Let Us Never Forget

Anne Frank in a video

2009-10-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

STARZ Channel to Air Simon Wiesenthal Center Documentaries in Honor of Holocaust Remembrance

2009-10-01T13:33:00.001-07:00

STARZ Channel to Air Simon Wiesenthal Center Documentaries in Honor of Holocaust Remembrance

All Five Films to Air October 1st on IndiePlex to Honor the Anniversary of the Mass Execution of Over 1,000 Remaining Jewish Inhabitants in Luboml, Poland in 1942

All films are slated to air on Starz’s IndiePlex channel on October 1, 2009 beginning at 4:00 p.m. (et/pt). The October 1st premiere date marks the anniversary of the mass, open execution of more than 1,000 of the remaining Jewish inhabitants of the German-controlled town of Luboml, Poland in 1942. The documentaries are scheduled to air again in April 2010 alongside an array of feature films on Starz Cinema and Encore Drama, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Month.

“Starz acquired the documentaries at the suggestion of Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, who has long been associated with The Simon Wiesenthal Center,” said Robert B. Clasen, Chairman and CEO, Starz, LLC. “As a company, Starz applauds the efforts of the center and is honored to air programming that supports the legacy of Mr. Wiesenthal and the organization’s commendable mission.”

Please note that all times are ET/PT and dates/months listed below are subject to change.

Genocide (Thursday, October 1 at 4:00 p.m. on IndiePlex) won an Academy Award® for Best Documentary, Features (1982) and is narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. Others in the documentary include Simon Wiesenthal and archived footage of Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Josef Goebbels and Charles de Gaulle. Genocide is also set to run on Encore Drama on October 6 at 5:45 a.m. and on October 22 at 7:35 a.m.

I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal, (Thursday, October 1 at 5:30 p.m. on IndiePlex), narrated by Academy Award®-winning actress Nicole Kidman, is a comprehensive look at the life and legacy of humanitarian Simon Wiesenthal. It features previously unseen archival film and photos, as well as interviews with Wiesenthal’s longtime associates, government leaders from around the world, friends and family members. Those appearing in the documentary include Simon Wiesenthal, Frederick Forsyth, Marvin Hier, and Ben Kingsley (2007 original release date). I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal is also set to run on Starz Cinema on October 19 at 12:35 p.m. and on October 28 at 2:30 p.m.

Liberation (Thursday, October 1 at 7:20 p.m. on IndiePlex) is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, Jean Boht, Sir Ben Kingsley, Miriam Margolyes and Patrick Stewart (1994 original release date). Liberation is also set to run on Encore Drama on October 15 at 5:45 a.m. and on October 19 at 2:05 p.m.

The Long Way Home (Thursday, October 1 at 9:00 p.m. on IndiePlex) won an Academy Award® for Best Documentary, Features (1998) and is narrated by actor Morgan Freeman. The Long Way Home chronicles the experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors who were moved into Displaced Persons' camps after World War II, and eventually permitted to begin new lives in Israel and the U.S. Those in the documentary include Edward Asner, Martin Landau, Miriam Margolyes, David Paymer, Nina Siemaszko, and Michael York.

Unlikely Heroes, (Thursday, October 1 at 11:00 p.m. on IndiePlex) narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, highlights seven previously unknown stories of men and women involved in the Jewish resistance of the Holocaust, who exemplified extraordinary resistance, courage and human dignity during the most desperate days of the Holocaust (2003 original release date). Unlikely Heroes is also set to run on Starz Cinema on October 26 at 3:50 a.m.

Accused Nazi Guard John Demjanjuk Deported to Germany

2009-05-11T23:19:00.001-07:00

Accused Nazi Guard John Demjanjuk Deported to Germany

Monday , May 11, 2009

AP
ADVERTISEMENT

CLEVELAND —
Federal agents carrying John Demjanjuk in a wheelchair put him on a small jet Monday to be deported to Germany, where the retired autoworker is accused of being a Nazi death camp guard in World War II.

Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demjanjuk was on the plane and that its destination is Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk's request to block deportation and about 3 1/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is wanted on a Munich arrest warrant that accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The legal case spans three decades.

Click here to see photos.

Chronology of the John Demjanjuk Case

A German Justice Ministry spokesman, Ulrich Staudigl, said the retired autoworker was expected to be in Germany by Tuesday.

Demjanjuk denies Germany's accusations, saying he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war and was never a camp guard. Demjanjuk's family fought deportation, arguing he is in poor health and might not survive the trans-Atlantic journey.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Demjanjuk deserves to be punished and that this will probably be the last trial of someone accused of Nazi war crimes.

"His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber," Hier said in a statement. "He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying."

The center was established to locate and help bring to justice Nazi war criminals.

The deportation capped a day in which Demjanjuk said goodbye to his family and was visited by two priests at his home in Seven Hills, a Cleveland suburb.

He then slipped quietly into an ambulance parked in his driveway, his family members standing at the edge of the garage and holding up a floral-patterned bedsheet to block the view of reporters and photographers across the street.

Earlier Monday, his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said an appeal in a U.S. court would go ahead even if his father isn't in the country.

"Given the history of this case and not a shred of evidence that he ever hurt one person let alone murdered anyone anywhere, this is inhuman even if the courts have said it is lawful," Demjanjuk Jr. said.

Also Monday, a Berlin court rejected an appeal aimed at preventing deportation.

Once in Germany, Demjanjuk will be brought before a judge and formally charged. He will also be given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, in keeping with standard procedure, Staudigl said.

Demjanjuk is expected to be held in the medical unit of a Munich prison. The government has said preparations have been made at the facility to ensure he will receive appropriate care.

The case dates to 1977 when the Justice Department moved to revoke Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on U.S. Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,519863,00.html

The United States Holocaust Museum Collections

2009-03-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/overview/

The Collections Division
The Collections Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Musuem consists of eight branches: Archives, Art and Artifacts, Film and Video, Music, Oral History, Photo Archives, Collections Management, and Conservation. Together these branches are responsible for the acquisition, registration, preservation, storage, cataloging, reference, and reproduction of the thousands of collections housed in the Museum and displayed in its exhibitions, publications, and on its Web site.

The Collections Division identifies, collects, and preserves the documentary, photographic, and artifactual record of the Holocaust and makes it available for research and display. It seeks to enhance the accessibility of this material through user-friendly databases, online catalogs, web presentations, and extensive reference service.

International Archival Programs Division
The archival evidence of the Holocaust, consisting of millions of pages of documents, is scattered to virtually every country and clearly shows the enormity of the crime and its implications. This massive documentary record is endangered, however, and the dispersal of materials hinders expedient and productive use by researchers and survivors alike. The International Archival Programs Division of the Museum works to collect, preserve, and make available evidence of the Holocaust to scholars, survivors, and the general public.

The discovery of over 500,000 pages of Holocaust-era Jewish community records in Vienna a few years ago illustrates why it is so important to reproduce and preserve Holocaust documentation.

The Museum Collection
The Museum has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Holocaust-related materials in the world. Included in its holdings are works of art, artifacts, photographs, archival documents, manuscripts, historical footage, music and sound recordings, and oral testimonies.

Scope
The Collections of the Museum cover a broad range of subject areas pertaining to the history of the Holocaust. These include:

* Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
* The rise to power of the Nazi movement in Germany and Austria
* The flight of European refugees from Nazi Germany and refugee communities around the world
* Nazi racial science and the propaganda campaign against Jews, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and the mentally and physically handicapped
* Nazi anti-Jewish policy in the 1930s, from the boycott through Kristallnacht
* Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war
* The invasion and occupation of eastern and western Europe
* The roundup, deportation, and resettlement of European Jewry
* The mass shootings conducted by mobile killing squads
* Ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers
* Nazi collaborators and satellite states
* Resistance, rescue, and life in hiding during the Holocaust
* The liberation of Europe and the disclosure of Nazi concentration camps
* The war crimes trials
* The displaced persons camps
* Legal and illegal immigration to Palestine
* Postwar immigration to the Americas
* Holocaust assets and restitution
* Holocaust memorials and commemoration

Types of Materials
The Museum’s holdings include:

* Art: period drawings, prints, sculpture, posters, and other creative works
* Books and pamphlets
* Broadsides, advertisements, and maps
* Film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies; music and sound recordings
* Furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, and tools
* Microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records
* Personal effects, ritual objects, jewelry, musical instruments, and numismatics (currency)
* Personal papers: documents, correspondence, memoirs, and scrapbooks
* Photographs and photo albums
* Textiles: uniforms, costumes, clothing, badges, armbands, flags, and banners

Donations
The Archives Branch seeks to augment its collection of personal papers, oral history, music and sound recordings, films, and original photographs related to the Holocaust. If you have such materials and are willing to donate them to the Museum, please contact the Archives at (202) 488-6113.

Georg Duckwitz

2009-03-26T09:16:00.001-07:00

It is one of the great untold stories of World War II: In 1943, in the German occupied Denmark, the Danes find out - thanks to Georg F. Duckwitz, a courageous German maritime attaché - that all 7,500 Danish Jews are about to be rounded up and deported to the Nazi death camps. The Danish people make their own decision: it's not going to happen ..

In August, 1943, a state of emergency was declared in Denmark, and the Nazis decided that they could now move against the Jews. In September Hitler approved the deportation of the Danish Jews and Werner Best of the SS, Hitler's chief in Denmark, received the final order. Now the Nazis were prepared to deport the 7,500 Jews, starting at 10 PM. on 1 October 1943.

Two German passenger ships, docked in Copenhagen’s port, were ready to ship approximately 5,000 Jews to Germany on their way to the kz camp Theresienstadt. Buses were to take the remaining 2,500.

