The first  Jewish stamp was printed in 1897 in Breslau ( Wroclaw – Poland today), which belonged until World War II to Germany.

At the end of the nineteen century there was a local post office in Breslau,  mostly sending mail inside the city. The service was called “Germany Private Mail 1873 – 1914 Breslau”.

In 1897, before the Jewish New Year, a special stamp was printed, which gave the 20,000 Jews living in Breslau at the time  the opportunity to use a special stamp for their New Year greeting cards. This stamp is known as “The first Jewish stamp”.

At the upper part of the stamp you see an inscription in Hebrew  “לשנה טובה”, meaning “For a good year”, At the center of the stamp you see the inscription “5658” , denoting the Hebrew calendar year (תרנ”ח).

The nominal value of the stamp was 1.50 Pfennig.

The first ever  printed  synagogue stamps using the Yiddish language with the Hebrew aleph -bet in the world – the City Post Stamps of Luboml

In the first years of the twentieth century the city of Luboml (Libvine in Yiddish) was a prosperous  commercial center located south-east of Warsaw, and was then under the Russian rule .In 1915, after the outbreak of World War I ,the region was occupied by Austria and a basic postal service was provided by the Austrian “Etappenpostampt” (military stage postal service).

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire toward the end of World War I  many Polish city postal authorities ran out of stamps. In the absence of national Polish postage stamps  a few local authorities (Luboml among them) issued provisional “city postage “ stamps of their own.

In September 1918 the Luboml Administration ordered stamps from the printing company Unia in Prague.

At that time the population in Luboml was multicultural. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Poles, Ukrainians and Germans, According to historical records they all lived in relative harmony. During the war the city had even a Jewish Mayor!

The design  of the local stamps of the city of  Luboml by an unknown designer reflects the multicultural nature of the population. In the stamps typical scenes are depicted. The name of the  issuing authority (city of Luboml) is printed in each of the four major languages of the residents of the city: Yiddish-Shtotpost Luboml שטאדטפאסט לובאמל; Polish-Pocztamiejska w Lubomlu; German-Stadtpost Luboml Ukrainian-Minska Poczta Lubomni.