1964 Red Orchestra Stamp Set

A set of six stamps issued in East Germany in 1964 depicted members of the famed Red Orchestra resistance groups during World War II. Red Orchestra was the name given by the German Abwehr intelligence organization to a number of loosely-connected resistance cells located throughout Germany. Composed of devout communists, the Red Orchestra groups were assisted and directed by the Soviet Union. Over 400 people have been connected to the various groups by historians in recent decades. The seven people featured on these six stamps were all captured and killed between 1942 and 1944. Anton Saefkow, Franz Jacob, and Bernard Bastlien, the three men featured on the 5, 10, and 15 pfennig stamps were the leaders of the aptly-named Saefkow-Jacob-Bastlien Organization. Saefkow spent much of the 1930s in several different German prisons, serving sentences related to his communist activities. After being released in 1939 he teamed up with Jacob and Bastlien to form what would become the largest commu