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This sent chills up my spine


Linda Z
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After attending my postcard club's annual show and sale today, I sat down this evening to look more closely at the cards I'd bought. When I'm looking for cards to buy, I barely glance at the backs, and usually have fun reading the messages after I get home.

One of the cards I bought today was a shocker. It's a sweet little New Year's card from Germany, showing a man standing in the snow playing some kind of horn, with holly tied to his knapsack and with two adorable pigs standing nearby. (That's why I bought it...I love pigs.)

The card was dated on the front, 1933. I flipped it over and noticed a swastika where the stamp should be. I'd sort of noticed that earlier, but that hadn't set off any alarms because that symbol was widely used to signify good luck. I've seen it on many old postcards.

But then I looked at the message (written in German) to see if I could make any of it out. I didn't need a decorder ring to translate the last two words on the card: "Heil Hitler."

Holy sheet.

PS. 1933 was the year he became Chancellor of Germany. I'm sure the average person thought he was going to save the country. Creepy.

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Creepy indeed my-favorite-Linzee. I just had one of those eerie shudders that starts between your shoulder blades and then runs up the back of your neck.

If the world knew then what it knows now....I wonder what it would have done then!

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Man, oh man, Linda! Talk about a trip down History Channel lane. :blink:

Hey! If it's in good condition, you just might be able to sell it and make quite a bit o' $$$ for it. Who knows.

Now if only you could come across one of Hitler's paintings he did when he was a youth, hmmm?

$$CHAA-CHIINGG$$

:B)

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I can't tell you how strange it was for me to see those words, written 76 years ago by a real person. I often say postcards are a little slice of history that you can hold in your hand, but that's not the kind of history I'm accustomed to seeing, that's for sure!

I never believed for a minute that claptrap about the Holocaust never happening. There was just too much evidence to the contrary. And I've been well aware of the horror of HItler's place in history since I was a kid. But somehow this made it more real.

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I can't tell you how strange it was for me to see those words, written 76 years ago by a real person. I often say postcards are a little slice of history that you can hold in your hand, but that's not the kind of history I'm accustomed to seeing, that's for sure!

I never believed for a minute that claptrap about the Holocaust never happening. There was just too much evidence to the contrary. And I've been well aware of the horror of HItler's place in history since I was a kid. But somehow this made it more real.

How much does a card like that cost?

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Rocky, it cost $7, not because of what was written on it but because of the front. The dealer happens to be an old friend, and he hadn't even noticed the message on the back. I took it back to show him today, and he was shocked, too.

BTW, old postcards can cost anything from a quarter to hundreds of dollars--some really scarce ones even go into the thousands.

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it is always fun to imagine the history and stories behind our finds. In this case, I would not get overly dramatic. The phrase was required whenever addressing certain authority figures, and there were serious consequences for failure to do so. Many just used it all the time when in public so as not to forget in those tiimes when it was required.

In our TWI times, how often did we say "God Bless" without giving it any thought whatsoever.

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It would be interesting to have the rest of the card translated..

When i was around 10 i was in the basement digging through one of my dad's old storage trunks and found some letters beautifully written in that German style script. After asking him about them he told me that as a high schooler he had a penpal in Germany in the 30's, which was a common thing to do in those days...I forget exactly what the content of the letters was--Im going to have to ask him about them again

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It would be interesting to have the rest of the card translated..

When i was around 10 i was in the basement digging through one of my dad's old storage trunks and found some letters beautifully written in that German style script. After asking him about them he told me that as a high schooler he had a penpal in Germany in the 30's, which was a common thing to do in those days...I forget exactly what the content of the letters was--Im going to have to ask him about them again

It should be pretty easy to get a serviceable translation from Babelfish, if Linda is interested.

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Hey Linda,

Really really chilling. Glimpses into history and peoples lives like that fascinate me.

I have an album with postcards from all over the world from a couple of cruises that family members took in 1911. They are so pretty. How would I learn about what I have got? I know that I should find out how to take better care of them. Most were never written on. Is it better for them to have been used?

I didn`t know that people collected these things.

I also was given several stamp albums from an elderly woman which once belonged to her father who was a British dignitary. The stamos are a fascinating picture into history as well. Many of them are from countries no longer in existence. All have pictures of historical and notable figures to the people of that area and time. I would love to know more about them and why people thought them worthy of that honor.

My friend gave them to me as an aid to teaching the kiddos about different places. Anybody collect stamps that could point me in a direction that would help me to identify and understand a little better?

I also have a letter written during the civil war from an ancestor. He talked about the hardships as a soldier. He said that sukie (their mule) back home ate a lot better than he did.

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