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WWII Censor cover, Karachi to Athens 1941
We were given this letter because we were known to collect postal history, and we found it intriguing. The letter was dated inside Karachi, 25.3.41 and addressed to what looks like
Stassa Poulockis
Sth Y Metanes 39 New Smyrna
Athens, Athinai Greece
There are four postal markings on the front of this cover and they are all more or less legible, but as this is well beyond our area of knowledge we cannot explain them. If anyone reading this page knows about them, we would be pleased to hear from you.
On the reverse of the envelope there are four different postal markings, including the RETURN TO SENDER, with a red circle around the address which looks like
From H C Issigonis
Mary Road
Karachi Brit. India
Enclosed in the envelope was a hand written letter and three small black and white photographs. One page of the letter is written in English, but the other three pages are written in Greek. A member of the Stamp Community Chatboard kindly translated these letters for us, but because they are less than 100 years old, (and therefore the privacy element), we have not put these translations on our website.
We were surprised that a letter from Karachi to Greece would have been through Egyptian Censorship, but this was during the Second World War, and the Allied forces withdrew to Egypt and later engaged the Germans at El Alamein. We cannot tell whether this would have been the reason, as there is no onforwarding address to suggest why it would have been opened by the Egyptian Censor. The letter was obviously read by a censor, who must have been able to read Greek, as two lines of the letter have been obliterated, making it impossible to read or even guess what has been censored.
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