COVER N.108 - POLAND

Postmark: Special Commemorative Postmark #SOLIDARNIzUKRAINA - MИ З BAMИ (Solidarity with Ukraine, we are with you) 21-04-22
Posted on the 21th April; received on the 3rd May 2022
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In times such as those we ungratefully and ungracefully go through at present, solidarity takes on a concrete and pragmatic meaning and it comes as no surprise that stamps translate this stance. 

Thank you so much, Roman, for this beautiful cover with special cancellation.

Ever since the Russian leadership decided to invade Ukraine, initiating a totally unjustifiable war that has already caused a number of deaths that is unknown but is suspected to go at least into the tens of thousands, Poland, one of its EU neighbours has been at the forefront of the Union's efforts to receive and accommodate all those, especially women and children, fleeing the horror that unfolded over their once peaceful dwellings. 

This much needed solidarity, has meant that millions of innocent people have found at least a safe haven where they can walk with their heads high without fearing that a bullet, shrapnel, a mine, a  torturer or a rapist might find and harm them.

This is the same solidarity that some have missed in the past, though... after all, the world is but one and the bullets bit just as hard in Kiev as in Alepo or Kabul or  any of the other not so mediatic places of human conflict, but seeing it materialise so strongly here is encouraging,  to say the least.

Times like these are prone to foster pride, of all sorts: personal, if you're involved like many Polish people gracefully are; professional, if you belong to any of the professions more involved with the effort, like  health and social care professionals; national, if your country, as a whole, is doing so much to help.

Pride translates easily into symbols, and that's what the S tariff stamp issued on the 23rd March on my cover is about: two arms painted in the national colours of Poland and Ukraine shake hands... "We are with you" legend: strong image, nothing more needs saying.

(as a side note I should emphasize that pride, nationalism, symbols are not a risk free equation, though. Let's take a pure fictional example: one country invades another crying out that the soldiers of the latter are extreme right radicals.... with its action, they turn the object of its action into heroes and martyrs.... heros and martyrs are the staple of symbols... hmmmm, clever move, to say the least...)

The A tariff stamp on the cover was issued on 02MAY2018 and with its "My homeland" theme is a worthy companion, if anything but for semiotic reasons, to the "we are with you" stamp,