Photo: Albert Goldman, the New York City postmaster in the 1930s and 1940s, joins Santa Claus for a photo to promote the 1947 film “Christmas Eve.”
USPS Operation Santa is the postal institution it is today thanks in large part to Albert Goldman, who is believed to be New York City’s first Jewish postmaster.
A recent Jewish News Service article offers insight into Goldman, who served from 1935 to 1952, and includes observations from Stephen Kochersperger, the Postal Service’s historian, and June Brandt, a USPS senior research analyst.
“You can see how brilliant he was,” Kochersperger says in the article. “We were lucky to have him.”
Brandt points out that the then-Post Office Department’s Letters to Santa program had been around since 1912 but vastly expanded under Goldman.
“Santa letters were his big thing,” she says, and the article quotes media sources calling him “the father of the Santa Claus fund” and the “official opener of letters-to-Santa Claus.”
Both USPS employees praise the postmaster’s civic-mindedness and media savvy.
Kochersperger said he believes the big role played by the Postal Office Department in the 1947 film “Miracle on 34th Street” was a Goldman coup. “I’m certain that would not have happened but for Albert Goldman,” he says.
He also credits the postmaster with the public relations masterstroke of placing enormous mailbox-shaped temporary postal stations in busy areas of the city.
The article dives into the many complexities of the postmaster, who was proudly Jewish but embraced not just the Letters to Santa program but Christmas tree lightings and lobby displays with fervor.
Author Menachem Wecker wrote that Goldman often spoke at churches and interfaith events and joins the tradition of Irving Berlin and Mel Torme, Jewish composers of Christmas classics “who have made their mark on the holiday.”
One thing shines through: Goldman relished his postal role and cared deeply about the less fortunate.
“No worthy cause in this city has ever had to ring twice to enlist the enthusiastic support of Albert Goldman,” the New York Times wrote in its obituary.
