On the surface, each of the cards displayed here represents a simple act of exchange. The Good Conduct Card, issued to prisoners at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp as a reward for work well performed, could be surrendered for an extra bit of food or tobacco. The photographs displayed beside the Good Conduct Card appeared in popular brands of cigarette packages in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Collectors traded them or placed them in albums, much like they do with stamps or baseball cards.
The pre-printed Postcard that completes the group expresses thanks for a package sent by a friend to Russel Steiner, a prisoner in Terezin Concentration Camp. Upon deeper reflection, however, each card tells a more complicated story. The fact that the inhabitants of Flossenbürg had to rely on a good conduct card for an extra bite of bread is deplorable, as is the realization that, as a prisoner, Russel Steiner probably never received the package for which he sent thanks. The only personal handwritten words “My dear friend,” added above to the standardized message make this recognition even more poignant. This Postcard is typical of similar cards we know of which were disseminated among prisoners to send to family and friends and which described the concentration camps as happy, idyllic locales. Postcards distributed to prisoners at Auschwitz indicated that they were sent from a place called Waldsee, a word meaning “a woodland lake,” in German. These cards contained messages such as “I am doing fine,” “I have found work here,” or even “Follow us here!” Often these messages, if not pre-printed, were dictated to prisoners by SS soldiers minutes before the authors were sent to the gas chambers. Sometimes, prisoners attempted to signal their deceit to the recipients of the postcards. In two such cards, displayed in a 2006 postcard exhibit in Budapest, the authors, Jozsef and Samuel Stern, signed their names as Joseph R’evim (Hebrew for “hungry”) and Samuel Blimalbiscj (Hebrew for “without clothing”). Similarly to the Postcard, the Cigarette Cards also reinforce the deliberate fiction that the Nazis fabricated and forced upon those living under their regime.
Along with glorifying images of Nazi leaders and the contemporary German state, the Cigarette Cards included texts that familiarized collectors with Nazi initiatives. Sixty years later, the images seem hollow, recognizable as propaganda perpetuating the myth of the Nazi Party as a benevolent government.
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