Random Stamps from Germany

 

Deutsche Bundespost "Internationales Jahr Des Friedens"

 

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 20 June 1986 released a first day cover stamp called "Internationales Jahr Des Friedens" (International Year of Peace). Cacellation postmark originated from Bonn.

Deutsche Bundespost "Bedeutende Gebäude der Geschichte der BRD"

DEUTSCH BUNDESPOST on 20 June 1986 released a block set of stamps entitled "Bedeutende Gebäude der Geschichte der Bundes Republic Deutschand" (Landmarks of the Federal Republic of Germany). A total of 7,999,000 stamp sets were printed using the offset method. Postmark cancellation originated from Bonn. The stamps included:
- Museum Koenig in Bonn
- Reichstag in Berlin
- Bundeshaus in Bonn

Deutsche Bundespost Rollenmarken-Dauerserie Sehenswürdigkeiten

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 12 January 1989 issued their "Rollenmarken-Dauerserie Sehenswürdigkeiten" (Series of Definitive Stamp Roll Depicting Landmarks, Personalities and Artifacts). Shown on this first day cover with Bonn cancellation postmark:
- Nofretete Berlin
- Bremer Roland
- Schleswiger Dom
- Bronzekanne Reinheim

Deutsche Bundespost Franz Liszt

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 20 June 1986 issued a first day cover stamp marking the centenary death anniversary of Franz Liszt  (1811—1886). Rothacker executed the graphic design. This .80 pfennig stamp features a Bonn cancellation postmark.

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the Romantic era. He gained renown during the early nineteenth century for his virtuoso skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Frédéric Chopin, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Joachim Raff, Mikhail Glinka, and Alexander Borodin.

A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School (Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt's musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony.

Source: Wikipedia

Deutsche Bundespost Carl Maria von Weber.

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 20 June 1986 issued a first day cover stamp marking the 200th birth anniversary of   Carl Maria von Weber. Gamaroth executed the performed the graphic design. This .80 pfennig stamp features a Bonn  cancellation postmark.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist, and critic who was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic opera).

Source: Wikipedia

Deutsche Bundespost Hochwasserhilfe

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 19 August 1997 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated to "Brandenburg Flood Aid 1997" (Hochwasserhilfe). It featured an outline of the Federal Republic of Germany with inset of Brandenburg. Additionally, it included  the Brandenburg Coat of Arms.  Cancellation postmark originated from Bonn.

Deutsche Bundespost Europäische Satellitentechnik

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 20 June 1986 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated to European technique of space satellites (Europäische Satellitentechnik). Haase executed the graphic design. This .80 pfennig stamp featured a Bonn cancellation postmark.

Donetsk People's Republic & Luhansk People's Republic (Russia) Stamps and Postcard

RUSSIAN STAMPS AND POSTCARD,  issued in April 2022, purportedly were released by the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). 

That said, this block is not considered to be 'legal' or valid postage since only Russia recognises these regions, not the World Postal Union. Nevertheless they make for interesting momentos of this conflict.

Supposedly the State Unitary Enterprise of the LPR Post put into circulation this block of artistic postage stamps "Don't Leave Our Own!" dedicated to Russia's "special military operation" to liberate the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics.

On the camouflage background of the block stamps, a white letter Z is depicted. This has become a symbol of support for the participants in this special military operation in the Donbas and Ukraine; photographs of hostilities are placed on the margins of the block with the text: "We did not start this war, but we must end it..." Strength V to the truth!", "For the victory!", and "Thank you, brothers!".

The block with the format of 110 mm x 85 mm was issued with a circulation of three thousand copies. Block price - 77 rubles. The stamp format is 45 mm x 35 mm.

As for the postcard, the babushka with the old Soviet flag and Red Army in the background says a lot about the Russian mindset in the current Russo-Ukrainian War.

Don't get me wrong. My interest is purely a philatelic and historical one, nothing political, nothing more.

 

Republic of the Congo

REPUBLIQUE DU CONGO "Oiseaux & Disney" (Birds and Disney: Beauty & the Beast) stamps with cancellation postmarked Brazzaville were issued in 2010. This is a rather odd thematic combination. A collector/seller gave this freebie when I purchased a first day cover of the Anglo Zulu War.

Polish Post 60th Death Anniversary of Witold Pilecki

POLISH POST honoured Witold Pilecki in 2008 on a postal stationery card that marked the 60th year of his death. The following  year, in 2009, Pilecki and other Polish Auschwitz survivors  were honoured in a series of postage stamps.

Witold Pilecki (13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948 (codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.