Sir Martin Gilbert tells in his excellent book The Righteous how Georg Duckwitz, posted to Denmark before the war, learned of the deportation plans on 11 September 1943. At great danger to himself he flew to Berlin two days later to try to have the plan set aside, but in vain. Two weeks later he flew to the Swedish capital, Stockholm, to discuss with Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson the possibility of the Danish Jews being smuggled across Oresund, the narrow belt of water to Sweden.

Finally Georg Duckwitz risked everything and leaked out the deportation order to a leading Danish Social Democrat, Hans Hedtoft. Hedtoft later recalled:

"I was sitting in a meeting when Duckwitz asked to see me. 'The disaster is going to take place', he said. 'All details are planned. Your poor fellow citizens are going to be deported to an unknown destination'. Duckwitz's face was white from indignation and shame .."

According to Duckwitz, 1 October was set as the zero hour and Hans Hedtoft immediately warned C.B. Henriques, the head the Jewish Community, and Dr. Marcus Melchior, the acting chief Rabbi of the Krystalgade Synagogue. They took immediate action ..

The word was passed and the Danes responded quickly, organizing a nationwide effort to smuggle the Jews by sea to neutral Sweden. Risking their own lives, the Danes dropped everything to help family members, neighbors, or friends and offered their support, conveying warnings and finding places for the Jews to hide. The Danes felt that persecution of minorities was a breach of Danish culture and they were not prepared to stand for it.

From all strata of Danish society and in all parts of the country, clergymen, civil servants, doctors, store owners, farmers, fishermen and teachers protected the Jews. A taxi driver was reported to have telephoned every person with a Jewish name he could find in the telephone directory.

The rescue of the Danish Jews is an inspiring story from a terrible time in human history. In most other Nazi-occupied countries, the Germans found it easy to deport the Jews. No one defended them the way the Danes did. Denmark was also different and special in another way. Almost everywhere else in Europe, returning Jews found their homes had been broken into, and everything of value stolen. When the Danish Jews returned, they discovered that their homes, pets, gardens and personal belongings were cared for by their neighbors.

Almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark was rescued and survived the war years, mostly in neutral Sweden and a few hundred in Theresienstadt under the distant but constantly protective concern of the Danes.

After the war Georg Duckwitz served as Germany's Ambassador to Denmark. He has been recognized by numerous Jewish organizations. In 1971, he was honored at Yad Vashem for his efforts to assist the Danish Jews in escaping to Sweden.

Duckwitz died in 1973.

http://www.shoah.dk/Courage/Duckwitz.htm

Ban calls on world to fight Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and bigotry

2009-03-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Ban calls on world to fight Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and bigotry

27 January 2009 – Over six decades after 6 million Jews, nearly a third of the total, and countless other minorities were butchered in the Nazi German Holocaust, it is more vital than ever to learn from the tragedy to prevent further atrocities, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today.

“We must continue to examine why the world failed to prevent the Holocaust and other atrocities since. That way, we will be better armed to defeat anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance,” he said in a message marking the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

“We must continue to teach our children the lessons of history's darkest chapters. That will help them do a better job than their elders in building a world of peaceful coexistence. We must combat Holocaust denial, and speak out in the face of bigotry and hatred,” he added in the message, read at a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York by Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.

Mr. Ban noted that new initiatives in Holocaust remembrance and education have given an authentic basis for hope, which is the theme of this year’s observance, the fourth since the General Assembly instituted the annual commemoration.

“But we can and must do more if we are to make that hope a reality,” he stressed. “We must uphold the standards and laws that the United Nations has put in place to protect people and fight impunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Our world continues to be plagued by ruthless violence, utter disregard for human rights, and the targeting of people solely for who they are.”

As well as the ceremony, chaired by Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka, the UN marked the occasion with panel discussions and other events, including an initiative by the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) called the “Footprints of Hope,” which brings the global network of the UN Information Centres together with local schools to further youngsters’ understanding of the Holocaust and their respect for human rights through documentary and film resources.

A new exhibit has also opened in the Visitors’ Lobby about the Nazi regime called “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race.”

General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto echoed Mr. Ban’s call to the world to learn the lesson of the Holocaust. “We need to move beyond our statements of grief and memory, however powerfully felt, and work to develop new ways of thinking about the Holocaust, about genocide, about the apparently bottomless capacity for peoples’ cruelty to each other,” he said in a message.

“That capacity is shared by all of us. At their core, all genocides, all holocausts, start with the alienation, demonization and the marginalization of the “Other” – those citizens of another religion, another race, ethnicity, another set of political ideas, or another sexual orientation than our own,” he added, calling for a struggle against intolerance and for relationships that replace “us and them” with “we and ours.”

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29679&Cr=holocaust&Cr1=

David Tennenbaum

2009-03-13T21:42:00.001-07:00

David Tennenbaum was born on March 11, 1931, the son of Jozef and Fanny Tennenbaum. The family led a happy life in Lvov, Poland, where his father owned a fruit import/export business.

The Tennenbaum family's feelings of security collapsed, however, following the Nazi occupation of Lvov in the summer of 1941. In August 1942 the family was herded into the Kleparow ghetto on the outskirts of Lvov. A few months later eleven-year-old David and his mother escaped from the ghetto.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells how a Ukrainian professor - a family friend - assisted in their escape and found them a temporary hiding place at the home of an ethnic German in Lvov. Ironically, the son of the professor was a member of the Ukrainian SS then serving on the eastern front. The professor secured false papers for David and his mother and found them a long term hiding place in December 1942 in the village of Zimna Woda.

http://www.shoah.dk/Courage/david.htm

They were taken in by an elderly, retired, schoolteacher named Mrs. Sokolinska. The timing of their move to Zimna Woda was very fortunate - shortly after they left their first hiding place it was raided and those living there were arrested.

Fanny hid under name of Franciszka Maria Wieczorkowska, while David, who had grown his hair long, passed as her daughter, Teresa Marja Wieczorkowska. He also pretended to be retarded so as to avoid having to take the required physical examination to attend school. David passed his time playing by himself and reading among the many books in the house.

In September 1944 David and his mother were liberated by the Soviet army. His father had disappeared - presumably he was deported to the Janowska KZ camp and murdered.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

2009-03-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas(2008) PG-13

When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno (Asa Butterfield) befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone wears striped pajamas. Unaware of the fate of those Jewish prisoners or the role his own Nazi father plays in it, Bruno embarks on a dangerous journey inside the camp. Mark Herman directs this gripping adaptation of the novel by John Boyne.

Sgt. Anton Schmid

2009-03-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

During the years of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania a German Sergeant Anton Schmid disobeyed his superior officers and saved 250 Jewish men, women, and children from extermination in Nazi death camps by hiding them, supplying them with false ID papers and helping them escape. On 13. April 1942, he was executed by the Nazis ...

We would never have known the story of Sergeant Anton Schmid, had it not been for those who owe him their lives. Most recently, Germany renamed a military base Feldwebel Anton Schmid Kaserne in his honor for his courage.

Anton Schmid was an electrician who owned a small radio shop in Vienna. Drafted into the German army after the Anschluss of 1938, Schmid found himself stationed near Vilnius in the autumn of 1941. The Germans had entered Lithuania shortly before. As a sergeant of the Wehrmacht he witnessed the herding of Jews into two ghettos and the shooting of thousands of them in nearby Ponary. In a letter to his wife, Stefi, Schmid described his horror at the sight of mass murder and of "children being beaten on the way". He went on: "You know how it is with my soft heart. I could not think and had to help them."

During much of the 19th century and continuing in the 20th century until the Nazi invasion, Vilnius and Warsaw were Europe's two preeminent centers of Jewish cultural, intellectual, religious and political life. In the summer of 1941, the Nazis launched a genocidal campaign of mass murder and deportations to death camps that, in three years, systematically killed about 180,000 Jews, i.e. about 94% of the Jews living in Lithuania before World War II, the largest percentage of any country. Today there are 6,000 Jews left in Lithuania ..

Anton Schmid was moved by the suffering of the Jews in the Vilnius ghetto and decided to help. He managed to release Jews from jail and risked his own life by smuggling food into the ghetto. His courageous assistance involved the saving of more than 250 Jews whom he managed to hide and the supplying of materiel and forged papers to the Jewish underground.

Arrested in January 1942, and summarily tried before a Nazi military court on February 25, Anton Schmid was executed on April 13 by the Nazis for his acts.

If Sergeant Schmid's acts were enormously rare, he evidently saw nothing extraordinary in them. "I merely behaved as a human being," he said in his last letter to his wife. In all the hell that was breaking loose around him, he chose to stay awake, to keep his head up and his heart opened. In the midst of so much death and destruction, he found some way to value life and brought back life and restoration in the only way he knew to do. He stood out as one of the few known German soldiers who had enough courage to do what he felt was right.

On 16 May 1967, the Israeli government paid tribute to Sergeant Anton Schmid. Yad Vashem awarded his widow the medal 'Righteous Among the Nations' which bears the inscription: "Whoever saves one life - saves the world entire."

In Germany the honoring of army sergeant Anton Schmid on May 8, 2000, appeared particularly significant because his name replaced that of an army general, Günther Rudel, who fought in two world wars and had been held up as a hero and example in the first decades after World War II.

Many Germans have long clung to the notion that Nazi atrocities were not the work of the army but of Hitler's elite SS and fanatical death squads. Now the government decided to strip a Wehrmacht general's name from a base and, for the first time, identify a military institution with a soldier who saved Jews. As Rudolf Scharping, the defense minister, said:

"We are not free to choose our history, but we can choose the examples we take from that history. Too many bowed to the threats and temptations of the dictator, and too few found the strength to resist. But Sgt. Anton Schmid did resist ..."

http://www.shoah.dk/Courage/Schmid.htm

Blacks During the Holocaust

2009-03-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

BLACKS DURING THE HOLOCAUST

The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder. However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups.

