IF YOU NEED INDIVIDUAL STAMPS RATHER THAN THE WHOLE SET PLEASE WRITE TO ME AND I WILL LIST THEM SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY.
SOLIDARITY STAMPS WERE PRINTED ON WHATEVER PAPER WAS AVAILABLE AS BETWEEN 1982 AND 1990 EVERYTHING WAS SCARCE IN POLAND. THIS GIVES RISE TO VARIETIES WHICH ARE DISTINGUISHED BETWEEN BY THE DISCERNING SPECIALIST.
AS FAR AS I AM AWARE, BASED ON THE MATERIAL I HAVE PERSONALLY SEEN, THIS ISSUE EXISTS ONLY ON ONE KIND OF PAPER
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SCAN IS A STOCK SCAN. YOU WILL RECEIVE STAMPS OF A SIMILAR QUALITY
THIS PROPAGANDA STAMP SET WAS ISSUED BY THE POLISH UNDERGROUND SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT AS A DIVERSIFICATION STATEMENT AGAINST MARTIAL LAW WHICH HAD BEEN DECLARED BY THE COMMUNIST AUTHORITIES IN POLAND. IT IS A VERY RARE AND COLLECTABLE ITEM . THE UNDERGROUND MEMBERS WHO ISSUED THIS STAMP RISKED A LOT, BECAUSE IF CAUGHT THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPRISONED WITHOUT TRIAL.
THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO OWN A UNIQUE PIECE OF HISTORY. IT IS A MUST FOR EVERY SERIOUS HISTORIAN AND COLLECTOR OF THIS PERIOD AND WILL MAKE AN INTERESTING ADDITION TO YOUR COLLECTION.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced the introduction of martial law in a speech first broadcast on radio and television at 6:00 am on December 13, 1981. In order to isolate members of the opposition (from the Solidarity movement), 52 internment centers were created. A total of 10,132 internment orders were issued against 9,736 people during the period of martial law.
The Madonna of Kosielsk was created by the Sculptor Tadeusz Zielinski – prisoner of war (1940-42) in the Kozielsk (one of the Katyn Massacre sites) and Griazowiec Camps in the former Soviet Union (USSR). One of only 448 survivors from 14,500 Polish Officers who were prisoners of War in the former USSR. The work was created by Zielinski in secret and using steel rods as tool. This picture was donated to the Polish Hill River Church Museum in the USA by Hanna Paszkowska whose father was also one of the survivors. Tadeusz Zielinski carried this picture with him out of the prisoner of war camp and throughout various battle fields in Europe. The Katyn Forest Massacre, was a war crime mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the Soviet secret police NKVD under the orders of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Politburo in April–May 1940.The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, 6,000 police officers, with the rest being Polish intelligentsia arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests." Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943.The revelation led to the end of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the London based Polish government-in-exile. The Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the perpetration of the killings by the NKVD. The modern Polish investigation of the killings covered not only the massacre at Katyn forest, but also the other mass murders in surrounding areas. Polish organisations, such as the Katyn Committee and the Federation of Katyn Families, consider the victims murdered at the locations other than Katyn as part of the overall massacre.