In 1939 he participated in the unsuccessful defense of Poland against the German invasion and shortly afterward, joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement. In 1940 Pilecki volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in order to infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp.

At Auschwitz he organised a resistance movement that eventually included hundreds of inmates, and he secretly drew up reports detailing German atrocities at the camp, which were smuggled out to Home Army headquarters and shared with the Western Allies.

Pilecki's  resistance movement built a home-made radio transmitter to broadcast details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp and the conditions of the inmates. The radio transmitter was built by camp inmates in 1942. The secret radio station was built over seven months using smuggled parts. It broadcast from the camp until the autumn of 1942, when it was dismantled by Pilecki's men after concerns that the Germans might discover its location.

 The information provided by Pilecki was a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or that the Home Army would organise an assault on it from outside.

On the night of 26–27 April 1943 Pilecki was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, and he and two comrades managed to force open a metal door, overpower a guard, cut the telephone line, and escape outside the camp perimeter. They left the SS guards in the woodshed, barricaded from outside. Before escaping they cut an alarm wire. They headed east, and after several hours crossed into the General Government, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans. The men fled on foot to the village of Alwernia where they were helped by a priest, and then on to Tyniec where locals assisted them. Later, they reached the Polish resistance safe house near Bochnia, owned, coincidentally, by commander Tomasz Serafiński—the very man whose identity Pilecki had adopted for his cover in Auschwitz

After escaping from Auschwitz, Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. Following its suppression, he was interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp. After the communist takeover of Poland he remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile.

In 1945 he returned to Poland to report to the government-in-exile on the situation in Poland. Before returning, Pilecki wrote Witold's Report about his Auschwitz experiences, anticipating that he might be killed by Poland's new communist authorities. In 1947 he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and, after being subjected to torture and a show trial, was executed in 1948.

Source: Wikipedia

USPS Distinguished American Diplomats - Hiram Bingham IV

USPS on 30 May 2006 issued a commemorative 39 cent stamp honouring Hiram Bingham IV in its series of Distinguished American Diplomats. Hiram Bingham IV (1903-1988) was one of six distinguished American diplomats featured. The first day cover postmark cancellation originated from Washington, DC. This multicoloured stamp was printed using a photogravure method, by Avery Dennison

Most people are aware of Swedish diplomat Raul Wallenburg and his exploits, but probably not Bingham and the 347 diplomats who often defied the policies of their respective governments to issue visas, passports and similar documents to refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and Nazi occupied countries.

 

Bingham began his career in China, where he saw communism begin to take over the country.  He later served in Poland and England.  In 1939, Bingham was transferred to the US Consulate in Marseilles, France.  The following year, Germany invaded the country and set up a Nazi-friendly government.  The thousands of refugees who had fled to France in previous years were forced into internment camps.

At this time, the U.S. State Department discouraged its diplomats from granting visas to the refugees.  After touring the camps and observing the poor conditions of the occupants, Bingham decided to defy orders and began helping refugees escape France.  He issued Nansen passports, travel documents for refugees who could not get passports from their home country.  Word spread of the vice consul’s efforts.  Martha Sharp, an American rescue worker, wrote this about Bingham: “I am proud that our government is represented in its Foreign Services by a man of your quality… I believe that such humane and cooperative handling of individuals is what we need most coupled with intelligence and good breeding.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department did not view Bingham’s actions in the same positive light.  In 1941, he was moved to South America.  While stationed in Argentina, he helped find Nazi war criminals that had escaped to the country.  Bingham resigned from the Foreign Service in 1945.

The former diplomat moved to a farm in Connecticut to raise his family.  His wife and 11 children “never knew why his career had soured,” according to his youngest son.  After his death on January 12, 1988, the story was revealed when the family found a dusty bundle hidden in a closet.  The letters, documents, and photographs told the story of Bingham’s rescue of more than 2,500 Jews in ten short months.

Since that time, the United Nations and the state of Israel have honoured Hiram Bingham IV.  His children accepted the Constructive Dissent award on his behalf in 2002.  The family donated the documents to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and some of them were part of a traveling exhibit called Visas for Life: The Righteous and Honorable Diplomats.  In 1998, one of Bingham’s sons began asking the US Postal Service to issue a stamp in his father’s honour.  That goal was realised in 2006 when Bingham was featured as part of the Distinguished American Diplomats Series.

Source: United States Postal Service

Deutsche Post Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mauthausen

DEUTSCHE POST in the former German Democratic Republic on 5 September 1978 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Mauthausen. This multicoloured stamp measured  55 x 33 mm. Lothar Grünewald designed the stamp. Deutsche Wertpapierdruckerei (VEB) printed 3,500,000 stamps using the photogravure method. It was valued at 35 Pf. - East German pfennig. Postmark cancellation for this FDC originated from Berlin.