After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa (Schutztruppen), as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany and took with them their racist attitudes. Separation of whites and blacks was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the victorious Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany. The use of French colonial troops, some of whom were black, in these occupation forces exacerbated anti-black racism in Germany. Racist propaganda against black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases. The children of black soldiers and German women were called “Rhineland Bastards.” The Nazis, at the time a small political movement, viewed them as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler charged that “the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization.”

African German mulatto children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo (German secret state police) had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously “disappeared.”

The racist nature of Adolf Hitler's regime was disguised briefly during the Olympic Games in Berlin in August 1936, when Hitler allowed 18 African American athletes to compete for the U.S. team. However, permission to compete was granted by the International Olympic Committee and not by the host country.

Adult African Germans were also victims. Both before and after World War I, many Africans came to Germany as students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers, or low-level colonial officials, such as tax collectors, who had worked for the imperial colonial government. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, a dancer by profession, was murdered by the SS in 1933, probably because he was black. Gilges' German wife later received restitution from a postwar German government for his murder by the Nazis.

Some African Americans, caught in German-occupied Europe during World War II, also became victims of the Nazi regime. Many, like female jazz artist Valaida Snow, were imprisoned in Axis internment camps for alien nationals. The artist Josef Nassy, living in Belgium, was arrested as an enemy alien and held for seven months in the Beverloo transit camp in German-occupied Belgium. He was later transferred to Germany, where he spent the rest of the war in the Laufen internment camp and its subcamp, Tittmoning, both in Upper Bavaria.

European and American blacks were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system. Lionel Romney, a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine, was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Jean Marcel Nicolas, a Haitian national, was incarcerated in the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps in Germany. Jean Voste, an African Belgian, was incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp. Bayume Mohamed Hussein from Tanganyika (today Tanzania) died in the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin.

Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.

Some African American members of the U.S. Armed forces were liberators and witnesses to Nazi atrocities. The 761st Tank Battalion (an all-African American tank unit), attached to the 71st Infantry Division, U.S. Third Army, under the command of General George Patton, participated in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, in May 1945.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005479

Julian Bilecki

2009-02-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Julian Bilecki was just a teenager when he and his family hid 23 Jews in an underground bunker, saving them from Nazi death squads in war-torn Poland. In 1943, nearly all the families of the Jewish community in Podhajce, Eastern Galicia, about 3,000 Jews, were slaughtered by the Nazis. A little group - several of them children and teenagers - escaped from the Ghetto and survived the Nazi extermination finding their way to the Bilecki farm.

In June of 1943 the Bilecki family members who lived near the ghetto heard a knock on their door, opened it and saw not only some of their Jewish friends and neighbors but also some strange faces - 23 in all. They had come to seek refuge from the Nazis.

The Bilecki family took them in and decided that with the few young, strong men in the group of escapees they would build a bunker in a cave in the woods and camouflage it with leaves and branches. The biggest problem was providing food. Food for the villagers was scarce during these times, but how do you feed 23 extra people without arousing suspicion? Somehow the Bileckis were able to ration enough food for everyone.

However, this temporary shelter was soon discovered by passers-by in the woods and, fearing for their friends' lives, the Bileckis were forced to look for another location, to build another bunker. The second bunker was built very near to the Bileckis' own home. It was winter and the snowcovered ground would leave a trail of footsteps to the new hiding place. A survivor, Mrs. Grau Schnitzer, later recalled how Julian Bilecki being a young, agile and very brave boy, would jump from tree to tree to deliver his bounty to his Jewish friends in order to avoid leaving tracks in the snow.

The Bileckis showed the desperate Jews where to hide, helped them move when they were almost detected and brought burlap sacks of food - mostly potatoes, beans and corn meal food - and clothes regularly for a year. Once a week, someone from the family would come to sing hymns to the Jews and share news from the outside world. "They gave us food for the soul - hope to survive," Schnitzer said. "They deprived themselves. They endangered their lives."

Mrs. Grau Schnitzer, then 9, recalled how she left the ghetto with her parents to bury a wagon full of dead bodies and then escaped. Her father and uncle, who had known the Bileckis before the war, went to them for help."We knew that they were believers and we knew that they were good people," she recalled. "We had no choice, and we hoped that they would not report us. We said Here we are, help us and they helped us".

Another survivor, Sima Weissman, later recalled, how they "not only hid us, but spent time with us, reading the Bible and praying for our salvation .. three times it was necessary to change hiding places, so that nearby villagers would suspect nothing. It's impossible to describe what these people did for us. No family member would have done more than they did."

Genia Melzer, another survivor, was 17 then and was left for dead by the Nazis in a pile of corpses after a mass shooting. "I lay down on the floor with my head down, and my little cousin, 9 years old, lay down on my right side. They started shooting, but I wasn't shot. They thought I was dead but when a little girl coughed, they came with an ax and started chopping." Genia survived the second assault, too, still pretending to be dead. "They took us to this mass grave and they threw all the people into it and I was on top."

Genia Melzer crawled out from among the bodies and ran to the woods near Podhajce, where Julian Bilecki found her covered with blood and took her in. Her brother, uncles, aunts, cousins and all her friends were killed - but she survived. Today she is a greatgrandmother ...

After almost a year of living underground, one day the group heard shots above the bunker. They knew that at last they had been liberated and freedom was just beyond that thin layer of twigs and branches that had concealed their existence from the world for almost a year. The Russian Army liberated the area on March 27, 1944, and the surviving Jews went their separate ways, some immigrating to the U.S.

Over the years, many survivors sent packages of food and clothing to the Bilecki family, who remained poor, and corresponded by mail. There are no telephones on poor Ukrainian farms. They regularly send money to the Ukrainians. And they arranged for all the rescuers to be honored as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

More than a half-century later, a gray-haired Julian Bilecki, now 70, and five survivors, all New York residents, were brought together by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. A retired bus driver Bilecki was flown in from Ukraine, his first airplane ride, first time out of his country. As he walked into a reception room at Kennedy Airport, the five survivors, now gray and some walking with canes, applauded and cried as they greeted with flowers, hugged and kissed the man who, as a teenager, risked his life to help them escape the Nazis and survive the Holocaust.

Tears welled up into his eyes. "I see you all have gray hair," Bilecki said through a translator. "I too have gray hair. I thought I would never see you again. I feel lost. I thought this would never happen. All I did was help. It is very pleasant that people remember. Now I am getting paid back by God."

"If it wasn't for them, we would not be here right now. As Jews, we had no right to live. When Jews were in need, these people were there for us," one survivor said ...

In 1992, in the first ceremony of its kind in Ukraine, seven Ukrainian citizens were inducted into Yad Vashem's Righteous Among the Nations for their efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust. One of those honored was Julian Bilecki. Attending were representatives of Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Julian's brother Roman, a resident of upstate New York, had been similarly honored for his heroic efforts to offer refuge to Jews by several organizations.

http://www.shoah.dk/Courage/Bilecki.htm

Yom Hashoah, the day which commemorates victims of the Holocaust, is May 3rd. View the special on-line exhibit

2009-02-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/special/voices.shtml

Dedication

Holocaust Survivors live in two worlds: worlds of fear and worlds of hope. What they have experienced has marked them. They saw their families turned into ashes in the field. They have also witnessed the continuity and the blossoming of the Jewish people.

On this Yom Hashoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance, we commemorate the martyrs and the survivors of the Holocaust with the letters published here. This series of letters was written by some of the martyrs to one of the survivors.

May their memories never be erased from our thoughts.

Anne Frank-Virtual Display

2009-02-18T21:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=23&lid=2

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/af/htmlsite/

The Diary of Anne Frank, posthumously published in 1947 and eventually translated into almost 70 languages, is one of the most widely read works of non-fiction in the world. For many, especially younger readers, Anne's diary is their first encounter with the history of Nazi Germany's attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.

Anne's legacy, however, extends beyond her diary. Between the ages of 13 and 15, Anne wrote short stories, fairy tales, essays, and the beginnings of a novel. Five notebooks and more than 300 loose pages, meticulously handwritten during her two years in hiding, survived the war. They reveal a young woman who had great ambition to be a writer and was exploring her craft. Her works combine adolescent imagination and playfulness with mature insight and self-awareness.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/af/htmlsite/story.html

Educational centre to open at former Roma concentration camp

2009-02-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

Educational centre to open at former Roma concentration camp
[18-06-2008 13:14 UTC] By Jan Richter

A former Roma concentration camp in South Moravia was turned into a holiday resort in the 1960s. Now the site is set to become a documentation and educational centre with a permanent exposition on the Romany Holocaust – the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic.
Roma concentration camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu, photo: Museum of Roma culture Roma concentration camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu, photo: Museum of Roma culture
About 6,500 Bohemian and Moravian Roma went through two concentration camps in the occupied Czech territory before they were shipped to Nazi extermination camps. The best known of them is Lety, which today houses a pig farm criticised by the European Commission. The other is in Hodonín u Kunštátu, some 40 km north of Brno, South Moravia, which might become the country’s first and only research and educational centre on Roma history and culture. Minister for Ethnic Minorities and Human Rights Džamila Stehlíková led the negotiations with the property’s owner.
“The negotiations took several months before the owner of the establishment agreed to sell the property. Compared to the pig farm on the site of the other concentration camp in Lety, it was much easier, because the owner showed a lot of good will.”
The former concentration camp will become an international research and educational facility with programmes on Roma history and culture for schools, teachers and the public. The only surviving barracks building will have the country’s first permanent exposition on the Romany Holocaust. The centre will be part of the Brno-based Museum of Roma Culture, whose director Jana Horváthová says education on Roma Holocaust should be included in school curriculum.
Džamila Stehlíková Džamila Stehlíková
“The whole of Europe is getting ready to launch Roma Holocaust education at schools, but this hasn’t yet happened in many European countries. If we in the Czech Republic were first with such a centre, I’m sure other European countries would be interested in following what we’d be doing, and come to learn what we would be the first to develop.”
Apart from an exhibition on the Roma Holocaust, the Museum of Roma culture is also planning to use the centre for presenting their unique collection of visual art as well as for an outdoor museum with samples of historic Roma housing. Minister Stehlíková again.
“I’m sure that we will find an agreement and that the Culture Ministry will agree to fund the documentation and educational centre, and I also hope that we will receive international assistance. The planned centre should present the history and the culture of the Roma people, not just in the Czech Republic but in a broader European context as well.”
Provided the Museum of Roma Culture receives sufficient funding, the documentation and educational centre in the former Roma concentration camp in Hodonín u Kunštátu could open in middle of next year.

