Living to Tell the Story
The Life and Legacy of Morris Rosen
“I owe it to my fellow inmates from all the concentration camps where I was kept. They did not make it, but I did, and I want the world to remember them.”
— Morris Rosen
A Life of Survival and Memory
Morris Rosen, a survivor on a mission, left this world on December 12, 2020, in his adopted hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. His mission: To be a voice for those who died in the Holocaust.
Morris, born Moniek Rozen in 1922, grew up in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland. He survived one of the darkest chapters in world history, from the ghettos to five different concentration camps and two death marches. He later dedicated his life to speaking of his experiences and carrying the memory of so many people, from his hometown and in concentration camps, who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
“I Remember Everything”
His story of survival is miraculous, and he would share it countless times with audiences, friends, and total strangers.
He often opened his talks by noting, “If I talked for a whole week, it still wouldn’t be enough because I remember everything.”
After learning about Morris’s life, I can understand the difficulty of conveying the history he carried with him.
From Family and Stamps to War and Loss
As one of ten children, Morris’s life was filled with friends and family before the war. His father, Jacob, owned a general store in Dąbrowa until the rising tide of anti-Semitism forced him to close the business in 1938. At that time, the Polish government actively sought to reduce the Jewish population by assisting Polish Jews emigrating to Palestine to form a Jewish state.
On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. Morris recalled waking to airplanes flying over Dąbrowa, bombs exploding near his town. Even though he was just 16 years old, he fled east, making it as far as the Vistula River before advancing German soldiers forced him to return home.
By the time Morris returned, his hometown was already occupied – his family’s possessions, like those of all Jewish families, were confiscated by the Nazis. This included his stamp collection, which he started at nine years old.
A Scaffold, A Lesson in Terror
Jewish residents were forced into labor, and Morris took a job as a carpenter’s assistant. His first job was to build a hanging scaffold in the town center. After the job was completed, the Nazis brought in ten prisoners from a neighboring town, performed a show trial for sabotage, and summarily hung them. Morris once recounted, “This is what they were doing all over Poland.”
Separated and Shipped Out
Morris would work in construction and as a painter until August 1942. Morris recalled that all the Jewish residents were told to assemble, wear their best clothes, and get new identification cards.
Instead, the Nazis sorted the residents into three groups for assignment. Older residents and those deemed too weak for service were deported to the Auschwitz death camp, including Morris’ parents. Not long after, Morris was shipped off to his first transition camp.
Risking Everything to Recover His Past
He arrived at the newly constructed camp to learn his barracks were not even complete. The prison guards confiscated all of the prisoners’ belongings when they arrived, including scores of pictures of Morris’ family, friends, and, as he called it, “a girl he had been sweet on.”
In the middle of the night, Morris escaped from the barracks, jumping a fence that had not yet been electrified, to the barracks where the stolen possessions were stored. After an hour-long search, Morris recovered the photos and returned them to his barracks, storing them in a soup can and burying them.
Death Marches, Freezing Rivers, and Ghosts of the Camps
By 1945, Morris was in the Kittlitztreben concentration camp in Poland. As Soviet troops closed in on the area, the Nazis evacuated the camp and forced the prisoners on a death march to Buchenwald, inside the German border. The 230-mile march in the winter snow would take them through Dresden, which Allied Forces had just bombed.
The prisoners were poorly dressed for the march, which lasted eight hours or more daily through the snow and cold. At night, the prisoners would huddle on the snow to keep each other warm. Morris told the story of reaching the Elbe River, where the prisoners were told to bathe and wash their clothes in the freezing river. When Morris emerged, he broke one of his pant legs, still frozen.
When he arrived at Buchenwald, he encountered “mountains of dead people.” Those who were still alive “looked like movie monsters.”
One More Escape, One More Train
In early April 1945, as U.S. forces marched toward Buchenwald, the Nazis again started evacuating. With an active underground resistance in Buchenwald, Morris attempted to escape and hide. He’d discovered a hole in a barracks wall and climbed inside. Other prisoners attempted the same, only to be found by Nazi soldiers. When they opened fire on the wall, Morris managed to make it out and join the last group of prisoners shipped out by train. In an interview, he noted, with some regret, that if he’d missed that train, he would have been one of the 21,000 prisoners saved by the Sixth Armored Division of the U.S. Army.
Instead, he endured a rough train ride toward Theresienstadt “camp-ghetto” located in what is today the Czech Republic. During the trip on the cramped, freezing train, prisoners would die, and they would throw them off the train at night. Soviet planes targeted trains traveling, ultimately disabling the train he was on and forcing him to take a second march.
Morris finally reached Theresienstadt, which was more of a ghetto than a camp. The ghetto was a “retirement spa” for older Jews and a concentration camp for sending Jews off to their death. By this point in the war, the Nazis refused to feed the prisoners, hoping they would die from starvation instead of executing them. Morris was a prisoner there for two weeks before Soviet troops liberated the camp. By that time, he’d lost his parents and five siblings to the Holocaust.
From Survivor to Entrepreneur
After the war, Morris remained in Europe for four years before immigrating to the United States in 1949. When Morris arrived, he educated himself, first learning English, then going to the Maryland Institute of Art, where he got a degree in interior design. He spoke proudly about starting his own business in Baltimore, Maryland, getting jobs by word of mouth and repeat business.
A Prescription: “So Collect Stamps.”
