Now For a Story You Never Heard

Strange brew at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing

On September 23rd of 1986 a new stamp was issued by the United States Postal Service in New York City. This stamp honored one Dr. Bernard Revel, a Jewish scholar and educator. The dedication ceremony was held at Stern College for Women at the Yeshiva University Midtown Center. The Yeshiva University was celebrating its centennial. This center of higher learning is the oldest and largest under Jewish auspices.

Dr. Revel arrived in the US in 1906 from Lithuania and became a citizen of the US in 1912. He received a masters of arts degree and then a doctorate of philosophy from Dropsie College in Philadelphia (Dropsie? yeah, google it). Named president of Yeshiva in 1915, there a graduate school is named in his honor. He served in this position until his death at age 55 on December 2, 1940.

First day cover of $1 stamp honoring Dr. Bernard Revel, September 23, 1986. This stamp is the 35th issue of the Great Americans Series. Available yet at stamp outlets.

We’re getting to the odd part…

The $1 stamp was designed by one Tom Broad of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Its engravers were Kenneth Kipperman (vignette) and Robert Culin Sr. (lettering & numerals). The mintage numbers are 161,080,000. Presuming the term mintage is used for stamps or should it be printed or engraved?

Kipperman’s Bio

Kenneth Kipperman was born in 1946 in Lodz, Poland. He had just missed living through the apocalypse that befell the country’s Jews. After the war, he and his family spent some six years in a displaced persons camp in Italy before moving to the United States and making a home in Coney Island. When he learned of the World War apocalypse and what had happened to his people, it obviously affected him deeply. He felt like a ‘stranger in a strange land’.

After a stint in the US Army, he took a job at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Eventually, he moved up to an elite assemblage of sixteen people responsible for engraving the designs of stamps and currency. Kipperman would go on to engrave the image of Alexander Hamilton on the Series 2004A Ten Dollar Note signed Anna E Cabral (Treasurer of the US) and John W Snow(Secretary of the Treasury).

He was arrested protesting the demolition of a building he and others wished to use for a Holocaust Museum. The news reports claimed a bomb scare but there was no bomb. He was charged with a felony and was facing twenty years in prison. He plea-bargained for a suspended sentence, a year’s probation, 100 hours of community service and counseling.

A larger photo of the $1 stamp. Can you find something in Revel’s beard that doesn’t belong.

https://keynumis.com/transforming-a-hobby/

And the weird part:

A month after this incident, the Bureau of Engraving was alerted by an anonymous caller that a very small Star of David or six pointed star was engraved into Dr. Revel’s beard. Kipperman, the obvious culprit, later said “It was just a symbolic gesture. He’s Jewish and I’m Jewish. It’s no big deal”.

But, it was a big deal. Millions of stamps had been printed. The story made the front page of the Washington Post. Kipperman, already suspended for thirty days for the protest incident, was suspended for a year from his engraving post. Although secret marks are permitted by some countries, it is against US postal regulations to etch signatures or other unauthorized marks into a stamp die. The mark went undetected by Bureau of Engraving officials until that anonymous phone call tipped them off.

The Star of David at the juncture of Revel’s mustache and beard. Every one of the 161,080,000 stamps issued as far as we know, has the star.

So What Does This Have in Common With Numismatics?

I picked these ten dollar bills up at a coin club function. I paid a premium of one dollar for them as no one else seemed interested and then purchased the stamp to see it for myself. Signed by Kipperman November 16, 2007. I know not who he signed them for but I had never heard the story and was fascinated by it.

The story makes me feel for Kipperman, as a man afflicted with a lifelong obsession by something utterly horrible that happened to his people. He spends his life trying to have some of the horrid artifacts of that struggle, still in museum basements, put to rest properly with religious rites. Such as a lamp shade made of human skin made for the wife of a concentration camp commandant “The Bitch of Buchenwald”. He has been unsuccessful so far.

(In 1947, Ilse Koch aka ‘the Bitch of Buchenwald’, received a life sentence from United States War Crimes Tribunal in Dachau. She was reported to be a sadist and nymphomaniac with a penchant for articles made of human skin.)

Two Series 2004A Federal Reserve notes Kenneth Kipperman engraved the bust of Alexander Hamilton for. This is the only current bill that has no dead president portrait and faces left. (Ben Franklin faces right) They are A Block notes and were printed in Fort Worth, Texas for the fifth district of the Federal Reserve Bank System in Richmond, Virginia.

From the archives of the L.A. Times