Archive for the ‘Blogroll’ Category
Profiting from the Holocaust!
Aktion Reinhard
Profiting from the Holocaust
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SS- Brigadefuhrer August Frank, one of the heads of the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) issued an order on the 26 September 1942 to the Aktion Reinhard headquarters in Lublin and to the commandant in Auschwitz, regarding the correct procedure for the treatment and distribution of Jewish possessions and valuables within the extermination camps.
Within the three death camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka the Germans established working commandos to sort and pack the possessions of the murdered Jews to the Reich, in accordance with August Frank’s orders.
Heinrich Unverhau who supervised the storage depot in the locomotive sheds at Belzec testified at his trial:
“SS Sturmbannfuhrer Hering accused me of being a saboteur because of the fact that during the sorting of the clothes that were sent for utilisation in Germany, a yellow Jewish star was found. Some money was also found there. These clothes belonged to Jews who were killed in Belzec.”
Top Secret 26 September 1942 To the Chief of the SS Garrison Administration Lublin Without taking into account the over all regulations which are expected to be issued during October, pertaining to the utilization of mobile and immobile property of the evacuated Jews, the following procedure has to be followed with regard to the property carried by them — property, which will in all orders in the future be called goods originating from thefts, receiving of stolen goods, and hoarded goods:
-August Frank SS Brigadefuehrer and Brigadier General of the Waffen SS |
Oskar Deigelmann a Reichsbahn official recalled a visit to Belzec:
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“As a controller I was responsible for ensuring the track was in good condition and in particular that the train ran smoothly. During a visit to the station at Belzec the supervisor, a Secretary or Senior Secretary from Thuringen, informed me that he was having a lot of problems with the SS, who were stationed near the wood.
Some time later I myself saw and had a word with a number of SS people in the waiting –room at Belzec. When I inquired, they told me that they were not members of the SS but they had merely been given these uniforms. As they described it, most of them came from lunatic asylums or nursing homes in the Reich, where they had been involved in the killing of the mentally ill.
I would like to say that one day the full significance of Belzec camp became clear to me when I saw mountains of clothes of all types behind our locomotive shed. There was also a large number of shoes there, as well as jewellery and other valuables.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/profitingfromAR.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Radogoszcz Police Prison, Lodz Ghetto
Lodz Ghetto
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Before the Second World War Radogoszcz was one of the oldest villages and districts of Lodz. In the early 1930’s Samuel Abbe built the biggest, three storey factory building in the area near to the crossing of the Gen. J. Sowinskiego (modern name) and Zgierska streets. It was accompanied by a single-storey shop floor with a characteristic saw-blade roof and a building serving both administrative and living purposes.
In August 1939 the factory buildings were taken over by the Polish Army and after Lodz had fallen to the Nazis, the Germans took over the buildings as a German sub-unit, which were stationed there till mid-October 1939.
Subsequently the premises were turned into a relocation camp, several thousand people from Lodz and the immediate area were incarcerated there. At first the people were placed in the four –storey building and the adjoining shop-floor. By the end of 1939 most of them were taken to the General Gouvernment, as well as to the Krakow and Nowy Targ regions.
The remaining relocated detainees were moved to the shop –floor, while the main building now became a place of detention for prisoners from a transit camp in the Michal Glazer Radogoszcz factory in 55 Krakowska Street.
Thus, till the end of June 1940, both the transit and a relocation camps were located together. On the 1st July 1940 the transit camp was transformed into the Extended Police Prison, and the last deportees were removed from there by the end of 1940.
Radogoszcz prison took on a more sinister role from the first days of November 1939, it was then that the Nazi authorities began to arrest members of the Lodz intelligentsia – such as teachers, local and state bureaucrats, social and political activists, and artists.
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Among the arrested were Polish citizens of German and Jewish origins. The arrests were a purposeful action aimed at depriving Polish society of its leaders. The arrests were made on the basis of proscriptive lists, and after a trial by a summary court, people were usually sentenced to death. They were executed immediately afterwards in the forests surrounding Lodz and the bodies were buried at the site of the murders.
