Archive for the ‘Blogroll’ Category
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
