By Cailin Acosta in La Mesa, California
What if a collection of valuable postage stamps, stolen from Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust, survived for more than 75 years hidden beneath a Polish home? That question is the premise of The Stamp Thief, a 2025 documentary directed by Dan Sturman. Part Holocaust history, part detective story and part heist film, the documentary follows screenwriter and producer Gary Gilbert as he attempts to determine whether a remarkable story about stolen stamps is actually true, and, if so, whether the collection can be recovered.
The Stamp Thief currently is making the rounds of Jewish film festivals with screeners being sent to reviewers, including me, around the country.
It is an unusual premise for a Holocaust documentary, and that is precisely what makes the film so engaging. Gilbert learned about the story through fellow screenwriter David Weisberg, whose father, psychiatrist Paul Weisberg, reportedly heard it from a patient. According to the story, a Nazi officer had taken valuable stamps from Jews being sent to concentration camps and secretly preserved the collection rather than turning it over to his superiors.
The story eventually led Gilbert to Legnica, Poland, where the stamps were believed to have been hidden. Rather than approaching the mystery as a traditional historical investigation, Gilbert and Sturman turn the search into something resembling a real-life Argo. The filmmakers create a fictional movie production as a cover for gaining access to the building where the stamps are supposedly hidden.
The result frequently feels more like a suspense film than a traditional history documentary. That approach makes the subject accessible without diminishing the seriousness of what is being investigated. The stamps are not simply valuable collectibles. They represent property stolen from people who were being systematically stripped of their possessions, identities and lives.
As the investigation progresses, the documentary raises difficult questions about what can actually be proven, who owns property stolen during the Holocaust and what responsibility later generations have to recover objects taken from Jewish families. There is also a fascinating ethical question at the center of the filmmakers’ approach: Is it acceptable to deceive someone in order to recover something that was originally stolen?
The question does not remain theoretical. The filmmakers must navigate the complicated relationship between Jews and Poland, both past and present, while trying to determine how much of the original story can be verified. Their investigation becomes as much about memory, ownership and historical responsibility as it is about finding a collection of stamps.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its ability to make something as seemingly ordinary as a postage stamp carry enormous historical weight. A stamp can be tiny, but it can also document a place, a government, a moment in history, or a person who might otherwise be forgotten.
That is ultimately what makes The Stamp Thief more than a story about a hidden collection. The filmmakers invite viewers to look at an artifact that could easily be dismissed as insignificant and consider the human story behind it. A postage stamp may occupy only a tiny space on an envelope. But, as this documentary demonstrates, sometimes that tiny piece of paper can carry an entire history.
The Stamp Thief runs approximately 103 minutes and is in English and Polish with English subtitles. The next screening is scheduled for the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival in Plymouth, Minnesota, on Friday, October 23. Click here for more information about the film.
*
Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World.