    

Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany.

Political opponents and groups of people labelled as ‘criminal’ or ‘antisocial’ were initially imprisoned here and forced to work in the granite quarries. In 1938, the SS transferred the first prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. During this phase, the prisoners, who were all Germans and Austrians and all men, had to build their own camp and set up operations in the quarry. Their daily lives were shaped by hunger, arbitrary treatment and violence. Later in the war, women were transferred here and were increasingly used as forced labourers in the arms industry.

When the US Army reached Gusen and Mauthausen in May 1945, some prisoners were in such a weakened state that many still died in the days and weeks after liberation. Of a total of around 190,000 people imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps over seven years, at least 90,000 died.

United Nations Post Cessation of Nuclear Testing

UNITED NATIONS POST on 23 October 1964 issued a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty stamp. It was  a black and red stamp, designed by Ole Hamann of Denmark, a member of the Secretariat staff. It depicted a symbolic padlock attached to a cloud from a nuclear explosion. The padlock bears the United Nations emblem and the words "Cessation of Nuclear Testing." The nuclear testing stamp was printed in Czechoslovakia in a quantity of 2,600,000.

The General Assembly adopted a resolution in 1961 declaring the use of nuclear weapons to be contrary to international law, the U.N. Charter, and the laws of humanity. It was an important step toward disarmament which eventually achieved the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1963.  More than 100 countries agreed to prohibit nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater.

At the time, it was the second consecutive United Nations stamp to depart from the pleasant and brightly coloured motifs traditionally used. The other stamp, created the previous month in 1964, was devoted to international narcotics control. It showed three hands reaching out for a dripping opium poppy.

South Africa Post Centenary of the Anglo-Zulu War (1879 - 1979)

SOUTH AFRICA POST on 25 May 1979 issued four stamps marking the Centenary of the Anglo-Zulu War (1879 - 1979). The stamps include: the Battle of Isandlwana, Battle of Rorke's Drift, Battle of Ulundi and British commendations awarded during the war. Postmark cancellation originated from Rorke's Drift. The first day cachet depicted King Cetshwayo of Zululand and British Lieutenant General Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford.

When the British succeeded the Boers as rulers of Natal in 1843, they encountered a hostile Zulu people led by King Cetshwayo. In 1878, the British laid claim on the whole of Zululand and demanded that King Cetshwayo submit to British rule. He refused and Great Britain launched an attack, starting the Anglo-Zulu War where the British initially suffered a high number of casualties. The battle at the Isandlwana Mountain on 22 January, 1879 was particularly disastrous for the British where 20,000 Zulu soldiers overran the British army camp. The British army was routed with more than 2000 causalities. At first, the Zulu victory shocked the British; however England decided to send more troops and the Anglo-Zulu War continued with heavy losses of life on both sides. In 1887, the British defeated the Zulus, and annexed Zululand and declared it a British Colony. With the discovery of gold in the region, and the further encroachment of the Boers, Zululand was annexed into Natal on 31 December 1897.

Deutsche Post Buchenwald Memorial

DEUTSCHE POST in the former German Democratic Republic on 8 September 1956 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated to the Buchenwald Memorial.  The maxicard shown here depicts the Buchenwald Bell Tower at the memorial. The FDC cancellation postmark of this red .20 pfennig stamp originated from Weimar.

The Buchenwald concentration camp, officially known as KL Buchenwald, was one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. It was operated between July 1937 and April 1945 on the Ettersberg near Weimar as a prison for forced labor. A total of around 266,000 people from European countries were imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp during this period. The death toll is estimated at around 56,000, including 15,000 Soviet citizens, 7,000 Poles, 6,000 Hungarians and 3,000 French.  When the 3rd U.S. Army approached on 11 April 1945, the prisoners took over control of the camp from the withdrawing SS.

Israel Post Diplomatic Rescurers During The Holocaust

ISRAEL POST in 2005 honoured a handful of diplomatic rescuers who saved thousands of Jews and other refugees from Nazi concentration camps between 1933 till 1945.  Left to right, they were Giorgio Perlasca, Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Carl Lutz, Chiune Sugihara and Selahattin Ülkumen.

Diplomats, consuls and foreign officials were in a unique position to extend significant help to Jewish refugees.  Many diplomats used every nuance in their regulations in order to keep Jews from entering their countries.  Yet a few defied their countries policy to save Jews.

