Gallery

 

In This Report:
White Eagles in the Streets of Danzig, Hans Vogels ...............................................Pages 1, 3-19
Where is the Schleswig-Holstein ? ...........................................................................................20
Attack Plan for the Polish Post Office (from the Archives) .................................................20-25
Letters to the Editor ...........................................................................................................26-28
Background: Excerpt from How War Came, by Donald cameron Watt ............................29-30


Countdown to 1939
Maybe we should apologize for all of the historic articles and notes from the 1930s, but this is the 55th anniversary of the beginning of the conflict, and it is sometimes valuable to re-address the problems that the world faced at that time. There is no way in which we can list all of the events in detail, but Gore Vidal sums this up by saying that superficial knowledge of what you know is better than total ignorance of what you don’t know. We’ll fly to learn as much as is possible in this limited space. Read as many books on the subject as possible; there are plenty of them out there! Background on pages 29/30 shares this.

We owe another special thanks to Hans Vogels for his studies at the Gdansk Archives with Ewa Panas. They always seem to find things that were missed in past publications; such as, the original espionage report on the attack on the Polish post office at Hevelius Place. Later we will see the interrogation transcript of one of the clerks who fought for the defense. Westerplatte is just around the (Five Toots) corner.

Dimitri Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony was recently performed by Dazid Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony, which we thoroughly enjoyed. The political connection, involving this period of the 1930s that are under study, is significant. Simply put, you could not think or publish anything that didn’t reflect the doctrine of Stalin. The year 1939 was the end of Stalin’s paranoid five-year purge of millions of supposed enemies of the state. At the height of the terror, kangaroo courts worked around the clock, and as many as 1000 a day were shot in Moscow alone. Artists, poets and musicians were objects of suspicion. Ian MacD onald writes that Shostakovich lay awake evety night, listening for a car outside, of boots thudding on the stairs or the sharp rap on the door. To counteract the political pressures, the Sixth is loaded with ironic tunes and, finally, a wild can-can. As MacDonald states, “the Soviet authorities had demanded light music and they were getting light music - with a vengeance! Listen to it with this 1930s context in mind.

Activities in 1994
REMEMBER the big OPS Convention at Hunt Valley, north of Baltimore, over the Labor Day
week-end! For your Prospectus and Room reservation card, Contact Steve Dembo, 6112 Deer Park Road, Reisterstown MD 21136. (If you arc flying in, Use BWI airport.) Steve’s phone number is (410) 526-3932.AIso note the Donaucschingen excursion starting on Sept.21st and the Germany & Colonies Philatelic Society convention in Newcastle September 23-25. A BIG philatelic year!

 

Danzig Report Vol. 1 - Nr. 83 - April - May - June - 1994, Page 2.