The rare institutional JERUSALEM-22 JNF registered mail label (#0694): affixed to
2 Nov 1949 Jewish National Fund illustrated imprinted postal stationary cover addressed to GUSSING Austria; franked 65 mils for the FA-2a postage period rate (40m airmail to Europe + 25m registry fee) using Doar Ivri stamps & tied by 1x strike of the
JERUSALEM-12 postmark on front + 2x on back; subsequently opened & sealed by the Austrian censor.
A very rare institutional registry label - and here a likely discovery piece: the specialist literature (Aloni p.234-5) writes that in the interim period (Jerusalem: 9 May - end July) only 8 such registered covers are known (
#0640-0647) and
all postmarked on 16 May 1948 by the special "Independence" postmark. From this cataloguer's examination a)
those registry labels differ from the one on this cover specifically the
typography of "JERUSALEM 22", and b)
none are seen used on JNF postal stationary. Given that the registry number here is
0694 a year and a half after those supposedly used in May 1948 and in light of findings by this cataloguer that much interim era registered mail is philatelically contrived and in some cases forged outright (published in
JerusalemStamps Bulletin #2),
this cataloguer proposes that this cover represents a genuine JERUSALEM-22 registered letter while those 'documented' (under questionable circumstances mentioned in the article) during the interim period
are in fact not genuine:
During the Mandate period across various printings of the label, Sacher (p.443) assigns #22 to the
Polish Consulate and to the
Controller of Light Industries; its 1948 association with the JNF appears to be an incorrect assumption by Fluri (p.65) based on information from Ernst Bowman,
where incomplete Mandate records were 'completed' with speculative and unfounded information. Likely
the forgeries are made using older rolls from their former institutional assignments. An example image of an interim period cover is included in this description's display.