Note: The symbol ‡ means the site is a backlist, that is, it has a link to this Przedborz website.

Polish and Other Philatelic Societies

• ‡  Polonus Philatelic Society, http://www.polonus.org/. See the Krakow Review and the Krakow Supplement sections to learn a lot about how to use scanners to view overprints, etc. The Krakow sections were originally developed by Michael Melnichak.
•  S-P-P, the Society for Polish Philately in Great Britain, http://www.s-p-p.org.uk/. (According to http://home.golden.net/~medals/stampclubs.html, the S-P-P was formed in 1992 from five precursor organizations, but see footnote 1.)
•  Other Societies.
  •  Polski Zwiazek Filatelistó (PZF). I believe this is Poland's main philatelic society, the analog of the USA's APS.
  • ‡ Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Polen e.V. (BDPh, The German Society of Polish Stamp Collectors).
  • ‡ "Troyak" , The Polish-Canadian Coin and Stamp Club, located in Mississauga, Ontario, a southern suburb of Toronto.
  •  Klub polské známky v České a ve Slovenské republice (The Polish Stamp Club in the Czech and Slovak Republics). Their site is in four languages: English, German, Polish, Czech.
  • Please let me know about other such organizations.
•  Other Relevant Philatelic Societies. (Primarily Russian, Austrian, and German because they all occupied portions of Poland from 1792 to the end of WWI.)
  • The (U.S.) Austrian Philatelic Society ("AUSPS")
  • The (British) Austrian Philatelic Society, ("APSUK") whose editor, Andy Taylor, as been very helpful with some of the history included in this website. Their links are also quite interesting.
  • The (U.S.) German Philatelic Society
  • Germany's Philatelic Federation (the BUND German Philatelic Association)
  • ‡ The Rossica Society of Russian Philately ("Rossica"). Rossica publishes Prigara's book, which includes a major section of the philately history of the Kingdom of Poland, for example.
  • And of course there's the American Philatelic Society (APS) and its sister organization, the American Philatelic Research Library (APRL), whose staff has always been exceptionally helpful, and which is a fascinating place to visit. Their catalog is on-line, and is starting to include the holdings of other philatelic libraries in the U.S. and perhaps Canada.

• Wikipedia's article on Polish Postal History and Stamps is more extensive and comprehensive than this website's, although it has some errors.
• ‡ Stamp Encyclopedia Poland, Ben Nieborg's excellent web site: www.stampspoland.nl/index.html. Curiously, I couldn't find a link to Ben's article on the WWI Warsaw local post (at www.ekpv.nl/verzamelingwarsawtownpost.pdf), but the information seems to be in his section on the Warsaw town post.
• Catalog Poland (or Polonica), by Leo van den Heuvel, is very interesting. Another Netherlands-based site, it's in four languages (Dutch, German, Polish and English) and lists stamps with Polish themes from about 75 countries. http://www.polonica.info
• ‡ StampDomain.com, maintained I believe by Jan Kosniowski (Not Jan Korzeniowski, who's President of the S-P-P), is a general-purpose philatelic website, with some specialized resources for Poland Philately. The Poland resource page lists a variety of internet resources and other Stamp Domain pages. The Philatelic Bibliography of Poland has quite a listing of books, many of which are available from the APRL.

  Kosniowski is also working on a worldwide catalog of Newspaper Wrappers, a draft of which can be downloaded (as of June 2010.) See http://www.stampdomain.com/newswrapper/

• Bill's Bunker is a fascinating site with philatelic, military, and other history in it. There's a lot to explore here! German WWI occupation philately can be found by going to the Home (Site Index) page and scrolling down until you see pictures of stamps.
• John Leach's Encyclopedia of Postal Authorities has something on many countries, although I couldn't find much when I was looking for WWI postal rates using in occupied Poland. But it's worth knowing about. He has a companion site on the early history of Cricket as well.

