It is mind-boggling that in the face of overwhelming evidence there are still people who deny the Holocaust. Specifically, they deny the mass extermination of Jews by gassing, and will often point to unsubstantiated “soil tests” conducted — by other deniers, naturally — at sites of former death camps. Yet even immediately after the war, it was widely established that the Nazis gassed people to death.
This Polish stamp, issued in 1946 according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, depicts a Grim Reaper-like Nazi emptying Zyklon-B over the Madjanek death camp. The first line of text reads: “Death camp.” The second line reads: “Bath and gas chambers.”
The stamp came to the IJN’s attention from José Sánchez, a self-described collector of various curiosa and member of the HEA. He acquired the specimen on eBay.
The treatment of the Holocaust in post-war Eastern Europe was complicated. Communist governments framed the Holocaust in terms of fascism and anti-fascism, and divorced themselves from any homegrown culpability in the anti-Semitism and mass killings. Commemorations at concentration camps found in the Soviet zone focused on communists killed by the Nazis and the struggle against fascism, and made little mention of the mass extermination of Jews by means of gas — the primary activity at the Majdanek death camp.
In 1946, Poland was already under Soviet influence, but its communist government wasn’t formed until 1947. Perhaps that brief lag in time allowed the Poles to openly acknowledge what occurred on Polish soil in a way that wasn’t repeated for decades to come.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]
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