William Kaczynski collection

<strong style="text-decoration-color: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ff0000; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: left;">This material has been digitised. Readers should book a reading room terminal to access it.</strong> William Kaczynski (1936-2019) was born in Germany to Martin and Edith Kaczynski. The family fled to England in 1939, after which William was interned with his mother and brother at Rushen internment camp on the Isle of Man as enemy aliens. A letter from his cousin, Wolfgang Happ, who was interned in Canada, sparked William Kaczynski’s interest in items documenting the postal history of the Holocaust. He built his collection of related material, both buying items at auctions and receiving donations from surviving correspondents and families. Ultimately the collection was used to illustrate his book Fleeing from the Führer: A Postal History of Refugees from the Nazis (2011, the History Press). The collection is currently on loan to the library from the Lewis 2013 Trusts (part of Schorr collection). <p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><strong>Readers need to reserve a reading room terminal to access this digital content.</strong></span></p><p>Material collected by William Kaczynski, which served as the basis for <em>A Postal History of Refugees from the Nazis</em>, published as <em>Fleeing From the Führer</em> (the History Press, 2011). Includes letter covers, correspondence, ephemera, and photographs, alongside some contextual material from Kaczynski’s collection process and exhibition. Includes documents relating to internment camps, concentration camps, displaced person camps, undercover mail and addresses, refugee and relief organisations, as well as significant events and individuals.</p> Open