AUCTION_PLUGIN_SKU_LABEL: 80581

Post-Auction Direct Sale $225.00
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Description

Hungarian Polish internee mail: stampless 11 March 1942 hand-dated bilingual Hungarian & French postage-free Red Cross Prisoner of War postal card, from Anton Borsuk of the Royal Hungarian 1/2 "Polish Technical Labor Camp" (location not revealed - possibly the SZENTGYÖRGYMEZŐ region of the city of ESZTERGOM) to his wife in LEMBERG (LVOV) Poland/Generalgouvernement; the postcard is tied by a 2-line Hungarian text cachet of the unit's command "M. Kir. 1/2. Lengyel Műszaki Munkatábor Parancsnokság" & an additional instructional marking "BÉLLIGERANT INTERNÉ" (belligerant internee); the card is also tied by the round cachet of the Hungarian military censor + 3x other numbered handstamps (probably sorting numbers) & a red German Wehrmacht machine censor - without an index letter, but likely to be "G" for VIENNA, whose office handled mail to/from Hungary. Unusual & obscure postal history: Hungary refused to invade Poland together with Germany in 1939 "due to moral considerations" (foreign minister Pal Teleki); the Hungarian public was friendly towards the Poles and accepted refugees after the invasion. Here, apparently similar to France's policy towards [Jewish] refugees, Poles were enrolled in military formations providing auxiliary support. An ironic circumstance as Hungary was a member of the pro-Nazi Axis alliance. Cursory research suggests that Borsuk may have been Jewish. The only reference this cataloguer has found to this unit is a partial snippet of information that on 1 February 1941 the Polish refugee camp in this locale was renamed the 1/2 Polish Technical Work Camp, and that as late as October 1943 the Hungarian Mickiewicz Society held a Polish-Hungarian celebration in Esztergom; the locale's Jews were rounded up in a ghetto in May 1944 and deported to Auschwitz in mid-June.