We as stamp collectors deal with stamps, that is why we are known as stamp collectors. As children and many adults, when we get a letter, we tend to remove the stamp from the envelope and put the stamp in our albums and that's it. So what happens when we find a letter like this? As a stamp collector, this letter seemingly has no value. It's missing a stamp. But wait, is it really worthless or should we look into it further?
This letter was written to a woman by the name of Sarah Kalach. Sarah was born in 1928 in Safed and she belonged to a very, very, very old Safed family. They probably got to Safed after the Arab massacre of the Jews of Safed in 1834 which began on June 15th, yes 189 years ago.

As a child, Sarah joined the Etzel movement. Etzel stands for "Irgun Tzvai Leumi" (IZL) which translates to "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel". As we all know, the British were in control of what was then called the British Mandate for Palestine and the the IZL organization was labeled a terrorist organization by them.

Guerrilla warfare are actions taken against basically military targets, while terrorism is practiced against civilian targets.

That means that Sarah basically belong to a terrorist organization as far as the British were concerned, so her days as a free person were numbered. Sarah was living in Haifa and she got word that the British authorities were looking for her. So she moved to Tel Aviv and after about the year she moved back to Haifa to take care of the branch since many of her colleagues had already been taken prisoner.

In June of 1946 the IZL took part in the King David hotel bombing. The British obviously saw that as a terrorist act, but the IZL group claimed that it was a legitimate target because that was the the British Army Headquarters. Now after this, the British started to crack down big time on the IZL members. As as I said before, Sarah was living in Haifa and somebody spilled the beans and informed the British CID, the Criminal Investigation Department. Heinz Reinhold snitched on her to the CID and he actually told them exactly where to find Sarah.

Sara Kalach, is on the left

On the 29th of October 1946, the British authorities raided the apartment and took her and her brother Shlomo into captivity. Shlomo was actually expelled to Africa, to a detention camp in Kenya. He remained there until after Israeli independence had been declared.

Sarah was sent to the Woman's Detention Camp in Bethlehem and this letter was sent while she was imprisoned there. She was released in March of 1948, along with other woman prisoners, not long before the British left Palestine. Don't worry about her. She got married in 1952 and now has children and grandchildren.

Back to the letter. It was written to Sarah in 1947 when she was in the detention camp, and it was written to her, by her father, Yakov, or they also called him Yankele. The British CID removed the stamp. Why? Because they suspected that messages were written on the back of the stamp. This practice had been in use by the British themselves during the Second World War, So they were aware of the system and they were making sure that messages sent to Sarah didn't bypass the censor of the censor.

And that's the story. Take a simple letter, which you know nothing about, that most people would throw away. I would have, if I didn't know history. This is a lovely case of social postal history.