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/105238

Marking the Holocaust

2009-02-15T00:21:00.000-08:00

Marking the Holocaust
[27-01-2009 15:36 UTC] By Dominik Jůn

The Czech Republic has been marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which comes on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland. Numerous events have been taking place across the country and in Prague in particular. Dominik Jůn spoke with Zuzana Tlášková of the Jewish Museum in Prague to find out more.
“Today is the day of remembrance for the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and there are a lot of events that are commemorating this day. One event was in the Czech senate between 10 and 12 in the morning, with many survivors from the Holocaust being invited there. At six in the evening, there is a concert at the Spanish synagogue in Prague to remember the composers that were interned at the Terezín ghetto. And for the last two weeks, along with the United Nations information centre in Prague, we have been doing lectures for students about the Holocaust.”
Obviously as the years go by, the memory of the Holocaust fades, and the last survivors pass away. So do you think that Czechs are forgetting about this period in history?

“I don’t think so. We still have a few survivors that are with us and they can talk about the things that had to endure during World War II. After they are no longer with us, I still hope that we will be able to remember and not forget what happened during that time with the Jewish people in the concentration camps.”
How would you assess Jewish-Czech relations at the moment? Are there any tensions – obviously there are anti-Semitic incidents now and again.
“Of course there are the kinds of Neo-Nazi activities in this country like there are in other countries. But I think that the most important thing that we can do is to do lectures, cultural programmes and other activities regarding the Holocaust – this is the only way that we can fight with them. We must show that we will never forget and never give them an opportunity to assert falsehoods about this period in history.”
These days one hears the word “Holocaust” used with regards to various conflicts -most notably the recent Israeli-Gaza conflict, with perhaps both sides engaging in a war of perceptions. Do you think that sometimes that the term “Holocaust” is overused and even cheapened in this sense?
“I don’t think that it is a good idea to use this word with regards to the conflict in Israel, because in my opinion it is something completely different and it is not wise to suggest that they are the same.”

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/112647

Winton Train to retrace route of kindertransport

2009-02-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

Winton Train to retrace route of kindertransport that saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children
[19-05-2008 14:26 UTC] By Jan Velinger

This Monday, Sir Nicholas Winton, the British stock exchange clerk who quietly saved more than 650 Czech Jewish children from the Holocaust and told no one for more than 50 years, turned 99. In Prague, the occasion was marked by representatives of Czech Railways as well as the Film Academy of Miroslav Ondříček in Písek. Together, they announced an ambitious new project called The Winton Train, which will retrace the route of the original Prague-London kindertransport which saved so many. Young filmmakers, inspired by Mr Winton’s deeds, will be among those who will take part in the journey.

Next year it will be 70 years since Sir Nicholas Winton, a former stock exchange clerk, helped 669 Jewish children escape Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a deed he kept secret, even from his own wife, for almost half a century. She only discovered the truth in the late 1980s, coming upon an old briefcase in the attic containing lists of children’s names and letters from their parents. Ever since, Mr Winton’s story has gained worldwide attention and continues to inspire countless people, something organisers from Czech Railways and a film school in southern Bohemia now want to highlight. Throughout 2008, students at cooperating film schools across Europe and North America will work on productions either inspired by Mr Winton’s story or similar stories of sacrifice and selflessness in the world today. Olga Dabrowská is a professor at the Miroslav Ondříček Film Academy in Písek:
Photo: CTK Photo: CTK
“All the final films will be screened at the Winton Fest organised by us together with the London Film Academy. Then they will also be screened at the student film festival in Písek and they will also be broadcast by Czech TV as well as other broadcasters in the European Union.”
The students, together with others, will then also take part in a re-enactment of the original kindertransports. Historic steam engines will travel from Prague, across Germany and the Netherlands before reaching London, where the final train will be met by Sir Winton himself. Wherever possible, Czech Railway organisers said on Monday, historic engines and railway cars will be used, although not always the originals. For example, the train leaving the Czech capital will be one loaned from Hungary, as suitable Czech trains from the period are no longer operational. Czech Railways’ Zbyněk Honys said on Monday the same idea would apply even across the English Channel:

“We are looking for a ferry from the period which could transport us across La Manche, as opposed to travelling through the Chunnel.”
If everything goes as planned, the Winton Train will leave Prague on September 1st, 2009 the anniversary of the original departure of the last kindertransports out of Czechoslovakia organised on the eve of the war by Mr Winton. On the occasion a plaque commemorating Mr Winton’s contribution will also be unveiled at Prague’s Main Station.

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/104187

Propaganda examined in D.C. exhibit

2009-02-13T21:49:00.000-08:00

Nazi propaganda examined in D.C. exhibit

By Nafeesa Syeed, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Wearing a black hat and a suit bearing the yellow Star of David, a man recoils from a large finger pointing at him from above.

"He is to blame for the war," reads the poster caption.

Similar images, along with newspapers, speeches and broadcast clips, tell the story of how Nazi Germany's propaganda machine cultivated hatred and suspicion and portrayed Jewish people as the enemy in the new museum exhibit State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda.

ALSO IN D.C.: Bible used by Lincoln, Obama goes on view
CITY GUIDE: D.C. hotels, restaurants and more

The exhibit opened Jan. 30 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and runs through December 2011. It documents how propaganda fostered public indifference as the government and its allies went from hostilities to mass atrocities of the Holocaust, when millions of Jews and other groups were killed between 1933 and 1945.

Museum officials hope visitors will become more critical of information and more aware of anti-Semitism and intolerance. For instance, the exhibit touches on the 1994 Rwandan genocide and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to wipe Israel off the map.

"It's to alert people to the fact that hate speech and language like this didn't go away when the Nazis fell," said Steven Luckert, the exhibit's curator. "These are things that we have to be constantly aware of in our own day."

Nazi leaders branded Adolf Hitler as a savior. The swastika logo became instantly recognizable in posters and other marketing used to attract votes from women, laborers and students as the Nazis rose from a little-known party.

After coming to power in 1933, Hitler established a ministry of "public enlightenment and propaganda." Visitors can use a touchscreen monitor to see and hear examples of the ministry's work, including music they used.

Newspaper reports also played a role in gaining support for the Nazi agenda. Curators said many Germans didn't share Hitler's desire to go to war in 1939 so fabricated reports of countries such as Poland threatening the country were printed to make it seem like an invasion was necessary.

At its core, the Nazi party promised to unite Germans under a national, Aryan identity regardless of class, religion or region — but excluded were Jews, the mentally and physically disabled, gays and other groups considered "impure."

Anti-Semitic propaganda accused Jews of conspiring to take over the world, describing them as "aliens" and "parasitic."

A photo slide depicts a white woman with her arm around a black woman, both smiling, warning: "Racial pride fades" with such friendship.

Films and other entertainment mocked those branded as the enemy. A movie poster shows a thick-browed, grimacing Jewish caricature for The Eternal Jew, a 1940 documentary-like film with footage of Jewish ghettos. The film failed at the box office.

But another movie with famous actors and a well-known director, was more subtle in its message. Jews were expelled at the historical drama's end.

Nazi propagandists spread radio broadcasts and news reels in dozens of languages across Europe and overseas, including to the U.S., South America and India. At the same time, they banned foreign news broadcasts.

Despite the demonizing rhetoric, curators said references to the atrocities that were committed were rare. Officials focused on presenting a positive image of Germany.

"I think that represents real danger," Luckert said. "That you could be so swayed by something that seems so positive to you, that you neglect the consequences that it has for somebody else."

Following World War II, the Allied forces that toppled the Nazis worked to destroy the party's propaganda. They renamed streets, closed newspapers and banned symbols. A 1945 photo shows an American soldier in Germany searching for Nazi content in a large pile of books.

Kerry Overbeck, 19, a sophomore at American University, visited the exhibit as part of her class on Holocaust history. The propaganda targeting the youth especially shook her, she said.

