Never forget

We Jews have had a rough time, massacres by Roman invaders, Muslim invaders, Crusaders and others. In Europe, we had massacres in most countries, during Crusader times, the Inquisition, the Black Death, Pogroms and the Holocaust. 

Now we have our own country and the words "Never Forget" and "Never Again" are an integral part of the Israeli and Jewish psyche. Here in Israel we have two remembrance days where there are sirens, the first on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the second a week later for the remembrance of our fallen soldiers. Simply put the first remembrance day is to remember the cost when Jews did not have a country of our own and the second to remind us of the cost of holding on to a country of our own.

But the horrors of Europe during the Nazi years was not only felt by Jews, but by everyone. Austria was one of the countries that was occupied by the Nazis. After the war and its liberation from Nazism, the Allies were in control of Austria. However in 1946, the Allies signed an agreement that loosened their control. The Austrian Parliament was almost relieved of Allied control. A decision of parliament could be overturned only by a unanimous vote by all four Allies: France, England, America and Russia, but the Russian vote was almost always vetoed.

Along comes an Austrian stamp issue in 1946 for a "Never Forget" ("Niemals Vergessen") exhibition on the crimes of Nazism.  Eight stamps were prepared, six of them displayed below. The surtax was intended to pay for the exhibition. 

Two of the stamps, as shown on the left, were censored by the allies as they were considered to have upsetting or unsettling imagery. They were prohibited from release despite them being already printed. The sheets were confiscated, but somehow some stamps survived.

The left stamp shows an SS lightening bolt striking a map of Austria and the right stamp shows a skeleton with an Adolf Hitler mask. Both images are striking but are they more striking than the image of the hand holding the Nazi snake or sweeping away the remnants of Nazism? It is always a question of the beholder. It has been surmised that those images were accusing Austrians of capitulation and the allies did not want to anger those Austrians who willingly accepted the Nazi regime. The Americans needed the Austrians on their side as the Cold War was on the horizon. Is this the only reason?

The offending stamps were replaced by two presumably less offensive stamps. The SS lightning bolts were replaced by a sword and the Hitler skeleton was replaced by the hand of a dying prisoner behind barbed wire. I personally don't think that the hand of a dying prisoner is less offensive because for me, personally, it showed what was happening as the world stood by in silence, which is why we say "Never Again".

The stamps were designed by Alfred Chmielowski, who won the competition for the stamps to accompany the exhibition. The designs must be interpreted against the background of the idea to not offend the Austrians who believed that they were the first victims of Nazism and their feelings were above others who had been persecuted. So they show demonized power anti-fascist and Christian symbolism, (wreath of thorns, seductive snake, etc.). Nothing about anti Semitism is mentioned, even the hand of a dying prisoner is bland.

Designs by Leopold Metzenbauer were rejected. They show, for example as shown on the left, a chain of people passing by a burial ground and in the foreground there is the Jewish star. Perhaps a more apt design for Never Forget, but then again that is my Jewish perspective.

Interestingly enough during the Nazi years, that same snake was used against Judaism, as can be seen in the stamp on the left from German occupied Serbia in 1942. This stamp was part of a set of four issued as a part of an Anti Masonic exhibition. This exhibition was, in effect, an anti-Semitic exhibition, one of many during the Nazi years.

Sources:

• https://www.stamp-collecting-world.com/austriastamps_1946c.html
• http://borsoslorinc.com/works/niemals-vergessen