• Virtual Przedbórz (www.przedborz.com.pl, in Polish). This is quite usable with Google translate (especially when used with Google Toolbar automatic translation), and has many interesting photos, woodcuts, links, etc. It may have the best on-line views of Przedbórz, and is well worth exploring.
•  Town Official Web Site, http://www.umprzedborz.com.pl/, also includes a photo gallery with some of the same photes as virtual przedborz's.
•  Mapofpoland.net's many photos of town: Przedborz photo gallery (The photos are the best part; I didn't find the map very useful for showing the town' s streets, but the map is OK for locating the town.)
• New, Sept 2011: The Przedborzki Słonik Biograficzny (PSB, or Przedborz Biographical Dictionary) is a new and exciting source of information about Przedbórz people. The site is in Polish, but translates well enough with Google Toolbar. It is run by Wojciech Zawadzki, who I believe started the project in Feb. 2008. The site contained almost 200 biographies as of 23 Sept. 2011.

  I don't know what similar projects exist for other parts of Poland.

  Of particular interest for Przedbórz philately are the biographies of
  • Shlomo Abramsohn (or Abramson), the promoter of Przedbórz local delivery stamps,
  • Peter Franczak, the postmaster during the relevant period,
  • Marian Duński, author of articles about Przedbórz philately.
  Thanks to Zdzislaw and Marek Porawski, who I believe were told of this site by Paweł Zięba. Thanks also to Roman Harmel for summarizing certain sections for me.
• The International Civic Heraldry website page on Przedbórz: http://www.ngw.nl/int/pol/p/przedbor.htm. In general this is a good source for coats of arms of cities, but I can't find historical coats of arms (COAs) prior to WWI.

  On the other hand, the World Civic Heraldry Guide is good for historical COAs of larger units such as voivoidships, gubernias, etc. For example, under Russian occupation, Przedborz was in the Radom Gubernia from 1867 (or perhaps 1844), whose COA can be found are http://www.civicheraldry.com/page/7463

• Bagnówka.com has pictures of the Przedbórz Jewish Cemetery, a (poor) additional view of the synagogue interior and other items. There's lots of info about other Polish locations as well. The site is expanding, but is slow to load for me.
• Ovi.com's very attractive slide show of recent photos of Przedbórz.

• Wikipedia's article on Poland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
• the Polonia Media Network®'s POLONIA TODAY® website has a section on Polish History, which gives a very readable synopsis of key events. The Library of Congress country study, reproduced at Info-Poland, seems somewhat less detailed.
• Another web site on Polish History: (sponsored by ancestry.com?) http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~atpc/heritage/history/chronology.html
• The Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA) home page. This includes info on how to buy the Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego on CD and other interesting stuff.
• http://www.jewishgen.org/ has a lot of fascinating general Polish history buried in the introductory articles about individual communities. I don't have a comprehensive list of which ones are particularly good, but they will be gradually added over time. Krakow and Lida District might be good places to start. Click on "KehilaLinks" under research; but some of the other links might be as fruitful. Under databases, be sure to click on "Complete List of Databases" to a sense of the scope of JewishGen.
• PolishGenWeb also has many links to information about specific areas of historical Poland.
• PolishRoots.org has lots of interesting links, which I haven't yet explored. The history links are mostly about the Poles in the U.S., but the military history section is more global. It has links to Słownik Geograficzny, which seems to be only at the Warsaw Catholic University (or something like that.) (I found this site from the Librarian's Internet Index listed below.)
• Furthark's Hanseatic League website is much more broadly informative than the title suggests. Furthark's copyright section is also very interesting. I have no idea who Furthark is, but an internet search comes up with ancient runes, and other esoterica and in-group stuff.
• The Internet Public Library & Librarian's Internet Index were merged and reorganized sometime in 2009, I believe. It used to have topic headings, but now it seems best to simply enter the topic in which you are interested, because it works by search terms rather than topics and subtopics, I think. (Thanks to Eva Ginsburg for originally telling me about the LII.)

• Historyczne mapy Polski, a fabulous set of historical atlases, apparently all to the same scale. It appears to start with the first immigrations of the Slavs from further east, and has a nice way of using the Flash player to fade from one map to the next when you click the button.

  For example, it traces the Mongol invasions in 1241, 1259, and 1287.

  Update: The site is in Polish, but as of June 2010 it seems to work with Google Translate.
  