From the 10 November 1939 until early January 1940 about 2,000 people, both men and women, were at some time interned in the camp, of which about 500 were “tried” by a summary court and shot to death.
The factory buildings were not adapted in any way to house people prior to the establishment of the camp, there was no kitchen in the buildings, just a pot from brewing coffee. There were no beds in the rooms. The living conditions were extremely oppressive. The whole camp was surrounded by a barbed wire topped wall in which the corners held watchtowers for the guards.
The prisoners did not succumb to starvation and disease thanks to the Polish Committee for Aiding Those Detained in the Radogoszcz Camp, established with the permission of the Gestapo. The members of Lodz factory –owner’s families, the Bidermans and the Keiserbrechts, among others, played a prominent role in the committee.
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At the end of December 1939, the prisoners were moved to the Abbe’s factory building, where necessary works had been done, financed by the Committee for Aiding. A kitchen and baths were prepared, and rooms were furnished with wooden bunk beds.
The last group of prisoners was placed here on the 5 January 1940 at 10.00 a.m. The Polish women remaining in the Glazer plant were set free the next day. A group of Jews might have been detained in the plant till mid-1940.
The Extended Police Prison (Erwetertes Polizeigefangnis) in the factory buildings of Samuel Abbe was the biggest prison in Lodz and the surrounding region during the Nazi occupation. It was for men only, and the prisoners were sent to other prisons, typically in Sieradz, Leczyca and Wielun, as well as to forced labour camps, first in Ostrow Wielkopolski, then in Sikawa in Lodz, and concentration camps – mostly Dachau, Mauthausen- Gusen and Gross Rosen.
Read more: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/Radogoszcz.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
What it took for one Jewish man to survive the Holocaust
What it took for one Jewish man to survive the Holocaust
The Story of Victor Lewis
[Published with the permission of Victor Lewis]
I’m not a poet or a writer. But I have an important story to tell. My memories of the Nazi occupation of Poland and my experiences during the Holocaust gave me nightmares and interrupted my ability to sleep for many years after the war.
I wrote this account in memory of my dearest parents and siblings, most of whom perished in the Holocaust.
I also wrote this account for all to read, so that the experiences of my family during the Holocaust will never be forgotten. Now, it will be the job of our children, our grandchildren, our teachers, and historians to know the horrible story of the Holocaust, to pass it on to future generations – in the hope that it will never happen again! -Victor Lewis |
Victor Lewis (Leserkiewicz) was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1919 to a religious Jewish family. At the beginning of World War II, he had two parents, Abraham and Berta; two sisters, Lola and Greta; and two brothers, Leon (Leszek) and Jacob (Kubus). Lola left Krakow for Palestine years before the war broke out and was fortunate to have avoided the Nazi atrocities in Europe.
After a harrowing 6 years at the hands of the Nazis, both of Mr. Lewis’ parents, and his sister, Greta, had perished. Both of his brothers barely managed to survive, but his youngest brother, Jacob, died from food poisoning just a few days after being liberated from a concentration camp in Austria.
From the transport out of the Krakow ghetto that should have killed him, to the gruesome concentration camp at Plaszow, and finally, after five years of hardship – to the relative “safe haven” at Oscar Schindler’s ammunition factory in Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia, this is a heroic account of intense hardships and harrowing near-death experiences that were required for Victor Lewis to survive the Holocaust.
Deportation from Krakow
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A year and a half after the invasion of Poland by the Germans, the Nazis evacuated the Jews from my home town, Krakow, and resettled us in very cramped quarters in the most dilapidated part of the city. On March 13, 1941, my family of six people was forced to relocate from our comfortable 3-bedroom home at Retjana # 5 to a cramped one bedroom apartment at Targowa # 1, which we shared with several other families.
Life was difficult in the ghetto. Jews were routinely abused, assaulted, and even murdered by the Nazis, who patrolled the streets with pistols, rifles, and whips. We were prisoners at the hands of an abusive force that had prompted a world war, but we were totally unprepared for the obscene horrors and large-scale genocide that our captors were about to execute on us.
