Browsing ebay for interesting things and purchased this WWII German POW letter that was written in the Papago Park POW camp here in Phoenix.

If you don't know the story of the camp, there was a "Great Escape" from there in December of 1944.


His rank and name is Obergefreiter Rudolph Yahnke.

Some more info was that Miss ("Fräulein") Liselotte Kröger lived in the apartment of ("bei") Gretel Wilkens, road "General Litzmannstraße" No 110 III. This street name was existent only during 1933 - 45 according to Wikipedia. Before 1933 the street was named "Kleine Gärtnerstraße", after war it has been named "Stresemannstraße".


I had it partially translated and as follows,

"February 8, 1945

Dear Lotti,
Today at your 24th birthday my thoughts have swum to you as so many times before and they only wish you the good and a further long and lucky life. For your lovely regards you transmitted to me by ???? [I can't recognize the name] many thanks. With greeting once again, also to your mother and Hanni,
Rudi"


Pretty cool owning a piece of history from there.

That's really cool.  Even more so that its addressed to my families hometown.

I assume the Red Cross was in charge of handing off the mail between Allied and Axis sides?  Managing the mail between combatants is an interesting bit of history I have never seen explained in a any detail.

I think the Red Cross was in charge of handling from and to a specific location but the military was still in charge of censor and delivery to that Red Cross location.

On the front in the "Do Not Write Here!" section is a Censor stamp in green/blue ink.

PAPAGO PARK Amphitheater  is where I proposed to my first wife in 1972 , a night I still regret.