The stories behind the stamps

The following excerpts come from three of the letters received by Foxboro Regional Charter School students and were written by people who donated stamps to the Holocaust Stamps Project.

To see more letters, and to learn more about the project, go to https://stamps.org/news/c/news/cat/local/post/remembrance-connection-witness-the-making-of-a-holocaust-exhibit. https://bit.ly/3hmfnif.

“My great aunt, Mindl Kotel, was killed by the Nazis in front of her home, along with her husband and three children ages 11, 8 and 5. I saved five of the prettiest stamps and am putting them with a page showing the truncated family tree.

Thank you for remembering Mindl, Pinya, Vladimir, Abram and Bronya, along [with] the other 11 million killed in the Holocaust.”

– S. Radbil

“Some [stamps] are from my piano teacher ... Gabriella Kottler, and I will never forget the number burned on her arm from when she was in the camps.

One Christmas, she came to our house for dinner with her husband and ended up telling us her story. I vividly remember her telling us how they wanted to break her as she was a strong woman. Gabriella persevered, even when they took her shoes and made her stand in line in the snow.

“There was not a sound around the dinner table for over an hour.”

– J. Flynn

“I am sending you 100 Australian stamps, in memory of my maternal grandparents, Dolec and Jozefa Lurie. Both were survivors of concentration camps, and along with Dolec’s brother, were the only members of both families combined to live through the Holocaust. They were newlyweds before the war, and were reunited afterwards in a displaced person’s camp in Trani, Italy. They chose to emigrate to Australia, and lived there the rest of their lives.”

– M. Cole