The date was October 28, 1942. The Nazis were about to implement their second deportation of Jews from the Krakow ghetto to the extermination camps. We were told that the ghetto would be liquidated, that we all were to be transported to labor camps, and that everybody had to go to Plac Zgody square with their most important belongings.
Fear could be seen on the faces of every Jew in the ghetto. Everyone felt that something horrible was about to happen. On my way to our family’s apartment, I met my parents, my sister Greta, and my brother Leszek inside the corridor of their building. My parents had come out of the bunker where they were hiding, and I wanted to warn them to stay inside.
They didn’t have any working papers (Arbeits-bescheinigungen), so I thought that their lives could be in danger. But, it was too late to tell them to go back into hiding. From all sides, the SS Gestapo appeared before us and pushed us into the street.
Leszek and I had working papers indicating that he was a toolmaker and I was an auto mechanic for the German SS. We thought that these papers would save us and our family from the deportation. We presented the papers to SS Obersturmfuhrer Martin Fellenz, {1} a Gestapo
officer who was in charge of the deportation.
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Fellenz ripped up our papers, began to beat us with his club, and ordered us to go with all of the other prisoners to Plac Zgody. At Plac Zgody, I noticed many familiar faces, including my girlfriend Regina’s mother, Ida, and her two sisters, Tosia and Gienia.
I wanted to talk to them but I was not permitted to do so. I had to sit on the ground and remain still. The Germans ordered us not to move an inch. To prove their point, they began to kill anyone who got up or moved around. At that point I decided that I had to escape, no matter what might be the consequences.
I told Leszek my plans, and he said he would try to escape, too. I told my parents and sister what I intended to do, and they told me to go ahead and run. Soon, we were ordered to line up, four in a row.
I told my family not to look for me if I tried to escape. Passing Wieliczka Street, I tried to run into a house, but I was unsuccessful. I was stopped by an SS guard and forced back onto the line. I was lucky that guard did not kill me right then and there for trying to escape.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/vlewis.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Holocaust Controversies? The stupidity of debating with deniers!
Holocaust Remembrance
A time to memorialize, debate, debunk or debauch?
Guest Publication by
Dr. Martin Friedhaus
[photos added to enhance the text]
[Please note that editorials posted in this section are the sole viewpoints of the individual author and do not necessarily represent
any collective opinion of the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, or the University of Northampton]
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Tourists look at individually-painted dominoes along the former route of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. |
World leaders joined German crowds on Monday to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – a stark symbol of the Cold War that divided a city and a continent.
Recollections of November 9, 1989 dominated German newspaper headlines at the weekend, and television stations ran program after program of documentary footage, eyewitness accounts and discussion panels about the event that changed the face of Europe.
And while thousands of tourists have poured into the capital to mark the event which hastened the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Soviet Union, many have chosen to overlook another event that changed the face of Germany and Europe that also happened on the 9th of November..
Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass”
| “Kristallnacht” is a German word that consists of two parts: “Kristall” translates to “crystal” and refers to the look of broken glass and “Nacht” means “night.” The accepted English translation is the “Night of Broken Glass.” |
The most infamous Anti-Semitic Pogrom in recent history occurred on November 9, 1938. Instigated primarily by Nazi party officials and the SA (Nazi Storm Troopers), the pogrom occurred throughout Germany (including annexed Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia). The name Kristallnacht has its origin in the untold numbers of broken windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned stores, community centers, and homes plundered and destroyed during the pogrom. Read more about Kristalnact [here]
Shattered windows the day after Kristallnacht |
The actions that occurred that night in 1938 culminated in a meeting on the 12th of November, chaired by Hermann Göring who made the following statement:
I have received a letter written on the Fuehrer’s orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another.” The path to the “Final Solution” has now been chosen. And, all the bureaucratic mechanisms for its implementation were now in place.
The point of comparison of the events that occurred on November 9th of both 1938 and 1989 is in no way intended to minimize or trivialize the significance of either of these dates on world history…
However many decades later, association with the Kristallnacht anniversary was cited as the main reason against choosing November 9, the day the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, as the new German national holiday; a different day was chosen (October 3, 1990 as the new German reunification day).