"What people always ask is, 'Why learn about the Holocaust still?"' she said. "But there's so much more to teach us, because it's an ongoing cycle of hatred."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-02-06-holocaust-museum-nazi-propaganda_N.htm

Holocaust victims remembered by new ‘Stones of the Vanished’ project

2009-02-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

If you stumble across a little brass plaque on a walk in Prague’s Old Town next week, then the chances are it is going to be a ‘kámen zmizelého’ (‘stone of the vanished’). The project, organized by the Czech Union of Jewish Students, will eventually see stones commemorating victims of the Holocaust embedded in pavements all over the capital. The idea comes from Germany, as does the man making the memorials, Gunter Demnig. But the project coordinator at the Czech end is Petr Mandl. I met him on Wednesday morning to ask first about the name of the project:

“I would translate it as ‘The Stones of the Vanished’, the original name is ‘Stolpersteine’ in German, which means rather ‘stumbling stones’, but it is very hard to translate, and the meaning of the project is a bit different in the Czech Republic.”
So is this part of a European network of ‘Stolpersteine’ then? How big is the scale of this Czech project?
“So of course, we wanted Prague to be part of this international project – as you know, it has already been done in many other European countries. And now in Prague we are unveiling our first ten stones, and we want the project to enlarge by around 30 stones per year.”
And I hear that you are actually going to have to look quite hard to find these stones - that they are not going to be all that evident at first glance…
Photo: www.stolpersteine.com Photo: www.stolpersteine.com
“One of the ideas of the project is to personify the historical event that was the Shoah, the Holocaust. We want to reflect the stories of people who were murdered in its course. So of course, the stones can’t be massive and all down the pavements, on every corner.”
So, if you were going to hunting for these stones, where would you find the first ten?
“Well, the first stones will be put in the Old Town, in the Jewish Quarter, where many Jewish people lived. But in the future, the majority of Jewish people in Prague lived in Vinohrady, and so there will be many stones there as well.”

Who is funding this project?
“It is funded by private sponsors and donors, and also those people who want to dedicate a stone to their family share the cost.”
The project is being unveiled later this month, so there aren’t yet any stones in place, but what will they look like, for those who maybe won’t get to Prague, and maybe won’t get tot see them?
“The stones are concrete cubes around 10cm each, or four inches if you want to be metric about it, and then there is a sheet of brass on top with writing. The writing reads ‘here lived – the name of a person, the date of birth, the date of transport, where that person was deported and the place and date of that person’s murder’.”

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/108844

Oscar Schindler

2009-02-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

Oscar Schindler

A few years ago, the world-wide American periodical Life Magazine could announce that Oscar Schindler - famous as the central figure in Spielberg`s film "Schindler`s List", which received 7 Oscars - had been acclaimed a hero and elevated to the "Heroes`Hall of Fame". Side by side with famous historical figures like George Washington, Gandhi, Churchill and Martin Luther King ...

This Oscar Schindler has been described as a cynical, greedy exploiter of slave workers during the Second World War, a black-marketeer, gambler, member of the Nazi party eternally on the lookout for profit, alcoholic playboy and shameless womanizer of the worst sort.

In the beginning of the 1960s, this same Oscar Schindler was honoured in Israel and declared "Righteous" and invited to plant a tree in The Avenue of the Righteous, which leads to the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem. A memorial in the Park of Heroes praises him as the Saviour of more than 1,200 Jews!

Today there are more than 6,000 descendants of Schindler`s Jews living in the USA and Europe, and many in Israel. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population of Poland was 3.5 million. Today there are between 3,000 and 4,000 left.

Rake - and Saviour ... Who was this Oscar Schindler who started by earning millions of German marks through exploitation of slave workers and ended by spending his last pfennig and risking his life to save "his" 1,200 Schindler Jews from Hitler´s death camps?

Oscar Schindler was born on April 28th, 1908, in Zwittau in Czechoslovakia in a home imbued with his parents` deep piety. The nearest neighbours were a Jewish Rabbi family, and the two sons became Oscar`s best friends. The family was one of the richest and most prominent in Zwittau, but as a result of the deep economic depression of the 1930s, the family firm became bankrupt.

Now without employment, Schindler joined the Nazi party, as did many others at that time. It was opportune, when one remembers that the first German divisions invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. Maybe because he had seen possibilities which the war brought in its wake, he followed on the heels of the SS when the Germans invaded Poland.

Oscar Schindler quickly got on good terms with the local Gestapo chiefs and rejoices here over life in the beginning of the 1940s - he was a womanisor and heavy drinker, but continually risked his life to save his Schindler Jews from the deathcamps.

Schindler was recruited by the German Intelligence Agency to collect information about Poles and was highly esteemed for his efforts - a fact that was to play a decisive role later in the war for Schindler, when he needed all his contacts.

He left his wife Emilie in Zwittau and moved to Crakow, where he took over a Jewish family`s apartment. Bribes in the shape of money and illegal black market goods flowed copiously from Schindler and gave him control of a Jewish-owned enameled-goods factory, Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik, close to the Jewish ghetto, where he principally employed Jewish workers. At this time presumably because they were the cheapest labour ...

But slowly as the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence and terror, the seeds of their plan for the total extermination of the Jews dawned on Schindler in all its horror - he came to see the Jews not only as cheap labour, but also as mothers, fathers, and children, exposed to ruthless slaughter.

So he decides to risk everything in desperate attempts to save "his" 1200 Schindler Jews from certain death in the hell of the death camps. Thanks to massive bribery and his connections, he gets away with actively protecting his workers.

The SS officer Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow labor camp, had made the final liquidation of the Crakow ghetto and had experience at three death camps in eastern Poland, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka ...

The conditions of life at Plaszow were made dreadful by Goeth. A prisoner in Plaszow was very lucky if he could survive in this camp more than four weeks. The camp shown in Spielberg's film Schindler's List is the exact description of Plaszow.

Amon Goeth passed his mornings by using his high-powered, scoped rifle to shoot at children playing in the camp - he often would use it as an incentive to work harder. For example, some young men hauling coal were moving too slow for his liking. He shot one of them with his sniper rifle so the rest would hurry up.

Oscar Schindler outwitted Hauptsturmfuhrer Amon Goeth. When Schindler requested that those Jews who continued to work in his factory be moved into their own sub-camp near the plant "to save time in getting to the job," Goeth complied. From then on, Schindler found that he could have food and medicine smuggled into the barracks with less danger. The guards, of course, were bribed, and Goeth never was to discover it, though Oscar Schinder was arrested twice ...

At the point when his ambitions have been realized and he could walk away from the war a rich man while "his Jews" die in Plaszow and Auschwitz, Oscar Schindler desperately spends every penny he has bribing and paying off Amon Goeth and other Nazi officials to protect and save his Jews.

In a symbolic reversal of his earlier purpose in life, he spends all the money he made by exploiting the labour of Jews in buying the lives of Jews; whatever is not spent in bribing Goeth and other Nazi officials is subsequently spent in feeding and protecting his Jews.

At his factory, situated by the work camp of Plaszow, Nazi guards are instructed to stay on their side of the fence and nobody is allowed inside the factory without permission from Schindler himself. He spends every night in his office so he can intervene if the Gestapo come.

Twice he is arrested by the Gestapo - but is released, undoubtedly first and foremost because of his many connections.

At his factory, workers are only half as hungry as in other camps - meals at Schindler`s have a calorie count of 2000 as against 900 in other places. When food supplies are critical, Schindler spends great sums of money purchasing food supplies on the black market.

At his factory the old are registered as being 20 years younger, children are registered as adults. Lawyers, doctors and artists are registered as metal workers and mechanics - all so they can survive as essential for the war industry.

At his factory, nobody is hit, nobody murdered, nobody sent to death camps like the nearby Auschwitz.

They were protected and saved by Oscar Schindler. In those years, millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz, but Schindler`s Jews miraculously survived, to their own surprise, in Plaszow right up to 1944. Schindler bribed the Nazis to get food and better treatment for his Jews during a time when one of the most civilized nations of the world was capable of systematic mass-murder.

When the Nazis were beaten back on the East Front, Plaszow and its satellite camps were dissolved and closed. Schindler had no illusions as to what that would entail. Desperately he exerted his influence on his contacts in the military and industrial circles in Crakow and Warsaw and finally went to Berlin to save his Jews from a certain death. With his life as the stakes, he employed all his powers of persuasion, he bribed uninhibitedly, fought, begged ...

Where no-one would have believed it possible, Schindler succeeded. He was granted permission to move the whole of his factory from Plaszow to Brunnlitz in occupied Czechoslovakia and furthermore, unheard of before, take all his workers with him. In this way, the 1,098 workers who had been written on Schindler`s list in connection with the removal avoided sharing the fate of the other 25,000 men, women and children of Plaszow who were sent without mercy to extermination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only 60 kilometers from Plaszow.

By a mistake 300 Schindler-women were routed on a train to Auschwitz. Certain death awaited. A Schindler survivor, Anna Duklauer Perl, later recalled:'I knew something had gone terribly wrong .. they cut our hair real short and sent us to the shower. Our only hope was Schindler would find us.'

After weeks Anna and the other Schindler-women were being herded off toward the showers again. They did not know whether this was going to be water or gas. Then they heard a voice:'What are you doing with these people ? These are my people.' Schindler! He had come to rescue them, bribing the Nazis to retrieve the women on his list and bring them back.

The women were released - the only shipment out of Auschwitz during WW2.

When the women returned to Brunnlitz, weak, hungry, frostbitten, less than human, Schindler met them in the courtyard. They never forgot the sight of Schindler standing in the doorway. And they never forgot his raspy voice when he - surrounded by SS guards - gave them an unforgettable guarantee:'Now you are finally with me, you are safe now. Don't be afraid of anything. You don't have to worry anymore.'

At Auschwitz the children were generally killed upon arrival. Children born in the camps were often killed on the spot, especially if the child was Jewish.

So called camp doctors, especially the notorious Josef Mengele, would torture and inflict incredible suffering on Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others. "Patients" were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, castrated, frozen to death, and exposed to various other traumas. Often Mengele injected chemicals into the eyes of children in an attempt to change their eye color.

One twin recalls the death of his brother:

"Dr. Mengele had always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why - perhaps because he was the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralyzed. He could not walk anymore. Then they took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi anymore. I cannot tell you how I felt. It is impossible to put into words how I felt. They had taken away my father, my mother, my two older brothers - and now, my twin ..."