  Thanks to Tom Malicki for finding this site for me. Tom also provided the following links (and more !!). Some are partially in English, but most are in Polish:
  • http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~polwgw/maps.html, has a lot of interesting maps and links. Much of this site is in English.
  • http://katalog.onet.pl/6934,mapy-historyczne,k.html, looks very interesting, and now (June 2010) seems to work with Google Translate.
  • http://katalog.wp.pl/mapy-historyczne/, also in Polish, seems to have a variety of historical maps from all over the world, including Poland.
• Mapywig (Map Archive for the Military Geographical Institute of Poland (WIG), 1919 - 1939), a fabulous collection of maps. Apparently particularly strong in the period 1919-1939. Includes some town maps with resolution as high as 1:2500! Thanks to Ken Entin for telling me about this site.2
• Avotanu - Maps for sale, often chosen for Jewish Genealogy, but useful for Polish philately: http://www.avotaynu.com/maps.htm
• The PGSA links to on-line maps of counties (powiats) from the 1907 edition of The Illustrated Geographic Atlas of the Kingdom of Poland  (Atlas Geograficzny Illustrowany Królestwa Polskiego). Przedbórz is on the left edge of the powiat Konskie map (#65).
• Euriskodata sells CD's of old maps and other public domain materials. I'm not sure if their CD of Poland maps is available at any given time. The link is to their eBay store, as their own website was out of order when I last checked. Use the search box if you don't want to browse hundreds of listings.
• The 3rd Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary, 1 GB of 1:200,000 maps of much of Central Europe from about 1910. They go to 53° 30' north, somewhat south of the Baltic Sea. Below the map index is a list of sources for most of the individual 1:200,000 maps. Portions of the text seem to be in Hungarian, with most translated into English.
  
  Also note that the longitude is based on the Ferro Prime Meridian system, which as if it is somewhere in the Canary Islands instead of Greenwich, England. You need to add about 17° 39' 24.025" to Greenwich-centered longitude to get the longitude shown on these maps. (It's actually 20° west of the Paris Meridian, which passes through the Paris Observatory.) Thanks to the [British] Austrian Philatelic Society for including this on their list of links.

  If you read Hungarian, try http://www.fomi.hu/honlap/magyar/szaklap/2007/12/1.pdf, or perhaps http://sas2.elte.hu/tg/georeferencia.htm. The first article has an English-language summary at the end. (Apparently the Ferro system was created so that the Paris Observatory would be at median 20° East. There are slightly different versions, probably based on rounding off or making computational errors a few hundred years ago. Maybe some people didn't have the correct location of the Paris Observatory. Who knows?) Click here to read more.

• Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, translation of Pinkas Hakehillot Polin. http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol1_00206.html
• Moshe Verbin's model of the Przedbórz wooden synagogue:
  http://www.zchor.org/verbin/verbin20.htm
• Boris Feldblyum's Przedbórz Synagogue Photos and much more.
• Virtual Shtetl's page on Przedbórz. Virtual Shtetl seems to be a project of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, itself part of the Warsaw-based Jewish Historical Institute Association in Poland. The Przedbórz history section has lots of references, a feature I greatly appreciate. Thanks to Ken Entin for reminding me about this site.
  (Also see footnote 2 on this site's introduction to wooden synagogues.)

• The Jewish Agency's Jewish History Website This has lots of history, but the organizing principle is not at all clear. For example, a search for "Jewish Charter" yields a zillion entries, not sorted chronologically. ("Charter" seemed to work OK, however.)
• Fordham University's Internet Jewish History Sourcebook Very interesting! I don't know its limits yet.
• Edward Victor's website on philately, synagogues, and the holocaust. Click on Holocaust and then scroll down the topics in the left frame. He also has some history on Jews in Poland.
• Abe Chapnick spent time peeling potatoes in WWII Przedbórz, so it must have had at least one forced-labor camp. Read his story. (Warning: Abe's PDF seems to load quite slowly on my computer.)
• The (Lithuanian) Center for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews has a photo gallery of Lithuanian Wooden and Masonry Synagogues (mostly in various states of disrepair) and an interesting set of links, including the Jewish Virtual Library, a portal whose Bibliograhy of Websites includes perhaps 1500+ sites in 24 categories (as of mid-August, 2010.) (I stopped counting at 500, and I wasn't half-way through the list!!!)
• Another interesting portal is the Museum of Family History,a virtual museum with an extensive variety of "exhibits" and links, including pictures of synagogues in Europe and throughout the world, past and present. Finding stuff is not always easy. The search bar helps a lot, but it doesn't appear on all pages. Thanks to Ken Entin for suggesting this site. He also suggested the following which I have yet to explore:

  The Marian Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation	Polish Roots (listed above)	The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP)
  The Polish State Archives, http://www.archiwa.gov.pl/en/	The Center for Jewish History, http://www.cjh.org/	Jewish Records Indexing – Poland, http://www.jri-poland.org/

• The WarChron history of the Eastern Front, including events from about 1894 to 1922. I have the impression that this site is no longer maintained. It's tricky to skip around in. For example, if you wanted to know what happened on 26 Feb. 1915, you would probably have to find the 1915 section, and page forward until you found the date you were looking for.
• The War Times Journal has a concise, readable history of the Eastern Front at http://www.richthofen.com/ww1sum2/. (http://www.richthofen.com/ww1Sum/ is for the Western Front). The site itself is for all war buffs, and has some pretty interesting stuff.
• www.stahlgewitter.com/  This site is in German, but seems to list items from newspapers, official press releases, etc.

  If you don't read German, open up Google Language tools, set it for German to English Translation, and then past the URL into the Translate a Website box. You should be able to page back and forth, just as if you were reading the site in its original language.

• The Austro-Hungarian Army 1914-18, for Collectors of its Postal Items, by John Dixon-Nuttall (this is a reference item on the (British) Austrian Philatelic Society website)
• The Austro-Hungarian Land Forces 1848-1918, by Glenn Jewison & Jörg C. Steiner. This has an extensive list of related links.

• Info-Poland, a so-called web portal, seems to be a joint venture between SUNY-Buffalo and Jagiellinion U. in Krakow, with links to a huge variety of (generally English-language) websites with Polish content. The classroom section has history links, as does the Poland on the web section. The multi-page country guides links to several other web portals, such as Poland.pl.
• The Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (AKA the Lviv Center), a well-done site which seems to have a focus on Lviv (Lvov) and the Ukraine, but with links to Urban Studies around the world.

  One writer (who prefers to remain anonymous) says, "This Center itself has an especially useful online collection of urban plans, mainly from former (east and west) Galicia, from the late 18th century onwards. See http://www.lvivcenter.org/en/umd/maps/. Their Urban Maps Digital site includes about 65 maps. They are currently in the process of scanning and adding more maps. In addition, the Center's web site contains a collection of urban images from the 19th and 20th centuries, a few digital video items, a searchable online catalogue for their library of urban history, and a list of their publications. Their library contains a section of 470 books specifically on Jewish-related topics." (His comments have been slightly edited.)

• Peter Piper's Peck of Polish Philatelic History PDF's. (With apologies to Chris Kulpinsky, but I just couldn't resist.)
• ‡ A fascinating look at the world of forgeries: The Stamp Forgery Guide — be sure to look at the site map.
• One of the Forgery Guide's links is to Fritz Wagner's (no longer maintained?) website on Heligoland. The website has a lot of generally interesting data, such as expertizer's signatures, the BPP standards on where expertizing marks should be placed, etc.
• Another link is to Doc Pepper's website on U.S. newspaper stamps. His section on facsimilies discusses the U.S. Newpaper stamps facsimiles of Gebrüder Senf, which he considers to be the best.
• Two links are about Krakow overprints. One is the Polonus site listed at the top of the page, the other is to Michael Lenke's Krakauer website (in German), which I believe to contain some of the same material, and some material which I believe supplements the Polonus material. (Lenke also contributed to this Przedbórz website, for which I am grateful.)
• Philasearch.com is a German-language website which lists lots of auctions all over the world. I typed in "Przedborz" and found lots of items I'd never seen before, so it can be a good research tool, even if you don't spend the money. (Auction catalogs can serve the same purpose.) (Again, thanks to Roman Sobus.) [There are probably similar websites all over. This is the first one I've used. At least for now, any others I find will be added to the auctions portion of the Internet Philately page.]
• Map of Poland's Przedborz photo gallery has a zillion (105 on 10 March ' 09) photos of Przedbórz. I think they're all pretty recent, but haven't looked at them all. New photos are added from time to time.
• Kartenmeister.com seems to have an database for finding towns if you know at least part of the name in one language. It also seems to have a bunch of maps to download or perhaps purchase. I haven't explored it yet.
• Edward Victor's website on philately, synagogues, and the holocaust. Click on Holocaust and then scroll down the topics in the left frame. He also has some history on Jews in Poland.
• Cinderellas.info, sponsored by Rigastamps, provides a lot of links, etc. about Cinderella Stamps, etc.
• Polonus PURLs (Philatelic URLs): I've been asked to write a column for the Polonus Bulletin about internet and other resources of interest to the Polish Philatelist. With permission of Bob Ogrodnik, Polonus Philatelic Society President, I am posting selected PDFs of these columns, either as published or as drafts for submission to the Publications Committee. Doing so serves several purposes:
  • Provides additional publicity for the Polonus Philatelic Society (maybe)
  • Provides more discussion of some of the above websites and discussion of others not listed above
  • Solicits suggestions for websites to be included in future columns or in this site. (Bernard Paull has already contributed suggestions for future use.)
  Links to the PDFs:
  1. PURLs for Bulletin 539 (June 2010), a warm-up reintroducing the column.
  2. PURLs for Bulletin 540 (Sept. 2010), was about Polish Place names — how to sort out the multiple languages used.
  3. PURLs for Bulletin 542 (March 2011) was on internet computer translation sites. (No PURLs column was written for Bulletin 541.)
  4. PURLs for Bulletin 543 (June 2011) was on Polish Philatelic History.
  5. PURLs for Bulletin 544 (Sept. 2011) was about maps of Poland.
  6. PURLs for Bulletin 545 (Dec. 2011) was about Poland Internet Portals, most of which are listed above.
  Let me know what you think.