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This is not to say that Kristallnact has been forgotten… In fact all over Europe hundreds of commemoration and protest activities have been organized on November 9 1997, International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism. The biggest demonstration took place in Yugoslavia. Between 1.000 and 3.000 people marched in the streets of Belgrade to protest against the on-going violence against Roma in their country.
In Essen 1.000 anti-fascists marched in protest against fascist violence. In the Netherlands activities took place in 11 cities all over the country in many different ways, but mainly comparing the situation of refugees in 1938 and in 1997.
The European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees or “UNITED for Intercultural Action” has distributed 20.000 stickers and 5.000 information leaflets explaining the history of “Kristallnacht”, the purpose of the commemorations and giving examples of racist practices in Europe. The secretariat has sent out several press releases and numerous lists of activities. International journalists have been referred to specific organizations for more in depth information. The information has been spread widely through the Internet as well.
Holocaust Denial & Protest |
But how the comparison of 1938 and 1989 does raise some questions on how history can and should be reviewed, is the elevation of importance, or the choice of governments to proselytize some some events on history in itself a form of masked revisionism?
Within historiography, that is part of the academic field of history, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event.
The revisionist assumes the interpretation of a historical event or period, as accepted by the majority of scholars, needs significant change. In the case of Holocaust revisionism, or Holocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust, did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized.
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Although the number of active Holocaust denier authors is small, during certain periods they have been able to attract attention that is grossly out of proportion to their numbers and the level of their scholarship. Under the guise of a reasonable person’s search for truth, Holocaust deniers spread falsehoods and misinformation that appears reasonable to the uninformed reader.
Today the Holocaust is widely memorialized as a seminal event in the history of Western civilization. But the means are sometimes criticized. Washington DC’s Holocaust memorial has been one bone of contention, and in contrast to the Holocaust Revisionism movement, a new breed of Holocaust “Revisionist Debunkers” has arisen.
Professor Yehuda Bauer Holocaust scholar and author of Rethinking the Holocaust, and an advisor on the creation of the USHMM in Washington makes the point of avoiding the term ‘unique’ in reference to the Holocaust. But if there was nothing quite like it before or since, why does Bauer shy away from it?
“Every historical event is unique,” he explains carefully. “It cannot be cloned exactly. So when I say ‘unique’, it stands completely apart from any kind of similar genocide attack, which is not true.
When I say ‘unprecedented’, I mean that it never happened like that before but because it happened like that during World War II, it can happen again. What has happened can be repeated. The Holocaust had no precedent, but it is a precedent.”
In the 1990s, the growth of the Internet produced many conspiracy theory sites. Claims that the Holocaust did not exist, or did not exist on the scale claimed have been widely made on some conspiracy theory websites, many of which have blamed Jewish conspiracies for a range of issues, including the attack on the World Trade Center, the communist revolution, and AIDS.
Recently the terms Holocaust Industry and Shoah Business have come into vogue among Holocaust revisionists to express their perception that Jewish leaders promote the official story about the Holocaust for financial and political gain.
A number of authority figures stated publicly that the Internet allowed hate groups to introduce their messages to a widespread audience, and it was feared that Holocaust revisionism would gain in popularity as a result.
Photo from the Chris Webb article on Holocaust Denial & Debunking |
However we’ve also witnessed the evolution of the revisionist counter movement or “Holocaust Revisionist Debunkers” and if you think the Holocaust Deniers seemed kooky or paranoid in their methods, then the “Debunkers” can be simply downright psychotic in the way they approach the debate.
Renowned Holocaust Scholar Chris Webb made the following comment on “Holocaust Debunkers” in an editorial published by the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team:
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/essays&editorials/memorial-debunk-debate-debauged.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Einsatzgruppen Commander Paul Blobel
Einsatzgruppen Commander
Sonderkommando 1005
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Paul Blobel was born on 13 August 1894 in Potsdam. He served in First World War where he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. After the Great War Blobel studied architecture and practised this profession from 1924 until 1931 upon losing his job he joined the Nazi Party and the SS on 1 December 1931.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union Blobel took command of Einsatzkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C that operated in the Ukraine. As well as shooting the Nazis murdered Jews in gas-vans, Eimsatzgruppe C was issued at least five gas vans and gave two to Sonderkommando 4A, two to Einsatzkommando 6 and one to Einsatzlommando 5.
