Sobibor where they will be gassed.
On May 7 1942 Karl & Irma write this postcard to their daughter that still lives with her husband and son in Prague.
The text on the card is written in terrible German, fractured German written by someone that doesn’t really speaks German.
This is the translation:
We arrived in good health after a long journey.
(These transports were often way longer underway then really necessary)
We are thinking about you and our grandson Peter.
(Then the most important line of text on the card).
Stay were you are as long as possible. Be scared of Theresienstadt.
The ground here is wet and heavy.
Most of the local Jews here are poor.
Please write us back as soon as possible.
Give our regards to everyone.
We kiss you all!
Karl & Irma

Two weeks after they sent this card the Germans with aid of the ghetto police round up all those that can't work and lock them up in a beet storage facility near a local station, the elderly couple is amongst those rounded up.
The next days these unfortunate people are put on transports to Belzec and Sobibor to be murdered.

Their daughter Zdenka Epstein dies on May 27 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto, her husband docter Pavel Epstein and their son Peter end up in Auschwitz in 1944 were they are gassed.

Karl Löwy
karel_lowy_b_1875_medium.jpg

Irma Löwy
irma_lowy_medium.jpg

Zdenka Epstein
zdenka_epstein_medium.jpg

Dr Pavel Epstein
paul_epstein_medium.jpg

Peter Epstein
petr_alexander_epstein_medium.jpg
 

Attachments

  • DSC01502.jpg
    DSC01502.jpg
    161.6 KB · Views: 87
  • DSC01501.jpg
    DSC01501.jpg
    169.3 KB · Views: 78
Very sad and personal, incredible how you’ve connected all of this and pulled it together Peter. Thanks for sharing this fascinating, but terrible, stuff. Certainly it personalizes it.
 
Thanks CLG and Hambone!

It sure is a sad piece.
It is estimated that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, it is a pretty abstract number but this large number of course stands for real humans, people with families and objects like this make it easier to see the people behind the statistical figure.

This thread is a good example of the power of the internet in 2019.
In the pre-internet period this postcard was pretty much unresearchable and basically the only people interested in them were the philatelists.
But now in the internet age were archives worldwide are digitalizing and putting their information online and in combination with a search engine like Google makes researching these objects easier.
In this case, the story of the Komarow ghetto is known and published by the USHMM, I have the actual books, simply because I still like printed books but the article about this ghetto is also available online.
The photos are there passport pictures and have been put online on a genealogy website, which also makes the connection between the family members.
And now that it is put online on this website perhaps in the future someone that is researching the Löwy/Epstein family will find it with a Google search.
 
Thank you once again for putting faces to a story! I always find your postings very poignant.
 
Strong work Peter, thanks for sharing people and not just names.

Pat
 
Very sad and personal, incredible how you’ve connected all of this and pulled it together Peter. Thanks for sharing this fascinating, but terrible, stuff. Certainly it personalizes it.

Yes +1...It is amazing someone still has their photos and cares enough to post them.
 
You are an impressive researcher and I am glad that the people from the past can still be remembered. You are not just a collector but a historian.
 
Thanks guys!


The research on this one was really easy actually, all the work had been done for me, it was basically just using Google and using the work of others.

Their pictures are their passport pictures and they are still in a Czech archive; more and more archives around the world are digitializing and researchers are sharing that information online.
Holocaust museums and archives are all busy with trying to put faces on the names of the victims, this is an example of this recent work.
If you wanted to find their pictures you previously had to travel to the archive, which in itself wasn't easy when the iron curtain was still up, spend time looking through their files and at best you could make a bad quality copy of them; now you just type in their names in a online search engine and they pop up.
Sharing information on the internet isn't all about fake news and gossip on facebook.:thumbsup:

The family tried, in vain, to immigrate to the USA.
The daughters passport application survived and can be seen on this webpage:
https://www.holocaust.cz/en/databas...05962-epsteinova-zdenka-passport-application/
This website has a lot of information about the individual holocaust victims from the former German "Protektorat".
 

Attachments

  • 99343_ca_object_representations_media_64898_large.jpg
    99343_ca_object_representations_media_64898_large.jpg
    189.2 KB · Views: 31

Military Rifle Journal
Back
Top