• Computer Translation Sites
• Polish-English and other Philatelic Dictionaries
• Separate list of other sites related to Internet Philately.
• ‡ Backlinks, sites which have links to www.prz.ginsburgs.org or some section thereof:
  • Sites listed above, marked by ‡, include:
    - The Stamp Forgery Guide, filatelia.fi, is probably this Przedbórz site's main source of traffic.
    - Stamp Encyclopoedia Poland's section on Przedbórz has a link to this website.
    - Polonus Philatelic's Links Page is probably the second-largest source of visitors.
    - The Rossica Society of Russian Philately ("Rossica").
    - Troyak also lists this site in its other reference sites page.
    
  • Stamps Domain lists this site near the bottom of its Polish Links page.
  • Till Neumann's Klassische Philatelie website (in German) lists this site under Links, Diverse Spezialseiten (Special Sites). You have to scroll down quite a ways.
  • Filatelia e Francobolli (In Italian, Philately and Stamps) lists this site under Polonia (Przedborz).
  • Some eBay™ sellers have mentioned this site so that potential buyers of Przedbórz stamps could assess for themselves whether or not the listed stamps were probably genuine. That's how I was hoping this website would be used. These sellers have included David Kerr's eBay Stamps of Eastern Europe Store, Ron's Covers and Books (docronl), and stisidoreaw.
  • The BDPh, mentioned above, has a section on Przedbórz forgeries, using images from this website, with permission. Thanks to eBay seller 44195244 for telling me.
• About Wikipedia:   Wikipedia is your friend! See Wikipedia's Philatelic Portal and its list of philatelic articles.
  And/But ....
  • Wikipedia is an "open source" (my term) online encyclopedia, which means that anyone can register and add or edit listings.
  • While this may seem to be a good way for collaboratively generating and quality-checking encyclopedic listings, it is also subject to certain criticisms:
    
    I met someone who had written an article on some aspect of Canadian philately. He was quite upset because other people had rewritten his article and introduced many errors.
    
    A historian I know looked at Wikipedia for the first time recently. He was amazed not only at the amount of information that was available, but also at how bad the history was (from his point of view -- and I respect him a lot).

    I discovered that for myself, when I looked up Earl Warren's role in the shameful US WWII relocation of West Coast Japanese citizens. In August, 2009 Wikipedia listed Warren as Governer of California at a time when he was actually Attorney General.
    
    This error was corrected by December 2009, so Wikipedia does have some self-correcting properties. In fact, when I clicked on the article history link at the top of the page, I was astounded to find that the article had been revised an average of ten times a month January through November, 2009!!

  The point of all this is that I have made extensive use of Wikipedia, which introduces an additional source of error. (As if my own weren't bad enough!)