A member of the group testified after the war:
Two gas vans were in service I saw them myself. They drove into the prison yard, and the Jews – men, women and children – had to get straight into the vans from their cells.
I know what the interior of the vans look like. It was covered with sheet metal and fitted with a wooden grid. The exhaust fumes were piped into the interior of the vans. I can still hear the hammering and the screaming of the Jews – “Dear Germans let us out!”
The Jews went through our cordon and into the van without hesitating. As soon as the doors were shut, the driver started the engine. He drove to a spot outside Poltava. I was there when the van arrived.
As the doors were opened, dense smoke emerged, followed by a tangle of crumpled bodies. It was a frightful sight. The driver for Paul Blobel, testified after the war regarding the unloading of one of these gas-vans:
The use of the gas vans was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. I saw people being led into the vans and the doors closed. Then the van drove off. I had to drive Blobel to the place where the gas vans were unloaded.
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The back doors of the van were opened, and the bodies that had not fallen out when the doors were opened were unloaded by Jews who were still alive. The bodies were covered with vomit and excrement. It was a terrible sight. Blobel looked then he looked away, and we drove off, on such occasions Blobel always drunk schnapps, sometimes even in the car.
Blobel organised the infamous massacre of 33,771 Kiev Jews which took place in the Babi Yar ravine, the Einsatzgruppen reports give the full credit for the massacre to Blobel, but at the War Crimes Trial in Nuremburg Blobel protested his absence from Kiev, and declared further that only fifteen of his fifty-three men could be detailed for the executions.
In March 1942 Albert Hartel, a Gestapo expert on church affairs, was driving with Blobel towards a country villa outside Kiev used by Brigadefuhrer Thomas, the Higher SS and Police Leader. At the Babi Yar ravine, Hartel noticed small explosions, which threw up columns of earth. It was the thaw, releasing the gases from thousands of bodies, and Blobel explained – “Here my Jews are buried.”
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/blobel.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
The Story of Herschel Grynszpan
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Herschel Grynszpan was born on the 28 March 1921 in Hannover, Germany, to Zindel and Rivka Grynszpan. He was one of three children an elder sister named Esther and a brother Mordechai.
Zindel a tailor prospered and Herschel grew up an intelligent sensitive child, with few close friends and was an active member of the Bar-Kochba Jewish youth sports club in the city. He studied at a Yeshiva in Frankfurt-am-Main, but he returned to Hannover where he applied to emigrate to Palestine, but this was rejected due to his youth.
Herschel Grynszpan went to live with his uncle and aunt Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan in Paris in September 1936 via another uncle Wolf who was living in Belgium. He entered France illegally as he would not have been granted entry to France, as he had neither work, nor financial support.
He settled in Paris living in a small Yiddish speaking group of Polish Orthodox Jews. He spent the next two years in vain trying to stay in France legally but this was unsuccessful. His re-entry permit for Germany expired in April 1937 and his Polish passport expired nine months later leaving Herschel without any legal basis for staying in France.
During the same period under the Nazis Zindel Grynszpan’s business declined and the Nazis made life increasingly difficult for Jews living there, with ever increasing restrictive regulations.
The Grynszpan’s were among the estimated 12,000 Polish Jews arrested, by the Nazis, deprived of their property and herded abroad trains destined for the Polish border.
When they reached the border, they were forced to walk several kilometres to the Polish border town of Zbaszyn, called Neubentschen in German. Zindel sent Herschel a postcard from Zbaszyn telling Herschel what had happened and asking for him to rescue them, the postcard reached Herschel in Paris on the 3 November 1938.
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On the morning of the 7 November 1938 Herschel Grynszpan wrote a farewell postcard to his parents, which he never posted, bought a revolver and ammunition from a shop in Rue du Faubourg St Martin and caught a metro train to the Solferino metro station.
From there he went to the German Embassy at 78 Rue de Lille and asked, as a German citizen, to see an Embassy official. Herschel Grynszpan was shown into the office of junior official Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan shot vom Rath several times, as an act of protest in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews. He was arrested immediately by the French police.