Giorgio Perlasca
When asked why he did it, Italian-born Giorgio Perlasca who became the Spanish chargé d’affaires in Budapest said simply:  “Because I could not bear the sight of people branded as animals.  Because I couldn’t bear to see children killed.  I think it was this.  I don’t think I was a hero.”

Dr. Aristides de Sousa Mendes
By issuing visas to Jewish refugees, some were acting contrary to the explicit orders of their governments and superiors.  Doing this put them at direct risk to their careers and, in some cases, even their lives.  After issuing thousands of visas to Jewish and other refugees in Bordeaux, France, in June 1940, Portuguese Consul General Aristides de Sousa Mendes explained:  “My government has denied all applications for visas to any refugee.  But I cannot allow these people to die..I am going to issue [a visa] to anyone who asks for it...Even if I am discharged I can only act as a Christian, as my conscience tells me.”

Soon after issuing visas, de Sousa Mendes was dismissed from the Portuguese Foreign Ministry and was stripped of his rank and pension.  He was forced to sell his home, was ostracised by his friends, and suffered two strokes that left him partially paralyzed.  De Sousa Mendes had no regrets:  “If so many Jews can suffer because of one person [Hitler], then one Christian can suffer for Jews.”  In 1954, de Sousa Mendes died in poverty.

Carl Lutz
Swiss Vice Consul Carl Lutz led the "largest diplomatic rescue operation of World War II," according to historian Xavier Cornut, president of the Society for Swiss History, which studies the subject. He represented the interests of not only Switzerland but countries that had severed diplomatic relations with Hungary, including the United States and Great Britain. Unwilling to abandon the fate of hundreds of Jews crowding daily in front of the Swiss legation, he developed letters of protection, using the 7,800 certificates received from Great Britain for emigration to Palestine. The letters of protection, always numbered from 1 to 7,800, were distributed to prevent the deportation. 

Another feat was to extend diplomatic protection to 76 buildings in Budapest where Jews were housed, fed and supported. The Jewish Council for Palestine, now the "Emigration Department of the Swiss Legation," was located at 29 Vadasz Utca, in the "Glass House," which now houses a small museum. His life was also shaken on a personal level by the meeting with Magda Grausz, who had come to ask him for protection for herself and her daughter Agnes, and whom he would employ in his residence. He would marry her in 1949.

Until the fall of 1944, when the fascist Arrow Cross Party took power, Carl Lutz worked with the support of his then wife Gertrud. He even hid Jews in his black Packard and participated in the columns forced to march to the Austrian border. In total, more than half a million Hungarian Jews perished, 120,000 survived. The Swiss action, headed by Carl Lutz, helped save several tens of thousands of men, women and children.

He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1964 became the first Swiss to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. He died in Bern on February 13, 1975.
 

Chiune Sugihara 

The Japanese Consul, Chiune Sugihara, who saved Jews in Kovno, Lithuania, said:  “Those people told me the kind of horror they would have to face if they didn’t get away from the Nazis and I believe them.  There was no place else for them to go....If I had waited any longer, even if permission came, it might have been too late.”

Selahattin Ülkumen
Turkish and Greek Jews were deported to death camps from the island of Corfu. But on the island of Rhodes, Turkey’s Consul, Selahattin Ülkümen, saved the lives of up to 50 people, among a Jewish community of some 2,000 after the Germans took over the island. Turkish diplomat Selahattin Ülkümen is once said to have responded: “All that I did was follow my obligations as a human being.”

After more than 60 years, some 347 diplomats have been identified and honoured in the exhibit have yet to be recognised or rehabilitated in their own countries.  In the years after the war, many diplomats and their families suffered retribution and economic hardship for their courageous actions. 

Israel Post Death Anniversary of Anne Frank

ISRAEL POST on 19 April  1988 issued a stamp marking the 43rd death anniversary of Anne Frank (1929-1945). The stamp on the First Day Cover cancellation postmark  presents Anne’s name written in the secret code she invented herself in order to hide potentially threatening or too intimate recordings in her diary from prying eyes.

Anne received the diary for which she became famous on 12 June 1942, and began writing in it on 14 June. It was actually a red checked autograph book for which she decided would be used as a journal. Later, she switched to two notebooks after the autograph book was full, finally resorting to about 360 pages of paper.

Anne rewrote her diary in 1944 after hearing a call on the radio for people to save their war-time diaries in order to help document the suffering of the Nazi occupation once war was over.

Anne’s full name was Annelies Marie Frank. She was born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany to parents Otto and Edith. She had an older sister Margot.

The Frank family went into hiding after Margot was summoned to a work camp in 1942. They spent two years hiding in the Secret Annex above Otto's offices, on P rinsengraacht 263, in Amsterdam. It was the same annex that was featured on the Israeli first day cover cachet and stamp (shown here).

