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.

Israel always had good relations with Iran during the regime of the Shah. Iran was one of the few Middle Eastern countries that had any relations with Israel. Mail passed freely between the two countries. When the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, mail from and to Israel was no longer handled. Mail to Iran was stopped in 1983. Mail from Iran addressed to Israel was returned to sender and received an instructional marking of "There is no postal relations between Iran and Israel". Israel was suddenly cut off from Iran. Note: The actual message was: "Thereis no postal relations between Iranand Israel".

In the 1980s, I had a huge interest in mail from Arab countries with no relations with Israel. Items such as the one above were the most difficult to find seeing as how these were pre-Internet days. However I saw an auction lot showing letters from Iran, addressed to Geneva, and it had Hebrew writing on it. This really piqued my interest and I purchased the lot. In those days I worked in a company where there was an Iranian ex-pat and I showed her the lot. She looked at it and said the postbox number looked familiar, so I decided to do some digging.

As I said, there were no postal relations between Iran and Israel, meaning that Jews in Iran couldn't send letters to relatives in Israel. The Israel Broadcasting Authority attempted to fill this void. The I.B.A. set up a post office box in Switzerland (P.O. Box 152, Geneva) which was meant to receive mail sent from Iran. Every day, the I.B.A. broadcast the news in Farsi to listeners in Israel and out of Israel. This transmission was broadcast as far away as Iran. The gist of the broadcast was that listeners could write to "Radio Israel in Farsi" at the given address.

Mail leaving Iran, generally to non-Moslem countries, was often censored by the Iranian authorities and as a result people sending to this drop box did not put a return address on the envelope. Very often people did not even put stamps on the envelope so that they would risk entering a post office. This mail was then taxed by the Swiss Postal Authorities.

Since this service was quite open, there was always the possibility of terrorists using it to send letter bombs. As a result, when suspect mail arrived in Israel's hands, it was screened for letter bombs and "Checked" hand stamps were applied. The security officer who checked the mail signed the hand stamp as proof of its authenticity.

In theory, this could be used by Jews in all countries having no postal relations with Israel, although there were very few as many had been expelled from their host countries.

It is impossible to know how many letters were sent via this method as the Jewish community in Iran is not large and no records are available but it helped Jews in Iran who had no other way of getting word to Israel.

I am a stamp and postal history collector and over the years I have bought items that I would now like to sell duplicates so that I can buy other items I want. As I have been a member of eBay since last century, somewhere in the 1990s, I also sell there, but a year ago, things took a turn for the worse.

Up until then, I was selling on eBay and getting paid in PayPal, in dollars, and that money was used to buy other stamps or to pay for exhibition fees. Now listen to my anti-eBay diatribe:

I charge $4 for postage anywhere with postal relations with Israel. The letter is sent registered mail. Why registered? Because if you do not and the other side complains that it hasn't arrived, eBay immediately refunds the buyer. Fair practice, right! If it is registered, then it has been signed for. If it is lost, you can ask the post office to reimburse, but that has limits as well. They refund up to $50.

So I put an item on eBay for $5, knowing that it is worth $20 (I paid much more) and it gets sold for $5 (that is the name of the game) and then I add the $4 and the buyer pays $9. NOT TO ME, but to eBay. I now have to send this within 4 working days or eBay starts sending me mails and notices whatever.

I then go to the post office to send the item registered, the actual cost is $4.70 but no worries. I pay for this out of my own pocket because eBay has not transferred the money to me. However am I getting the $9, nope, look at this image:



So eBay will only pay me $7.42 of which $4.70 I had already paid to the post office, so for the item I sold, I am only getting $3 for! Is that fair practice? Of course not, but that is eBay.

Does eBay pay me immediately? Oh no. About a year ago they signed a monopoly deal with a company called Payoneer and you can no longer be paid in PayPal. You have to setup and account in Payoneer and eBay will transfer the money there. When do they transfer? They have two days in a month when they transfer, 1st or the 15th. Sold an item on the 1st, next payout day is 15th, so you have to wait.

End of story, no. eBay wants to make sure that the recipient receives the item. They will not release funds until the recipient has the money. I already paid $4.70 out of my own pocket and I don't have the item or the funds. How does eBay know when the recipient has received it? Either by feedback, or if you show them a mail that he says he received it or the registration number has shown to be delivered. Many countries do not share this information, England, Germany and America are some of those.

If 6 weeks has passed, they transfer the $7.42 to Payoneer, on the payout day.

Yippee, now I can use the money to buy items. Oh no! Payoneer doesn't allow that. I can only withdraw the money to my bank account and they charge $10 for that and only if you have at least $50 in the account and only to that limit. But, if you withdraw then the bank charges you a conversion rate, so more loss. Edited: So I decided that I needed $100 and decided to withdraw it to my bank account. So to get $100, I have to have $110 as that is the Payoneer charge. They used IBAN to transfer to my account and they made me pay the charges of $3. So that is $13 taken off in commission.

What about if you want to buy something on eBay? PayPal or your own credit card! Another foreign currency conversion.

Basically what both of these companies are doing is to make a profit on the money that they are holding, which is rightfully yours.

Edited: Now eBay is taking seller fees, for items that I received cash from, from my credit card and not from Payoneer. I can't even pay for items using Payoneer.

Lately I've been trying to build a display page about the national awakening in Europe in the 19th century because this had an impact on the fathers of Zionism. One example of the events taking place in Europe was the unification of Italy and the delayed addition of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice.

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna convened, which was intended to shape the map of Europe after the upheavals caused since the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era. Strangley the Congress determined that the kingdom would be included in the territory of the Austrian Empire. The Kingdom of Lombardy-Venice was Italian speaking and Austria was German speaking, very different cultures, history and languages.

