Coming to your Post Office – A Raoul Wallenberg stamp
Australia Post will release a 70¢ stamp in October commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat responsible for saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death camps.
New stamps…Raul Wallenberg is on the right
Approaches had been made to Australia Post prior to 2009 the year Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B’nai B’rith began to plan its 25th Anniversary celebrations. One of its ideas for the anniversary was to finally have an Australian Wallenberg stamp.
The stamp did not happen at that time although Australia Post and Melbourne stamp dealers Max Stern & Co worked together to produce a Raoul Wallenberg Stamp Sheet with 10 generic 60 cent Australia Post stamps on a sheet depicting Raoul Wallenberg and detailing some of his history. This sheet was published in a limited edition of 1,000 nearly all of which have now been sold.
Judi Schiff
Repeated submissions to Australia Post over the years met with rebuffs which stated that Australian stamps could only have Australians on them with the exception of the Queen.
But this did not deter the efforts of Melbourne’s Judi Schiff who was determined that Wallenberg would be recognised by Australia Post.
The concept of making Raoul Wallenberg an Honorary Australian Citizen was born and became a reality in April 2013 announced by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
To pursue the quest for a stamp, Judi Schiff began a Change.org petition which garnered over 520 signatures and the support of four Federal Members of Parliament. The result is that a 70¢ Raoul Wallenberg postage stamp will be released on 5 October 2015, one of three to be honoured in this way, the other two depicting Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela.
Judi Schiff told J-Wire: “This seems a very fitting and satisfactory outcome and brings Australia in line with a number of other countries which have released Raoul Wallenberg stamps in the past: Argentina, Canada, (Budapest) Hungary, Israel, Sweden and the United States.”