He married his wife Miriam, and they had two sons. Morris told the story of seeing a doctor for his nerves and anger issues. The doctor prescribed medication, and he took it for two years, but it was not helping him. He went to see another doctor, who told him he was addicted to the pills and had to quit, throwing his pills in the trash. The doctor asked him if he had any hobbies, and Morris responded that he’d collected stamps as a boy.
The doctor said, “So collect stamps.”
Olympic Stamps, Ghetto Mail, and a Mission to Educate
Morris started collecting Olympic stamps, amassing one of the world’s largest and most notable collections. That collection earned him invitations to the Olympic Games every four years. He went on to exhibit those stamps in the U.S. and worldwide, including attending Olympic Games in several countries with his sons.
He also began collecting mail from ghettos and concentration camps. He primarily exhibited mail from the ghettos of Poland. In 2002, he showed his exhibit, “Ghetto Post and Labor Camps in German-Occupied Europe With Emphasis on Ghettos in Poland 1939–1944.”
Keeper of History
He later sold his collection of ghetto mail to Dr. Justin Gordon, an APS Life Member and frequent writer and speaker on the topic. Justin and Morris first met at Ameripex in 1986, where they connected on the Holocaust. Justin showed Morris a cover from the Dąbrowa ghetto, and Morris recognized the young lady who sent it as one of his neighbors. “Morris was a wonderful person. He was very giving with information,” Justin shared with me. “He was what I consider a gentleman.”
A Leader in the Philatelic Community
Locally, Morris joined the Baltimore Philatelic Society in 1960, serving as its president from 1987 to 1993. When he joined, he was either the first or one of the first Jewish members of the club, recalled Phil Sager of Geezer’s Tweezers stamp shop in Maryland. When the clubhouse was downtown, Morris put his talents to work, redecorating and repainting the interior. Not long after joining the BPS, Morris joined the APS, becoming a member in October 1965, membership number 47550, reaching Life Member status.
Sager remembers Morris for his talks at the club, where he showed his ghetto collection and photos from the Holocaust. Morris would stop by the stamp store three times a year, browsing for material. Though he would occasionally pick up an item or two, Sager offered, “He seemed to prefer the European market.”
A Stamp Dealer’s Gift and a Full-Circle Moment
Morris began speaking with community groups and schools, using his philatelic collection to help illustrate his story. In time, Morris got more involved in Holocaust education, preservation, and tracing survivors to reconnect families separated during the war. When the American Red Cross moved its Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center to Baltimore, Morris also volunteered there.
In 1990, when a request came in looking for survivors from Dąbrowa, Morris was called on to translate and pronounce the name. He immediately recognized the name of a boyhood friend, Harry Nordon, living in New York City. They reunited in 1991, embracing in tears and sharing memories of home.
Morris also became a reliable volunteer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He would travel by train from Baltimore to Washington several times a week to work in the translation center, translating Polish to English. He spent more than three decades in service to the museum “to honor the memories of his brothers.”
That work allowed him to meet some impressive people, like Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who, like Morris, had resided at Buchenwald. Wiesel and Morris remained friends until Wiesel passed away in 2017, calling him “dearest friend Morris.”
The President, a Postcard, and a Final Chapter
In 2009, Morris helped lead the prayer during a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in the U.S. Capitol. After the event, he met newly elected President Barack Obama and even got a hug. Morris’ son Jake shared, “When they hugged, Dad said to him, ‘Good luck, you’ll need it’,” leaving the President laughing and smiling. For those who knew him best, that’s Morris.
Ed Rosen (no relation) of House of Zion Stamps knew Morris for 30 years, beginning when they both lived in Baltimore. They kept in touch when Ed moved west. “I just enjoyed his company. He’s a typical survivor. He was so enthusiastic about everything.”
Morris wasn’t just a friend; he was also a customer. Morris’s most amazing find didn’t come until 2020. Ed had a postcard for sale from a young man to his sister from a camp in Poland. Morris came across the postcard in a catalog for an upcoming sale and wanted to buy it. He called Ed and identified the postcard, saying, “I’d pay any amount of money to buy that.”
Ed, intrigued with the statement, asked why. Morris responded, “Because I sent that postcard to my sister, and I’d like to have it back.”
Without hesitation, Ed told Morris he couldn’t buy the postcard but could have it. He pulled it from the sale and shipped it to Morris, completing one of the most impossible journeys in philately.
The Purpose of the Collector
Philately is full of remarkable people and remarkable stories. Morris Rosen is proof that our mission is not simple or unimportant. Many people served as keepers of that postcard until it could be returned to the person who had sent it as a young man. Our purpose is to be more than just collectors but protectors of history.
We don’t just gather artifacts—we preserve memories. Each stamp, postmark, and tattered envelope can carry the weight of a personal journey. In Morris’s case, it was a postcard sent in desperation, one that outlived a war, crossed continents, and eventually returned home.
Philately allows us to preserve the smallest threads of human experience—details the history books often overlook. These tangible reminders are not just relics; they are voices, moments, and lives. By collecting, exhibiting, and sharing these pieces, we ensure that people like Morris, his family, and millions of others are not forgotten.
In that way, the collector becomes a steward of remembrance. And that is no small calling.
When Morris spoke, he closed with a simple request, which I’ll share on his behalf:
“You can see what hate can bring. Be friendly to each other.”
Thank you, Morris, for a life of purpose and powerful lessons in our role in the world.
Editor’s Note: The original story appeared in the April 2021 issue of The American Philatelist.