Unsent Postcards
Intermittently postcards were allowed to be sent as the only means of communication to people beyond the ghetto walls.
The Australian Society of Polish Jews and their Descendants are proud to host scholars Sarah Grandke Johanna Schmied in an online presentation of Unsent Postcards.
(Last) signs of life from the Litzmannstadt (Łódź) Ghetto
In 2019, Sarah Grandke and Johanna Schmied examined approximately 22,100 postcards which remained stored in the Litzmannstadt ghetto. These postcards provided insight into rediscovered signs of life and the complex censorship and mail restrictions that existed within the Litzmannstadt ghetto.
Intermittently postcards were allowed to be sent as the only means of communication to people beyond the ghetto walls. The majority of these cards were addressed to families and friends in Germany, Vienna, Prague and Luxembourg, and were written by those who had been deported in October 1941.
Grandke and Schmied’s research focused on the collection of unsent postcards that were destined for Hamburg. Their talk will probe: why the postcards never left the ghetto, what the deportees wrote on their cards that prevented them from reaching their destinations and why these postcards, in particular, were withheld by the censors.
Sarah Grandke is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum and was previously curator at the documentation centre “denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof” in Hamburg.
Date & Time: Monday 26 February2024 at 7:30pm(AEST)
Zoom link: https://polaron-au.zoom.us/j/82287755632
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