Despite the best medical care vom Rath died on the 9 November 1938, he was given a state funeral in Dusseldorf attended by Adolf Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The death of Ernst vom Rath was the catalyst for the Nazis to launch the Kristallnacht and on the night of 9 November 1938 the Storm Troopers took to the streets crying for vengeance.
The Brown-shirts invaded synagogues and Jewish shops and homes to break, burn and loot, in their wake leaving shards of glass and shattered windows. Nearly 100 Jews died in the night of violence and some 30,000 Jews were arrested and interned in concentration camps, many to die from the savage brutality within the camps. Grynszpan’s family who were in Poland were not affected by the murderous pogrom.
From November 1938 to June 1940 Herschel was imprisoned by the French in Fresnes Prison near Paris, before being moved to the prison in Toulouse. One month after the German occupation on the 18 July 1940 Grynszpan was transferred from the Toulouse Prison to the border of the un-occupied zone where he was taken back to Paris by SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Karl Boemelburg, who was tasked with bringing Grynszpan into captivity.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/grynszpan.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009
Dachau! www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
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Dachau one of the
first concentration camps established by the Nazis, was located in the small
town of Dachau approximately 10 miles northwest of Munich. The location at
Dachau was selected by the Nazis because it was the site of an empty munitions
factory from World War One, which was ideal for the establishment of a camp.
The opening of
the camp, with a capacity for 5,000 prisoners was announced by Heinrich Himmler,
Reichsfuhrer SS at a press conference held on 20 March 1933. The first
group of so-called protective-custody, consisting mainly of Communists and
Social Democrats was brought to the camp on 22 March 1933. They were guarded by
Bavarian state police until the camp was taken over by the SS on 11 April 1933.
Theodor Eicke was
appointed commandant and he was responsible for drawing up detailed regulations
which covered all aspects of camp life, later on when Eicke was appointed
Inspector General for all concentration camps these regulations were adopted,
with local variations elsewhere.
With Dachau as
his model, Eicke developed an institution that was intended, by its very
existence, to spread fear among the population, an effective tool to silence
every opponent of the Nazi regime
[You
can read more about Theodor Eicke
HERE]
The commandants
at Dachau throughout its history were:
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Hilmar
Wackerle SS Standartenfuhrer -
Theodor
Eicke SS Obergruppenfuhrer
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Heinrich
Deubel SS Oberfuhrer -
Alex
Piorkowski SS Obersturmbannfuhrer -
Wilhelm
Weiter SS – Sturmbannfuhrer -
Hans Loritz
SS – Oberfuhrer -
Martin Weiss
SS – Obersturmbannfuhrer
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Dachau became a
useful training ground for the SS, at Dachau first learned to see those with
different convictions as inferior and to deal with them accordingly, not
hesitating to kill when the occasion arose, as the following will demonstrate:
On the 12 April
1933 in Dachau four Jews died as a result of deliberate sadism, an eyewitness
account of their deaths was smuggled to Britain by a prisoner who was later
released.
“A few days ago we were going out as usual to work. All of a sudden the Jewish
prisoners – Goldmann, a merchant, Benario, a lawyer from Nuremberg, and the
merchants Artur and Erwin Kahn – were ordered to fall out of ranks. Without even
a word, some Stormtroop men shot at them.
They had not made any attempt to escape- all were killed on the spot all had
bullet wounds in their foreheads. The four Jews were buried secretly, no one
being allowed to be present.
Then a meeting was called, and a Stormtroop leader made a speech in which he
told us that it was a good thing these four Jewish sows were dead. They had been
hostile elements who had no right to live in Germany – they had received their
due punishment.”
Read more about
Dachau
and other Nazi camps HERE:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/index.html
The Holocaust Education &
Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
The Krakow Ghetto – zgody sq.
Krakow Ghetto
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Metal chairs at Zgody Sq. memorializing the victims of the Krakow ghetto |
The Ghetto which was established here covered the area enclosed within a few streets around Zgody Square and included 320 buildings. It was an area between the Vistula River, Podgorski Square, the Krzemionki hills and the Krakow – Plaszow railway line.
