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Front: Tan paper, folded in half. One side has the addressee written on black dotted line in pencil. Red postage stamp of Hitler's profile in right corner with Stutthof circular stamp on top of it. Other half has the prisoner's name,number and block filled in on black dotted line next to some German text, with something written in German in pencil written underneath. Back: Top has a block of German printed text in black with the title: "Auszug aus der Lagerordnung". The date is stamped in purple above, along with a pencil 9. The message is written in pencil in German on dotted black lines.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Stutthof was the first concentration camp complex outside of Germany prior to 1937 boundaries. It had its origins in an internment camp for civilians before becoming a labor camp. In 1942 Stutthof became a concentration camp, with crematorium and gas chamber added the next year. Conditions were brutal, typhus was common. Sick prisoners were gassed (with Zyklon B after 1944) or given lethal injections. Prisoners were slave laborers in local SS-owned businesses. Professor Rudolph Spanner developed a method for harvesting bodies to produce soap. He called the product R.J.F.. or, translated from the German Reines Judische Fett, Pure Jewish Fat.
8 3/4 x 5 1/2"
"Censored Formulary Letter from Prisoner at Stutthof Concentration Camp" (1943). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2014.1.317.