UnderMiner
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- Jul 27, 2014
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Was scrounging around the sanitation depot today when a truck dropped off a big pile of demolition debris. Saw lots of very old antique radios and other neat old things mangled throughout the pile of twisted metal rods and cement - likely the contents of an old person's garage. Nearly everything was too damaged for salvage. I sorted around through the pile in hopes of finding something that wasn't destroyed when I found this bronze plaque. The plaque depicts the Polish eagle. An inscription on the bottom reads: "Wolne Miasto Gdansk - Poczta Polska - 1939 Rok" which translated reads: "Free City of Danzig - Polish Post - Year 1939".
Didn't know how much history this plaque represented until I got home and realized the significance - 1939 would have been the last year that the Free City of Danzig existed before the Nazis seized control in the very first major event of World War II - the German invasion of Poland. More strikingly, and I just discovered the history a few minutes ago - a very specific battle took place called the "Defence of the Polish Post Office in Danzig."
It was literally the first major battle of WWII and involved the Polish Postal workers of the Free City of Danzig fortifying the post office and taking on the full force of the German Wehrmacht, SA, and SS as they began their invasion of Poland. The post office was bombarded by artillery, partially blown up with explosives, and then the Germans made the local fire department pump the basement full of gasoline and set it on fire. Out of the 56 Polish defenders within the building 28 lived long enough to surrender only to be executed soon after, 6 defenders managed to escape the building without being captured, and of those 6 only 4 survived to see the end of the war.
In the same article I was reading about the fall of the Free City of Danzig it highlighted the fact that one of the first things the Germans did after capturing the city was to remove all the insignia and symbols of Polish Danzig and put in their place new Nazi symbols.
So from this information I created a theory - this plaque I found today may have actually been removed by the Germans when they invaded the city, then during the war a US soldier or a Polish immigrant to the US simply brought it to New York, left it in his garage, and then half century later the garage was demolished along with its contents and disposed of - leading the relic to me!
Edit: Okay, I just confirmed what this actually is, and man is this something amazing. It is one of possibly a few dozen surviving examples left of the last ever issued coat of arms of the Free City of Danzig post office. These were installed in 1939 on the outside of Danzig post office mail wagons. Every Danzig mail wagon had one. On September 1st 1939, the very first day of WWII, the Germans invaded the city as part of their larger invasion of Poland. The mailmen of Danzig were the only resistance that the Nazis faced. The Main Post office building of Danzig was besieged all day until it fell and the surrendering post workers were executed. The Germans were ordered to remove all the Polish plaques from the city and install new Nazi versions. The Danzig Post Office plaques were removed from the mail wagons and German troops kept them as spoils of war - most being taken back to Germany and displayed as trophies. These wagon plaques were significant as they represented the Danzig post office - the very first adversary the Germans defeated in WWII. 5 years later when Germany was invaded by the American forces, American G.I.'s plundered many German houses and took back with them relics such as these plaques and brought them home to the US as souvenirs. The Polish called these trophies "Hitleryki". This is one of no more than a dozen or so known surviving examples of an original Danzig mail wagon plaque - a relic from the first battle, of the first day, of the first adversary the Germans defeated in WWII.
Nazis invade Danzig and plunder the Polish eagles, replacing them with swastikas:
Stalin with a Polish eagle plundered by the Soviets from the Nazis after WWII:
My Polish Danzig Post Eagle. Pried off a mail wagon by the Germans after the September 1st 1939 'Battle of the Danzig Post Office'. Originally the property of the Danzig postmen who fought back against the Germans on the first day of WWII. Likely brought back to Germany as loot until 1945 when it would have been confiscated by the Allies, eventually coming into the possession of Louie Dorniak, a Polish man who etched his name on the back of the eagle. Somehow the eagle was brought to New York and eventually forgotten and disposed of. Only by chance did I find it so that its story may continue.
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