Two significant “Aktions” aimed at deporting the Jews of Cracow took place on the 1-8 June and 27 –28 October 1942. As a result 11,000 Jews from Cracow were sent to the death camp at Belzec. Not one person survived these deportations.
Zgody Square was the main place for the deportation of Cracow’s Jews – the “Umschlagplatz”.
Here all those who were refused the right to stay in the Ghetto were gathered in the square. All who did not have a stamp in their job cards to confirm employment in a German company were brought here during a deportation Aktion in 1942.
As the crowd filled the square horse-drawn wagons came and from the balcony above the Eagle Pharmacy Gestapo men took photographs which were to serve as evidence that the resettlement was being performed in a “humane” manner. After taking the photographs the Jews were brutally chased off the wagons, with much shouting and beatings, and the wagon drivers were dismissed.
The crowd was escorted to the railway station in Prokocim and sent in a transport to the Belzec death camp.
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On 4 June 1942 a formation of Security Police(SIPO) and squads of Special Service (Sonderdienst) took positions along the buildings surrounding Zgody Square. Across the square facing the pharmacy the “navy –blue” police was stationed. Behind the Germans in front of the pharmacy groups of young people from the Building Service (Baudienst) were installed.
At the outlet of a dead-end street – 3 Zgody Square which led to the Infectious Diseases Hospital, ten people from the medical service – physicians, nurses and assistants with stretchers – were ordered by the Germans to help those who had fainted or were sick.
The Germans shot into the crowd, whilst doctors and nurses tried to help those wounded, by transporting them to the hospital in Jozefinska Street.
One of the eyewitnesses recalls these events:
Read the full article here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/zgody.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Nazi Euthanasia at Meseritz-Obrawalde! www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
Meseritz-Obrawalde Euthanasia Centre
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In 1939, the town of Meseritz was within the Prussian province of Pomerania. Today the town bears the name Miedzyrzecz and is situated in Poland. The hospital at Obrawalde (now Obrzyce), usually referred to as Meseritz-Obrawalde, together with the institution at Tiegenhof (now Dziekanka) in the Wartheland, were probably the most notorious killing centres of “wild” euthanasia.
During the period preceding the suspension of the euthanasia programme in August 1941, large numbers of patients had been transferred from Meseritz-Obrawalde “to the East” and had, like patients from other Pomeranian institutions, simply disappeared. At the beginning of 1942, the first trains, each containing about 700 handicapped patients arrived.
They were eventually to be transported to Meseritz-Obrawalde from at least twenty-six German cities, usually in the middle of the night. At the end of the year, and especially in 1943, these trains arrived more and more frequently. All the nurses and orderlies – according to their statements – had to “unload” the patients.
The sick patients were in horrible condition: many were emaciated and they were very dirty. This condition contributed to the nursing personnel being able to distance themselves emotionally from these people. The patients were in such an undignified condition that the personnel could be convinced to kill thousands of them without compunction. The staff selected for killing those patients who were unable to work, but the process was arbitrary and those selected included “patients who caused extra work for the nurses, those who were deaf-mute, ill, obstructive, or undisciplined, and anyone else who was simply annoying” as well as patients “who had fled and were recaptured, and those engaging in undesirable sexual liaisons.”
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Meseritz-Obrawalde Today
The selected handicapped victims were taken to so-called killing rooms where physicians and nurses killed them using an orally administered drug overdose or a lethal injection. The killing of was never done by only one nurse. Practical experience had shown that it was absolutely necessary for the killing to be done by at least two nurses. After the patient had been killed by the male and female nurses, a fraudulent death certificate was prepared and sent to the victim’s family. Most of the naked corpses were buried in mass graves, but some were cremated in Frankfurt an der Oder. Construction of a crematorium to handle the large number of corpses was begun, but the project was not yet completed when Soviet troops liberated the hospital on 29 January 1945. Meseritz-Obrawalde had 900 patients in 1939, but during the war the institution was filled to capacity with 2,000 patients.
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/Meseritz-Obrawalde.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
