About this Event
Introduction:
On the 5th of May 2025 the Dutch celebrate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands from the German occupation. With the liberation, a five-year tragedy and suffering for the Dutch people had come to an end. The Second World War also meant five years, with many limitations in international postal traffic.
In this presentation Hans will give you a comprehensive overview of the consequences of The Second World War on international postal traffic for the Netherlands. Beginning in September 1939 with the first suspended mails and the introduction of censorship in the belligerent countries, from there on, the measures and restrictions put on the international traffic by the German authorities is explained. A period when more and more restrictions were imposed on the Dutch postal services.
With the entry of the United States in the war, at the end of 1941, the number of international destinations shrunk to only a few countries. In 1944, the last full year of the war, when over 300.000 Dutchmen were forced to work in Germany, postal restrictions were at the peak. After D-day it took six months before the southern part of the Netherlands was liberated.
Due to the unsuccessful Operation Market Garden, it took another five months before the Netherlands were completely liberated. For the Dutch population, these five-months turned out to be the hardest part of the war, international mail almost came to a standstill. In this presentation, the most important effects of the war on the international postal traffic will be illustrated with some of the best items of this period.
The presentation will appeal to anyone; non philatelists interested in modern history especially the Second World War, philatelists young and old, both generalist and specialist in censorship or war related topics. All you need is some appetite to listen for 50 minutes to an interesting mix of history and philately based on extensive research illustrated with some magnificent items of postal history.
Biography:
Hans van der Horst lives in Leiden, Netherlands and has been a philatelist for over 55 years. Like many of us, he started out with stamp collecting in primary school. After collecting Dutch stamps for some years, his uncle gave him a small lot of German covers that turned out to be a correspondence of love letters from a German boy to a Dutch girl from the period 1938 to 1941. That correspondence, with some censored letters, triggered his interest in wartime mail. After collecting worldwide censored mail for some years, he realized that this was too broad, so he specialized in the Netherlands international mail during the Second World War.
Hans is a member of his hometown philatelic society and of the Dutch Postal History society as well as the Dutch Philatelic Academy.
Next to his membership of the RPSL he is also a member of international censorship societies in Germany (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Zensurpost) and in the UK (Civil Censorship Study Group).
He has successfully exhibited at regional, national and international levels.
He has been a four times winner of the Jo Toussaint Tournament (national philatelic presentation tournament). Hans has written articles for various philatelic organizations and has presented many times on the topic of the postal history of the Netherlands in the Second World War.
He is currently the Chairman of the Board of the publishing house of the Dutch monthly “Filatelie”
Event Venue
Online
GBP 0.00
