In 2019, Wayne Zuckerman received an unexpected gift from an Israeli stamp collector. The collector had spent over a year working to locate Wayne in order to give him four postcards. Using a Yad Vashem database and with help from Wayne’s local synagogue in New Jersey, he finally succeeded in reuniting the postcards with the descendant of their original owner. Sent in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the postcards were written by Wayne’s father, Abraham, to fellow Mauthausen survivor Jakob (Yankel) Fuhrer.*
Abraham Zuckerman was born on December 10, 1924 in Krakow, Poland to Wolf Joseph and Anna Zuckerman. He had two sisters, Hella and Dora. His family was observant and spoke Yiddish at home, and Abraham studied at yeshiva. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, Abraham’s family was forced into a ghetto. Abraham was then deported and imprisoned in a series of concentration camps. Eventually, he was selected to work in Oskar Schindler’s factory. His life was protected by this position until 1944, when the Nazis forced Schindler to send half of his workforce, including Abraham, to Mauthausen.
Nevertheless, Abraham Zuckerman survived the war. He was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American forces. He made his way to Bindermichl in Austria, where he met and married Mina Mark. In 1948, the couple immigrated to New Jersey, where they raised three children, Ann (b. 1949), Ruth (b. 1952), and Wayne (b. 1957).
Three of the postcards have the same front image of an SS officer and a tortured prisoner. Of this image, the Israeli stamp collector who worked so hard to find Wayne Zuckerman wrote, “The three other postcards have a horrible illustration of an SS officer and tortured prisoner. This illustration is part of the reason I had to find more information about A. Zuckerman and his friend Yankel Fuhrer. It’s a postcard for the one-year liberation of the camp, yet it is so sad.”
Upon receiving these postcards, Wayne Zuckerman began searching for a repository where they could be accessed for education and research and preserved for future generations. We are grateful that the Museum can serve as that institution.