Ken Lawrence & the History of the Nazi Scourge Exhibition
Acquisition of the Nazi Scourge Exhibition
Ken Lawrence was born and raised in Chicago. In the fall of 1960, at the age of 17, he traveled to Atlanta to attend the conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and witnessed the emerging civil rights movement firsthand. The following spring, after his second year of college, Ken left school to become a full-time activist.
Ken moved to Mississippi in 1971 to work full time as an organizer, writer, and supporter of peace, labor, and civil rights struggles. From 1971 to 1975, he was the Deep South representative of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and correspondent for The Southern Patriot, a monthly civil-rights movement paper. His articles were frequently reprinted in other papers, sometimes worldwide in foreign languages.
Ken began collecting mail related to the Holocaust in 1978. It wasn’t a conscious decision, as he did not know much about the Holocaust at that time. But Ken recognized the need to combat the white-supremacist rhetoric that was on the rise at this time, in particular the racist propaganda and Holocaust denial spread by the Ku Klux Klan.
Using his philatelic expertise and passion for activism, Ken set out to build an exhibition of Holocaust postal artifacts that would educate the public on what would happen if the beliefs spread by white-supremacists were allowed to win.
Ken spent over 20 years collecting pieces for the exhibition, which would later be titled, The Nazi Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe. His approach to adding pieces to the collection and how they were exhibited was, admittedly by Ken himself, unconventional. He did not try to get a piece of mail from every concentration camp and ghetto, but rather sought to tell the history of the Holocaust in broad strokes, in a way that would have an emotional impact and pique curiosity. Ken focused more on collecting the rarest or most unusual items, versus the ones that would be most “popular” in a Holocaust exhibition.
In honoring Ken Lawrence’s vision, Danny Spungen and the Spungen Family Foundation have kept Ken’s original Nazi Scourge exhibit intact at its core.
Danny Spungen first met Ken Lawrence in June 2007, while attending a summer session for the American Philatelic Society (APS) at State College in Pennsylvania. What first caught Danny’s attention was not Ken Lawrence himself, but rather what he was holding—a piece of parchment from a Jewish holy scripture (Tanakh) that had been ripped apart and used as a parcel wrapper by a Nazi soldier, who sent it back to his wife in Vienna, Austria.
Ken Lawrence explained that the piece was part of a larger exhibit that he took around the United States, particularly in areas where Neo-Nazis were known to march. Ken would bring the exhibit to local schools and churches to help teach students and the community that the Holocaust did happen.
At this time, Ken was preparing to sell the exhibition to a group associated with the Holocaust museum in Michigan. But with his interest piqued, Danny jumped at the opportunity instead.
Danny convinced Ken to sell the postal collection to him; they would both be taking a risk, but Danny promised to do “something” with the exhibit and that he would keep it associated with the Ken Lawrence name.
In 2008, that “something” resulted in the formal acceptance by the Spungen Foundation Board to make the exhibit—in its original (and famous) 10 Frame form—available online and through in-person exhibitions to students, researchers, and other interested parties.
As of December 2025, the Spungen Foundation Holocaust Postal Collection has been exhibited hundreds of times all across the United States, including Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and many more. The exhibit has even traveled abroad to Greece and China.
Currently, 25+ items from the Spungen Foundation Postal Collection are on long-term loan with the Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away traveling exhibition, which started in Madrid, Spain (October 2017). Other cities have included Malmö, Sweden; Kansas City, Missouri; New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Toronto, Ontario; and Cincinnati, Ohio. The organizing team for this traveling exhibition includes Robert Jan Van Pelt, Michael Berenbaum, and Luis Ferreiro.
Pieces from the Holocaust Postal Collection have also been loaned to CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana; the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Illinois; the Children’s Holocaust Museum in Whitwell, Tennessee; the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in Dallas, Texas; and many others.
What is the Holocaust Postal Exhibition and What Kind of Artifacts are Included in It?
The Holocaust Postal Exhibition consists primarily of philatelic and numismatic artifacts. This includes post cards, letters, scrip, paper money, ID cards and passes, and many other paper documents.
Philatelic
Philatelic – relates to philately, which is the collection and study of postage stamps, postal history, and the other materials related to stamps and postal history (such as post cards and letters.)
Numismatic
Ken Lawrence’s original Nazi Scourge exhibition has been kept intact, but added to since its acquisition in 2007 by Danny Spungen.
Highlights of the Holocaust Postal collection include desecrated Jewish scripture, used as parcel wrappers by the Nazis; a visa issued by Chiune Sugihara, who was awarded Righteous Among the Nations; other Righteous documents, such as Raoul Wallenberg ID passes, Bishop Angelo Rotta papers, and an ID issue by Carl Lutz, as well as the Yad Vashem certificate and medal awarded to the Pyrcak family for their efforts in saving 17 Jews by hiding them in their barn for 22 months; a Kindertransport tag; letters sent by Dr. Josef Mengele to his wife from Auschwitz and a medal that was awarded to him by Hitler; a Tutsi and two Hutu ID passes from Rwanda; and much more.
How the Holocaust Postal Collection Organized
In its base form, the main Holocaust Postal Exhibition is organized into 10 Frames and each of the 10 Frames has 16 Pages.
This was how Ken Lawrence originally set up the exhibition, as the Frame-Page structure is designed for exhibiting at stamp shows. Since the Holocaust Postal Exhibition has grown and changed over the years since its acquisition, another way to understand it would be like this:
You can think of these Frames like chapters in a book, each of the “Chapters” (Frames) has 16 Pages each, and when read in order, all these “Chapters” tell the story of the Holocaust.
The story that Ken Lawrence’s original exhibit tells is in chronological order, starting in 1933 with the rise of Hitler, going through the end of World War II in 1945. As the Spungen Foundation has added to the collection over the years, the timeline has expanded to include South African Apartheid-era ID books and ID cards from the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, which poses the question: “Never Again?”
Despite its chronological format, the exhibit is designed for you to jump in at any point and start reading.
No matter where in the exhibit you start, if you have any questions, curiosities, or clarifications that need answering, please reach out to our team.