These terrors occurred in Block 10 of Auschwitz I. Josef Mengele was nicknamed "the Angel of Death" for the inhuman experiments he conducted.

Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, "cost- accountant considerations" led to an order to place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits.

Oscar Schindler knew. He toiled through the rough waters of the confusions of war and surfaced from the chaos to save his Jews. Generations will remember him for what he did ...

Until the liberation of spring, 1945, Oscar Schindler used all means at his disposal to ensure the safety of his Schindler-Jews. He spent every pfennig he had, and even Emilie Schindler`s jewels were sold, to buy food, clothes, and medicine. He set up a secret sanatorium in the factory with medical equipment purchased on the black market. Here Emilie Schindler looked after the sick. Those who did not survive were given a fitting Jewish burial in a hidden graveyard - established and paid for by Schindler.

Later accounts have revealed that Schindler spent something like 4 million German marks keeping his Jews out of the death camps - an enormous sum of money for those times.

Even though the Schindlers had had a large mansion placed at their disposal close to the factory, Oscar Schindler understood the fear which his Jews had of nocturnal visits from the SS. As in Plaszow, Schindler did not spent one single night outside the little office in the factory.

The factory continued to produce shells for the German Wehrmacht for 7 months. In all that time not one usable shell was produced! Not one shell passed the military quality tests. Instead, false military travel passes and ration cards were produced, just as Nazi uniforms, weapons, ammunition and hand-grenades were collected. But still, a tireless Schindler succeeded in these months in persuading the Gestapo to send a further 100 Belgian, Dutch and Hungarian Jews to his factory camp "with regard to the continuing war industry production".

In May, 1945, it was all over. The Russians moved into Brunnlitz. The previous evening, Schindler gathered everyone together in the factory and took a deeply emotional leave of them.

He told them they were free, he was a fugitive."My children, you are saved. Germany has lost the war." He asked that they didn't go into the neighboring houses to rob and plunder. "Prove yourself worthy of the millions of victims among you and refrain from any individual acts of revenge and terror". He announced that three yards of fabric were to be given each prisoner from his warehouse stores as well as a bottle of vodka - which brought a high price on the black market.

At five after midnight - certain that his Jews finally were out of danger - Oscar Schindler left the factory. "I must leave now", Schindler said, "Auf Wiedersehen".

Oscar Schindler - and 1200 Schindler-Jews along with him - had survived the horrors of the Holocaust ....

The Americans captured Amon Goeth and turned him over to the Poles. Goeth was convicted of the murders of tens of thousands of people. He was hanged for his crimes in Crakow on September 13, 1946.During his trial Goeth displayed provocative indifference. And even though he is being hanged, Amon Goeth still salutes his Fuhrer in one final act of defiance ...

Poldek Pfefferberg, the Schindler Jew who helped Oscar Schindler procure black-market items to bribe Nazi officers with during the war, later told he promised Schindler to tell his story:"You protect us, you save us, you feed us - we survived the Holocaust, the tragedy, the hardship, the sickness, the beatings, the killings! We must tell your story ...."

Schindler`s life after the war was a long series of failures. He tried without success to be a film producer and was deprived of his nationality immediately after the war. Threats from former Nazis meant that he felt insecure in post-war Germany, and he applied for an entry permit to the United States. This was refused as he had been a member of the Nazi party.

After this he fled to Buenos Aires in Argentina with his wife Emilie, his mistress and a dozen Schindler Jews. He settled down in 1949 as a farmer, supported financially by the Jewish organization Joint and thankful Jews, who never forgot him.

But Oscar Schindler met with no success, and in 1957 he became bankrupt and travelled back alone to Europe. He never saw Emilie again ...
Emilie Schindler died Oct. 5, 2001, 94 years old. For 50 years she lived in her little house in San Vicente 40 kilometres south-west of Buenos Aires with her cats, dog, and beautiful roses. Only the uniformed Argentinean police disturbed the idyll. They were posted 24 hours a day to protect the old lady from antisemitic and ultraconservative extremist groups.

But in her A Memoir Where Light And Shadow Meet Emilie tells about her inner thoughts, when she visited Oscar's tomb, over thirty-seven years after he left:

"At last we meet again .. I have received no answer, my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me .. But what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married, this is how we are before God. I have forgiven you everything, everything .. "

Oscar Schindler settled down in at little apartment Am Hauptbahn Nr. 4 in Frankfurt Am Main in West Germany and tried - again with help from the Jewish organization - to establish a cement factory. This was not a success either, and it went bankrupt in 1961. In 1962, after Oscar Schindler was honored by Israel as a Righteous Gentile, his business partner in Germany canceled the partnership saying, ' ... now it is clear that you are a friend of Jews and I will not work together with you any more ...'

Abraham Zuckerman and Murray Pantirer, New Jersey real estate developers who were boyhood friends in Cracow, Poland, and were rescued by Schindler, re-established contact with Oscar Schindler in the 1950s, when they began their careers as real estate developers in New Jersey. They sponsored visits by Schindler to the U.S., treating him as a member of their families and helping him financially during the post-war period when he found it difficult to re-establish himself.

And his life was totally dependent on gifts and money from the Jews he saved. His close colleague and friend Poldek Pfefferberg encouraged every single Schindler Jew to donate one day`s pay a year. Another friend Moshe Beijski - also a Schindler Jew - who later became a high court judge in Israel, could lovingly recount how if you sent Schindler 3,000 dollars, he would have spent the money in two to three weeks. And would ring up after that and say that he didn`t have a cent.

In 1961, the year the war criminal Adolf Eichmann was brought to trial in Jerusalem, a group of Jews invited Schindler to visit Israel. The visit aroused great interest, coupled with the trial of Eichmann, and great efforts were made to have Schindler honoured as "righteous". The honour came the following year on the day of his birthday, when he was invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous.

But reactions in Germany were quite different! Schindler`s clear indictment of German war criminals in the trials after the war nourished the hatred that many felt for him. He was persecuted, he was sworn at on the streets, and stones were thrown at him.

It was said that he was their bad conscience - the conscience of all those who had known something but done nothing.

Schindler boxed the ears of a factory worker who called him a "Jew kisser", but achieved nothing other than being dragged into court on a count of violence, where the judge gave him a lecture on jurisprudence.

In a letter to one of his Jews, Schindler wrote, "I would have taken my own life, if it would not have given them so much satisfaction ...."

Every spring from 1961 until his death in 1974, Schindler Jews invited him to Israel for a couple of months, where all imaginable and unimaginable expenses were paid. Every year there were tumultuous scenes when his Jews gathered together to bid him welcome. Here he rejoiced over life, accompanied by his mistress, sleeping late every day and holding court with his friends, enjoying vodka and double cognacs in a street cafe in Tel Aviv.

His friend Martin Gosch lovingly wrote to him: "I hope the fact that you have taken an apartment in Frankfurt does not mean that you are carrying on with too many women. (One is enough! Remember, dear friend, we are no longer as young as we used to be!)."

On the 28th of April every year a large number of his Jews gathered together to celebrate his birthday. He always waited until everyone was seated, after which he made a magnificent entry and embraced the children. A Schindler Jew recounts that he loved the children like his own family. "He asked every one of us who had children to send photos with name, birth date, and how much they weighed. He never asked for anything for himself - but always asked about the children."

Oscar Schindler was honoured and revered everywhere by his Jews. In Jerusalem a floor of the The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace was dedicated to Schindler in the beginning of the 1970s for his efforts.

Murray Pantirer lost both his parents, two sisters and four brothers during the war. They were all murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. He was liberated as a 20-year-old Schindler Jew in 1945 as the only survivor and after the war, together with his friend and associate Abraham Zuckerman, built up a great fortune as a magnate in the United States . They honoured Schindler in their own special way. Every time a new town district was planned and built, at least one street was named after Schindler! In New Jersey alone there are 21 Schindler Streets, and even a Schindler Plaza.

Even today when the children have taken over the business, this entirely special mark of honour for Schindler continues .....

When asked, Schindler told that his metamorphosis during the war was sparked by the shocking immensity of the Final Solution. In his own words: "I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."

Oscar Schindler died of liver failure in Frankfurt on the 9th of October, 1974, at an age of 66. From 1939 to the day he died he was such in love with his Jewish people, that he wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. Poldek Pfefferberg asked him shortly before he died, why he wanted to be buried here. He answered :"My children are here ....."

In faithful acquiescence with his wishes, his earthly remains were taken to Israel, where his lead coffin was carried through the streets of Jerusalem.

Schindler - to be honest not one of the most devout sons of the church - was buried in the Catholic churchyard on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, in the presence of hundreds of weeping Schindler Jews.

Oscar Schindler was mourned on four continents ...

October, 1999, the list of Jewish employees drawn up by Oscar Schindler to save them from Nazi death camps was discovered in a suitcase full of papers left to a German couple, the german newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung reported. Stuttgarter Zeitung said it planned to give the suitcase to Yad Vashem. The gray Samsonite suitcase with a tag that reads "O. Schindler" was given to the newspaper by a couple who found it while cleaning the home of their late parents. The family had been close friends of Schindler. A former neighbor of Schindler's in Frankfurt, Dieter Trautwein, confirmed that Oscar Schindler spent the last months of his life in Hildersheim with his friends after becoming ill.

The Stuttgart couple found the list of 1,200 workers among the papers, which deal mainly with his life after World War II, his relationship to his German fellow citizens, his problems with alcohol and womanizing and his connections with Israel and with German Jews. The papers include an exchange of letters from the 1940s through the 1960s and a speech given by Schindler at the end of the war, urging the Jews from his factory not to take violent revenge.