In 1859, Austria was defeated by the Kingdom of Sardinia and France in the Second Italian War of Independence, and was forced to surrender Lombardy to the French Emperor Napoleon III. France, for its part, transferred the territory it had just won to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and thus the end of the unification of Italy was in sight. For the sake of completeness of the historical picture, I will mention that the area of Venice was handed over to Italy only a few years later, in exchange for its participation on the side of Prussia in its war with Austria.

The thematic point that interests me is the handover of Lombardy to Italy in 1859. One day an item caught my eye at a well-known European auction. The title in the auction catalog was:

Sardinian War, 1859: Austria against the Kingdom of Italy - loss of the Kingdom of Lombardy.

Interesting, I said to myself. The Sardinian War is another name for the Second Italian War of Independence, so I should definitely read the auctioneer's description of the item:

23.12.1856, Augsburg- Milan, 2 double 6 red-brown Kreuzer, on a letter weighing up to 1 luth. At that time Lombardy was still part of Austria, and the letter was sent within the Austro-German postal union. The letter passed through Switzerland, and the Swiss Post received 3 kreutzers in return. Arrival stamp of Milan from December 27, 1856.

Nice, I thought to myself. Augsburg is a city in Bavaria. A luth is a unit of weight that was used at that time in Austria, and is equal to 17 and a half grams. The fact that Lombardy was still part of Austria is exactly the heart of the matter for me. I paid 130 euros for the item, to which were added 65 euros in additional expenses (commission, handling and shipping fees), as well as 110 NIS that I paid to customs in Israel.

The item arrived and I excitedly opened it and then I sat down to examine it more carefully. I immediately had questions. The Bavarian stamps are indeed from the 1850s, but I found no sign of the letter passing through Switzerland or of a payment to the Swiss post office in return. Then I noticed that the year on the stamp is 1866 and not 1856 as written in the sale catalog! In 1866 Lombardy was already part of Italy, and the letter had nothing to do with the Sardinian War that ended seven years earlier.

This is the story of two sisters, both deeply in love with one another, but once they were bitter enemies. Their names are Germany and France. Today they live at peace with one another and are leaders of the European Union alliance, but as late as WWII, they were bitter enemies. Their animosity to one another can be traced as far back as Roman times but here we will stick to one specific incident, the 1870 Franco Prussian war.

Before the unification of Germany in 1871, one of the states was the Kingdom of Prussia, led by Otto von Bismark, the same person who was responsible for the unification of Germany. In 1870 a coalition of German states led by Prussia went to war with France and eventually defeated France. The end result was the creation of a unified Germany. In this war Paris and other areas of France were surrounded and were under siege by the coalition forces.

One such area was a fortress named Metz. The French Army of the Rhine was defeated by the Germans at the Battle of Gravelotte on 18th August 1870 and they retreated into the Metz fortress. The fortress was promptly surrounded by German forces. The French thought that they had enough food for about five months but because there were about 170,000 soldiers trapped in the fortress, the provisions only lasted for 41 days. They needed food.

One of the Metz forts under German occupation after the French surrender
By Beato, Felice A. - Image Zeno.org, ID number 2000185254X, Public Domain, Link

So now we have a surrounded fortress with people inside who need to send messages out to whoever, loved ones or request for reinforcements or whatever. So they took out their iPhones and loaded the WhatsApp app and immediately tapped in messages. Oh wait, this is 1870. How do they get messages out? Some people did rely on smugglers to get messages in and out, but this was unreliable and of course unofficial and on the other hand, can you really trust a smuggler?

On September 1st, Major Doctor Papillon, medical assistant in the ambulance of the Guard, was talking

Julien François Jeannel

to the military pharmacist, Julien François Jeannel, and he suggested the use of paper balloons to send messages out of the fortress. Actually ths was the end of his contribution to the system. On September 2nd, Jeannel proposed this method to Chief of Staff, Marshal Bazaine. He scoffed at the idea but enabled Jeannel to build a few balloons for initial testing. He had no confidence in the idea and considered it to be kids' toys.

These initial balloons became known as the "Pharmacists' balloons". From September 5th to 15th, the pharmacists launched 14 hydrogen-filled balloons carrying around 3000 very small letters. They called these letters "butterflies", maybe because the idea came from Doctor Papillon which means butterfly. These letters were constructed of tracing paper coated on both sides with varnish to make them waterproof. Only 7 of the first 14 balloons managed to carry messages to their destination. Today less than 20 letters are currently known. How many balloons were sent on which dates? No one really knows as there were days in which it rained heavily, so it would make little sense to send out a paper balloon.

Although Marshal Bazaine felt that these were toys, they reached their destination and so the senior commander of the Metz Fortress, General de Coffinières, decided to take it under his wing. He approached the Artillery and Engineering Application School to develop a new system and making it available to all, civilians and soldiers. A post office was opened and the mayor of Metz was informed of the official creation of the balloon post. The letters were to be written on "onion skin" paper, and measure only 10 cm x 5 cm. These balloons became known as The balloons of the School of Artillery and Engineering. I wonder why?

Ten balloons were launched by the Engineers between September 16th and October 3rd, each containing several thousands of the butterflies. Marshal Bazaine claimed that a number of the balloons had been captured by the Prussians and discontinued their use as of October 3rd. According to Yvery and Telliers specialized catalog, the total number of letters transported in this way is estimated at 150,000 but less than 125 are currently known.

On 20th October, the food provisions of the fortress ran out and I will not write here about what the French Army ate instead. 27th October, Bazaine was forced to surrender his entire army, simply because they were starving.