The Franks were soon joined by Hermann and Auguste van Pels with their son Peter (the boy Anne was to fall in love with), and Fritz Pfeffer, a German dentist.

The residents of the annex were arrested on 4 August 1944, after spending two years and 35 days in hiding. It has been thought that someone called the German Security Police but the identity of this caller has never been confirmed. A new theory suggests that the Nazis may in fact have discovered the annex by accident while investigating reports of fraud and illegal employment.

The residents of the annex were first taken to Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands, followed by the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. At this point the men and women were separated – Anne staying with her mother and sister. A few months later the two girls were taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Both Anne and Margot are believed to have contracted typhus and died around the same time, just a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Only their father Otto survived, and subsequently had her diaries published in 1947.

Poczta Polska 40th Death Anniversary of Maximilian Maria Kolbe

POCZTA POLSKA on 10 October 1982 issued a first day cover stamp marking the 40th death anniversary of Maximilian Maria Kolbe. The multicolour stamp depicted him in concentration uniform with red triangle badge (designating political prisoner) and his serial number 16670. The postmark cancellation originated from Warsaw and also displayed the 'P' triangle, serial number and barbed-wire. Poland has released at least two additional stamps dedicated to Kolbe; Germany and San Marino have each issued a stamp of him.

Maximilian Maria Kolbe (born Raymund Kolbe; also Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, 1894 – 1941), venerated as Saint Maximilian Kolbe, was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the Auschwitz concentration camp, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

Franciszek Gajowniczek was a captured Polish army argent who was transferred to Auschwitz on 8 October 1940. He and Kolbe met as inmates in May 1941. When a camp prisoner appeared to have escaped, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch ordered that ten prisoners die by starvation in reprisal. Gajowniczek (prisoner number 5659) was one of those selected at roll-call. When priest Maximilian Kolbe heard Gajowniczek cry out in agony over the fate of his wife and two sons, he offered himself instead, for which he was later canonized. The switch was permitted.

According to an eyewitness, who was an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After they had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe remained alive. Subsequently, Kolbe was put to death with an injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection.

As for Franciszek Gajowniczek, he dedicated the remainder of his life recounting the heroic act of love by Maximilian Kolbe. His first wife died in 1977. His two two sons died under Soviet bombardment in 1945. And he passed away in 1995 at age of 93.

Israel Post Commemorative of Dr. Janusz Korczak

ISRAEL POST on 26 December 1962 issued a first day cover stamp honouring Dr. Janusz Korczak. The designer was O. Adler. The postmark cancellation originated from Jerusalem. The first day cover cachet on this maxi card depicts Dr. Korczak with orphans and barbed-wire background.

Besides Israel, Dr. Janusz Korczak has been featured in commemorative issues from Poland and Germany.

Dr. Janusz Korczak was a prominent Polish educator, children's author, doctor and social activist -- one truly outstanding man who refused to save his life, not once but three times for the sake of others. After the Nazis took control of Poland in September 1939, Korczak received offers of refuge but refused to leave his young charges, who were forced into the Warsaw ghetto. And when those 200 or so children were rounded up for deportation to the Treblinka concentration camp, Korczak famously accompanied them in a dignified march to the train station. Most of them, including Korczak, perished in Treblinka.

Palestian Authority Post Gaza–Jericho Peace Agreement/Nobel Peace Prize

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY POST on 10 April 1995 issued a commemorative stamp marking the Gaza–Jericho Peace Agreement between Israel and and the PLO. The cancellation postmark originated from Gaza–Jericho. The stamp and cachet of the this first day cover issue depict Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony on 13 September 1993.

Negotiations concerning the agreement, an outgrowth of the Madrid Conference of 1991, were conducted secretly in Oslo, Norway, hosted by the Fafo institute, and completed on 20 August 1993; the Oslo Accords were subsequently officially signed at a public ceremony in Washington, D.C., on 13 September 1993, in the presence of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and U.S. President Bill Clinton. The documents themselves were signed by Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO, foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher for the United States and foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev for Russia.

The Gaza–Jericho Agreement, officially called Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area, was a follow-up treaty to the Oslo I Accord in which details of Palestinian autonomy were concluded.The Agreement provided for limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within five years. Pursuant to the Agreement, Israel promised to withdraw partly from the Jericho region in the West Bank and partly from the Gaza Strip, within three weeks of signing. The Palestinian Authority was created by the Agreement (Article III, Transfer of Authority), and Yasser Arafat became the first president of the PA on 5 July 1994 upon the formal inauguration of the PA.