The list is on letterhead for Schindler's enamelware factory in Crakow, southern Poland. Schindler wrote the names of 1,200 Jews at the Plaszow concentration camp and gave it to the Nazi SS, saying the people on the list were needed for employment at his factory in Crakow, Poland, said Mordechai Paldiel, who heads the department at Yad Vashem that researches and honors Gentiles. Schindler added fictitious jobs for each worker to convince Nazi officials that they were vital to the war effort and should live. One copy presumably was saved in SS archives, and Schindler may also have kept a copy, said Paldiel.

Michel Friedman, whose parents were saved by Schindler, said the newfound letters are important because they "confirm that his economic situation after World War II was very bad, and the only ones who helped him were the Jews and not the German government, which paid pensions to old Nazis."

"Schindler was a guest of honor at my bar mitzva and he was at our house for Sabbath dinners, said Friedman, a Frankfurt attorney and member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

The papers, contained in the suitcase, also have an unpleasant message for Germans: They show how a man known for rescuing Jews was isolated and rejected by his fellow citizens after World War II.

"For the Germans today, Oscar Schindler is a very positive example," said Stefan Braun, a reporter for the Stuttgarter Zeitung. "But after the war, people were not really interested in knowing about his story. In one of his letters from 1948, he says, 'There is a neo-Nazism coming from the east. Nothing has changed and it is worse.' " Braun said.

"The letters show how he learned that after the war Germany was not interested in looking at what happened during the Holocaust", Braun said. "He was very unhappy that Germans were not interested in the history, didn't want to hear about it. And they were angry that he had made a good impression in Israel."

"The suitcase is very old; it has a lot of trips behind it," Braun said. "When you open it you see a lot of old papers, very old letters. No one writes such letters any more today and no one collects them, either. It was completely disorganized."

Reading Schindler's papers gave him "the feeling of being intimate with someone I never saw. He was a very open-minded and free-speaking person. He said what he was thinking. He was balancing between a lot of hopes, a lot of disappointments."

For Braun, it was fascinating to read about the failed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film project based on Schindler's story. Though Schindler did get some advance money from the project, it was canceled in 1966. "Of course he was devastated," Braun said. "That was the end of the final hope."

The unearthing of these papers belonging to Oscar Schindler in Germany is one of several recent tangible reminders that the Holocaust is not ancient history ...

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Schindler2.htm

Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine

2009-02-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine
http://remember.org/educate/medexp.html
Foreword

People must remember the Holocaust as a insult to humanity. The lives lost were not only great in number, but offered so much to mankind. How the world would have been different if the millions of souls destroyed could have lived.

Doctors have always been thought of as the saviors of mankind, the healers, and caretakers of our utter existence. Even ancient civilizations revered the medicine men as having special power to protect life. The trust of a physician is sacred. This is why the practice of medicine by the doctors of the Third Reich is egregious, outrageous, and shocking. The Nazi doctors violated the trust placed in them by humanity. The most painful truth is for the most part the doctors escaped their crimes against Humanity and lived a life, unlike their victims.

The Experiments

INDEX

* Freezing / Hypothermia
* Genetics
* Infectious Diseases
* Interrogation and Torture
* Killing / Genocide
* High Altitude
* Pharmacological
* Sterilization
* Surgery
* Traumatic Injuries

Freezing / Hypothermia

The freezing / hypothermia experiments were conducted for the Nazi high command. The experiments were conducted on men to simulate the conditions the armies suffered on the Eastern Front. The German forces were ill prepared for the bitter cold. Thousands of German soldiers died of freezing or were debilitated by cold injuries.

The experiments were conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Birkenau, Dachau and Auschwitz . Dr. Rascher reported directly to Himmler. Dr. Rascher publicized the results of his freezing experiments at the 1942 medical conference entitled "Medical Problems Arising from Sea and Winter".

The freezing experiments were divided into two parts. First, to establish how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and second how to best resuscitate the frozen victim.

The two main methods used to freeze the victim were to put the person in a icy vat of water or to put the victim outside naked in sub-zero temperatures.

The icy vat method proved to be the fastest way to drop the body temperature. The selections were made of young healthly Jews or Russians. They were usually stripped naked and prepared for the experiment. A insulated probe which measured the drop in the body temperature was inserted into the rectum. The probe was held in place by a expandable metal ring which was adjusted to open inside the rectum to hold the probe firmly in place. The victim was then placed in the vat of cold water and started to freeze. It was learned that most victims lost consciousness and died when the body temperature dropped to 25 C.

Two Russian men were seen by a prisoner doctor in the cold vat. They were very strong men and had said a comment to the SS doctor performing the experiment. The prisoner doctor was shocked at how long the Russian men could take the cold without loosing consciousness. He asked the directing doctor to take them out of the tank. He did not allow this and increased the temperature slightly to prolong their pain. They died after a long painful stay in the tank.

The second way to freeze a victim was to strap them to a stretcher and place them outside naked. The extreme winters of Auschwitz made a natural place for this experiment.

The resuscitation or warming experiments were just as cruel and painful as the freezing experiments.

Sun Lamp

The victims were placed under sun lamps which were so hot they would burn the skin. One young homosexual victim was repeatedly cooled to unconsciousness then revived with lamps until he was pouring sweat. He died one evening after several test sessions.

Internal Irrigation

The frozen victim would have water heated to a near blistering temperature forcefully irrigated into the stomach, bladder, and intestines. All victims appeared to have died from the treatment.

Hot Bath

The victim was placed in warm water and the temperature was slowly increased. This method proved to be the best. Many victims died do to shock if they were warmed up to quickly.

Warming by Body Heat

Heinrich Himmler sugested to Dr. Rascher that he try to use women to warm the frozen men. He suggested that the victim and a women copulate. This perverted experiment occured with some success. However it was not as successful as the Warm Bath.

Genetic Experiments

The Nordic or Aryan Race was the most important goal of the Nazis. It was the largest part of the over all plan. The blonde hair, blue eye, super men were to be the only race. The Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and anyone else that did not meet the race requirements were to by cleansed from society through genocide. Hitler and the German High command made a list rules for the fellow Nazis to follow. The new rules required all SS before marriage must submit to general testing to insure racial purity. The rules for marriage were unbelievably complex. Thousands of marriages were denied. If the laws for marriage were broken it could mean the death penalty.

Dr. Sigmund Rascher and his wife learned what not following the marriage laws would hold for their lives. Mrs. Rascher was sterile. They were not illegally married; they adopted two children. They were later investigated by the Gestapo and executed for the crime. In this case, after his medical experimentation, it seems fitting that this killer was caught up by his own party.

Early in power the National Science groups were pushed into research of the race and experiments commenced. First the party needed propaganda to prove all other races were inferior. Measurements of heads, eyes, nose, blood were required. The vast majority of the early experiments were a propaganda sham. It was determined Gypsies had different blood and were inclined to criminal behavior. The same type of findings were made of all races other than the Nazis.

After the camps were started, vast genetic experiments were undertaken. The range of the testing was broad and specialized. The two major groups of experiments were first to refine the master race and second to determine the cause of defects.

Dr. Josef Mengele research on twins and Gypsies exemplifies the quest for the genetic studies. Dr. Mengele was known as the "Angel of Death". He would be at every selection when the new trains would arrive at Auschwitz. After the victims were unloaded off the trains and stripped naked and divided into men, women, and children, he would sort through the thousands of people. Most went straight to the gas chambers and others to hard labor in the camps. The twins, dwarfs, and unique physical specimens were selected to be assigned to the experimental blocks. In many ways the majority who where killed in the gas chambers were much better off than the survivors that had no idea what horrors awaited them.

Experiments on Twins

The twins were examined from head to toe. Measurements of every inch were taken. Dr. Mengele demanded specific and careful exams. If any detail was missed the staff, usually a prisoner doctor, would be punished. The twins were allowed to keep their hair for the first several days of the examination. After all the living data was taken the twins would be killed by a single injection of chloroform in the heart. Care was taken to insure the twins died at the same time. The twins were then dissected with the organs being sent to research centers.

Prisoner doctors tell of the fate of two Hungarian twins who arrived at Auschwitz late in 1943. Dr. Mengele was at the camp selection. The train arrived in the very early morning. Three sets of twins were found. They were taken to the experimental block. Dr. Mengele ordered the two Hungarian twins be placed in the examination room. The two Hungarian twins young men age 18 were described as "extremely athletic and handsome." They had much body hair and were allowed to keep it for the first few weeks. The twins were showered and returned nude to the examination room. The examination started at the head . All parts of their heads were examined. The head examination took almost days. They were then completely X-rayed . The next part of the examination consisted of tubes being forced through their noses and into their lungs. They were then ventilated with a gas which caused them to cough so severely they had to be restrained. The sputum from the lungs was collected for examination.

The twins were then photographed for several days . The purpose of the photographs were to show hair patterns. They were each forced to stand, bend, and kneel in many positions to accomplish the photographs. For example, they were required to stand with their arms lifted for many hours so the under arm hair could be photographed.

After the photographs were finished they were awoken very early in the morning. They were taken into a room with tables and a hot water vat. The water in the vat was very hot. They were made to sit in the water until they were ready to pass out from the heat. They were then strapped to a table where their hair was plucked out trying to save the hair root. They were put back into the hot vat several times. After enough hair was collected, they were totally shaven of every hair on their body. The twins were then again extensively photographed without hair.

The twins then received several two liter enemas which caused them much pain and discomfort. The boys on different days were strapped over a bench table and their rectums were hyper descended after which they received an extensive lower gastric intestinal examination. This extensive procedure was performed without any anesthesia. The young men were crying so loud that Doctor Mengele ordered they be gagged. The next day they received a painful and humiliating urological examination. In this examination tissue samples were taken from the kidneys, prostate, and testicles. Several semen samples were forcefully taken over two days.

