La Poste France National Deportation Memorial (1956)

LA POSTE FRANCE on 14 January 1956 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated to the National Deportation Memorial. What makes this FDC special is not just the stamp, but the cachet and postmark. The cachet on the envelope shows the camp as it was and the subsequent memorial that was constructed after WWII. The cancellation postmark originated from Natzweiler-Struthof, site of the concentration camp. Finally, the stamp depicts an emaciated internee and the monument at the site. The designer of the stamp was Pierre Lemagny and engraved by Charles Paul Dufresne.

Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily-forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft).The National Deportation Memorial was erected on the site of KL-Natzweiler, formerly known as the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, in Alsace. This complex was the only camp set up by the Nazis on the current territory of France.

 

The main Struthof camp was linked to about 50 satellite camps, mostly in Germany. From 1941 to 1945, more than 52,000 deportees and its commandos were interned here. Their composition and origin varied over the course of the war. Initially prisoners of common law and "German asocials", Russian and Polish prisoners of war were then predominant for a long time. But there were also deportees for political (Communist) or racist (Gypsy, Jewish) reasons, resistance fighters, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses from all over Europe. Women were included as well. Thousands of them died, mostly from exhaustion, abuse or starvation, others lost their lives in so-called medical experiments used to fuel research at the eminent Reich Universität in Strasbourg. The camp was also the place of execution of resistance fighters. The mortality rate there was 40%.The crematorium came into operation in the autumn of 1943. Initially, it was used to cremate killed Jews who had been subjected to medical experiments. In July 1944, four resistance women were executed and cremated. In the night of August 1 to 2, 1944, just before the liberation of Alsace, 106 resistance fighters were murdered and cremated. The same happened with 35 resistance members of the mobile group Alsace-Vosges.

In 1955, the survivors of the camp launched a national campaign to  construct a memorial worthy of the victims. The chief architect of Historic Monuments, Bertrand Monnet, designed a 41 metre high concrete structure clad in white stone from Hauteville. It was shaped to represent the "flame of memory of the deportation which must not be extinguished" and houses the skeletal image of a deportee engraved by the sculptor Lucien Feugniaux.  The statue is inscribed with the caption “To the heroes and martyrs of the deportation, grateful France”. The base of the monument hosts a vault where rests an unknown French deportee buried on 5 May 1957.

The National Deportation Memorial was inaugurated on July 23, 1960 by General De Gaulle, accompanied by two former ministers deported, Edmond Michelet, survivor of Dachau , and Pierre Sudreau, survivor of Buchenwald.

According to the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation approximately 165,000 people were deported from France to the entire Nazi concentration camp system, including:

- 89,000 for the repression of the fight against the occupier (resistants, political opponents, hostages or victims of reprisals), but also homosexuals and common law prisoners. 60% came back

- 76,000 (including 11,000 children) for the implementation of the "final solution of the Jewish question" in Europe. Only 3% survived.

Notable inmates included Boris Pahor, Trygve Bratteli, Charles Delestraint, Per Jacobsen, Asbjørn Halvorsen, Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, Andree Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky. The writer Boris Pahor wrote his novel Necropolis based on his experience.

Source: French Wikipedia