|
|
 |
 |
Background history
The POWs’ correspondence of the years 1939-1945, deposited in the department of philately, makes the largest part of museum collections, probably also the biggest collection of POWs’ correspondence in Poland, containing over 4.5 thousand philatelic items. It includes primarily letters, letter sheets, correspondence and post cards of the official POW post office, written on special printed or blank forms prepared by the Germans. They come from 21 oflags and 48 stalags located on the territory of the Third Reich. A substantial part of the collection concerns the Polish soldiers detained in Wehrmacht-run POW camps and internment camps in neutral states during World War II. This collection is unusually precious, since apart from its unquestioned historical and scholarly value, it is exceptionally significant emotionally, additionally augmented by the tragic wartime context which emerges in the picture of relations with the nearest ones left behind in the occupied mother country. POWs’ correspondence makes a vital source of information relating to the reality of the functioning of the German POW system in the years 1939-1945. It reveals also an interesting episode in the history of the post office, displaying its significance in the years of World War II. We present here a few examples of POWs’ correspondence, which are interesting as regards the content or unusual circumstances of their creation. The first of them is the letter sent from Stalag 344 Lamsdorf by a Warsaw insurgent, Officer Cadet Edward Switocz, nom de guerre “Warda”, to his father Piotr, who – following the capitulation of the Uprising – was taken to the concentration camp KL Gross-Rosen (Rogoźnica). The letter was mailed shortly before Christmas and is filled with great respect and concern for the fate of his father. Unfortunately, it did not manage to reach the addressee: it returned to the sender with the stamp bearing the message in German, “Returned! Impossible to deliver as the addressee is not in the camp!” This information communicated the sad truth – the father’s death. The returned letter was the only material memento of him. Another item presented on the exhibition is one of the 766 letters which the married couple of Andrzej and Krystyna Mystkowski, who were separated by the war, sent to each other in the years 1939-1945. During the war, Lieutenant Andrzej Mystkowski was a POW interned in Stalag II D Stargard and Oflag II B Arnswalde (Choszczno), Oflag II D Gross Born (Borne Sulinowo) and Oflag XC Lubeka. Letters and cards made then the only means of connection between him and his wife who remained in Skierniewice together with their newly-born son Andrzejek. The content of the letters written by the Mystkowskis overflows with the feeling of love, longing and incessant assurance of mutual faithfulness, as well as their concern for each other’s fate. They contain also a lot of information about the deplorable reality of the life in the camp. Special attention should be paid to the letter mailed on 31 December 1943 to Sapper First Class Jan Kubicki, a POW in Oflag VII A Murnau. The letter which was written by his children – his son Mieczysław and the daughter Teodora – meant a lot to him. It contains warm New Year’s wishes full of love and hope, which the children wanted to pass to their father themselves as he was welcoming the successive year in the captivity. The words strongly express the longing for the father, expectation for the war to come to the end and his happy return home. However, Jan Kubicki stayed in Oflag VII A Murnau until the liberation of the camp, which took place on 29 April 1945. He returned to Poland in September that year, not to find his little daughter at home as she had died without seeing her father. The letter is Jan Kubicki’s only memento of his dead child. Beside documents, course notes, maps and personal belongings, it enriched the exhibition “Murnau 1945. Forgotten photographs form the collection of Olivier and Alain Rempfer”.
Prepared by: Dorota Musiał
|
|
|
POWs’ correspondence of the time of World War II
Source of acquisition
The letters of Edward Switocz were presented to the Museum in 2008 by his daughter, Barbra Switocz-Robson, resident in Canada; the correspondence of the Mystkowskis found its way to the Museum in 2014, being purchased from Jan Mystkowski, the second son of the authors, thanks to financial support from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage; the letter of Teodora and Miecio Kubicki, along with other mementos of their father – Jan Kubicki – were presented to the Museum by his daughter – Halina Stachurka in March 2015.
Description of the item
The exhibited archival materials were written on uniformed German letter forms and correspondence cards. Individual letters differ merely with the stamps of the camp post-offices, censors’ numbers and numbers of the camps established in compliance with the German nomenclature. All the objects have been preserved in a good or very good state until today.
|