After this three weeks of tortuous medical examinations they were taken two the dissection laboratory. Using two doctors, each twin was simultaneously given an injection in the heart, taking their lives. They were dissected and their organs were sent to the Institute of Biological Racial and Evolutionary Research Berlin.

http://remember.org/educate/medexp.html

The Dentist of Auschwitz

2009-02-11T19:19:00.001-08:00

PreFace
The Dentist of Auschwitz

Preface

In July 1985 I joined twelve Jewish men and women from the United States on a fact-finding mission behind the Iron Curtain. In the capitals of Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia we visited a small number of Jews too old to leave for a beginning elsewhere. Most lived in Altersheims, homes for the aged supported by Jewish philanthropy. The Jewish life they had once known no longer existed, and anti-Semitism was still widespread. For the Jews, Hitler had won World War II.

When I returned to Boston, I sat back and took stock. I had to confront my obligation, and I began to speak out publicly about how and why nearly an entire people was erased from the face of the earth. In this process the small fragments of memory, fixed in my mind like holographic images, expanded and brought back my experiences in vivid detail.

But life does not always follow a straight road, as I had learned in my youth. One day, during a routine visit to the doctor's office, expecting a clean bill of health, I heard the opposite: "You have throat cancer," I was told. My good friend Dr. Goroll, as devastated as I, insisted that I be operated on the next day.

I imagined the worst. My speaking had become very important, for I had seen its effect on the young, how I had helped them understand the importance of resenting prejudices. Will I still have a voice? I wondered. The thought of becoming mute was overwhelming. I asked the doctors for a prognosis, but doctors are careful; they don't speculate.

Fortunately the tumor was small and, thanks to immediate surgery and weeks of radiation, my voice changed little. But I knew the doctors could not forecast the future. A voice inside kept telling me, "Write--you may not be able to speak for long."

I had to put my experiences on paper, and my work intensified. Comments from others poured in, echoing my own urge to write. This, then, is my story.

Although this book is the result of my recollections, some perhaps still locked in my subconscious, too deep for me to recall, it could not have been written without the valuable assistance I received from many sources. The sheer number precludes my thanking all of them. Nonetheless, I would be remiss not to thank a few.

In developing documentation of Auschwitz III, Fürstengrube, I am indebted to Tadeusz Iwaszko, writer and archivist at the State Museum at Auschwitz. I am grateful to Dr. Dirk Jachomowski of the Ladesarchiv Schleswig-Holstein and to Dr. Marienhöfer of the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg, Germany, for documents concerning the Cap Arcona disaster on the Baltic Sea. I am particularly grateful to Edith Pfeiffer of the Hamburg-Südamerika Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft and the Hamburg-Amerika line (Hepag) for company records, documents, and the history of the luxury liner Cap Arcona and for helping me obtain "top secret" documents concerning the bombing and sinking of the ship. I thank Barbara Helfgot-Hyatt, professor at Boston University and distinguished poet, who from day one encouraged me to write this book. I would also like to thank Ina Friedman, a prolific writer on the subject of the Holocaust, who read the first hundred pages of the manuscript and said to me, "Write. You are bitten with the writer's bug."

Special thanks to Arthur Edelstein and Marge Garfield for their talented revisions of the manuscript. Special thanks to Mark Dane for his valuable time and word processing equipment--for without it I would still be typing this manuscript on a typewriter.

In pursuit of this project, a very special acknowledgment goes to Dr. Karen E. Smith for her valuable advice.

Lastly, I thank my wife, Else, for keeping my spirits up during the more than forty-four years of our marriage. To the rest of my family, to my friends, and to my neighbors, my profoundest apologies for having been a hermit while writing this book.

I have purposely refrained from paving the book with notes and references so as not to trouble the reader who is not interested in research.

The mistakes, errors, and misjudgments are mine and in no way attributable to the people mentioned here, who have contributed so generously.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/dentist/preface.html

This is Chapter 12...There are 17 Chapters..The link is at the bottom of the page if you would like to read the entire book.

The Dentist of Auschwitz

Chapter 12
Auschwitz

Traumatized, starved, and soaked with human waste, we looked to be the inhuman, useless creatures the Nazis had characterized us as being. It was dark when the train stopped. Dawn came a few minutes later, and light began breaking through the windows. We are not at a station. Why did they stop? we wondered. A few minutes later the wheels began to roll slowly; then they stopped and rolled and stopped again, screeching.

It was light enough to see distant fences. We must be at a camp, and at least at the end of this misery. Perhaps the prophecy of our doom and death was wrong after all? The smoke, with the odor of burning flesh, that we suddenly smelled we passed off as the friction of the train's wheels on the rails. As the locomotive crept forward, we saw strangers on a ridge dressed in striped clothes with matching berets, walking like zombies and staring at our train as though they had been expecting us. We yelled, asking them to tell us where we were. But no words came back, just a sign from one of them: he slid his hand across his throat in a cutting gesture. The others that looked at our caravan twirled their fingers at the sky. We stared, frightened, in disbelief. We knew that it meant crematories. In the quiet that followed, a boy of perhaps sixteen asked what the strange gestures meant. No one answered him. No one wanted to share his grimmest thoughts. It is hard to describe our macabre mood. The meaning of the smoke was now apparent. It was not the train. My father was praying. I no longer thought that God could save us. My trust in him had ended. My genesis without him had taken place long ago, in Steineck.

The train rolled on. We passed more uniformed people. They looked on while SS men held flashlights and other prisoners gave us more strange signals. Some raised their arms up, mimicking Hercules. A constant stream of smoke spewed into the air. The train slowed and stopped.

The doors rolled open and startled us with loud bangs. "Raus! Alle raus! Alles liegen lassen!" (Out! All out! Leave everything!), the SS shouted. The cement platform was crowded with SS men, yelling and waving us impatiently out of the wagon. "Raus!" they yelled, as their dogs growled, showing menacing teeth. The word Auschwitz hung like a bad omen in the air. The impact shocked us. It was a ghastly sound that no one repeated. We knew that that word stood for selections and death. We knew that in Auschwitz Jews were turned to ashes. Their net was closing around us.

People began to pray. "Shma Israel Adonoi Eloheino Adonoi Aikhod. God is one. God is mighty."

"Raus! Raus! Alle raus!" they yelled with guns in hand. After being locked in the wagons for days, we had enormous difficulty in leaving the car while in a panic. Our limbs had molded to the mass of men in the cars and would not easily straighten again. "Leave everything on the platform!" the SS yelled. I only had a coat, besides the rags I wore, and I left it, but I held tightly to my life-saving dental tools. Bedlum erupted as SS men tore into us, whipping us for no reason. A whip swung across my body. "Das auch!" a contemptuous SS man shouted.

"These are a few of my dental instruments," I said, hoping he would allow me to keep them. Without another word he seized the box, snatched it off my shoulder, and flung it to the ground. The treasures that I had carried with me all this time, my fate and that of my father, lay scattered on the cement platform.

More prisoners in their zebra-striped suits gathered, watching us from behind the fence. We were ordered to undress and to leave our clothes on the platform. Carpenters, lawyers, shoemakers, businessmen, students, and professors--we were just plain Jews to our captors. They ordered us into the customary rows of fives. "Rechts schwenk, vorwärts marsch."

The skies were gray and had a strange look of finality. It was a cool morning, and the stiff breeze blowing across our naked bodies chilled us deeply. We pressed together, and I held on firmly to Papa, realizing that if we were separated we would never find one another. Then the dreaded word "Selekcja!" Polish for "selection," went like lightning through our lines and sent a bolt of fear through everyone. We knew the apocalypse was near.

We thought we knew all about Auschwitz's horror, but we were soon to discover how little we actually did know. Each of us had been quietly evaluating his chance of survival. To escape from here, one would have to be Houdini. We had barely taken ten steps forward when our line slowed to a crawl. We now crept forward, stepping on each other's heels. Some wept, and others tried to muster courage to appear strong and look healthy. Papa and I were several rows away from the bunch of SS men who, with flashlights in hand, were scrutinizing the naked men before them. I knew that each step took us closer to our doom and death, as the rails had predicted. A few more minutes and it will all be over, I surmised.

We were still moving and were soon to meet the group of SS men with the flashlights. One Nazi, who appeared to be the highest-ranking SS officer, wore a spiffy black uniform with a doctor's badge--a serpent wound around a sword. He was tall and slim, with a dark complexion. His thick black hair was cut short. He left no uncertainty that he was in charge. The procedure seemed well rehearsed. As his assistants paraded a row of prisoners before him, he made mysterious gestures. Only the guards understood, and they quickly executed his orders. A blink of his eyes, a wave of his hand, a twitch of his finger--each held a clue. Some people were ordered right and others left. It soon became apparent that one line seemed more fit than the other.

Two of the five men in the row ahead of us were ordered to join the weaker line. One of them courageously attempted to persuade his judge to let him go with the others. "Look! I am strong," he said. "I can work. I worked on laying rails for more than two years and did not skip one day." But an SS man shoved him back in his line. A daily supply of people, demand for labor, and the availability of room in the barracks were equally important factors in determining who lived and who died.

Before our turn, a fellow captive whispered, "Lift your heads. Act strong." The judges asked the first question of me. What was my age?

"Twenty-three," I said.

"Occupation?"

"Dentist," I replied.

They ordered me to the right, to join the healthier-looking group. As I stepped aside, I took my father with me.

"Halt! Nur Du!" (Only you), I heard one shout. I knew that Papa was at their mercy. They asked him his age and occupation.

"Forty-two, farmer," he said.

My father was forty-nine then. I thought it sounded good.

But "Links!" I heard them order. I saw them push him to the left.

"It's my father," I said, begging them to understand.

"Nein, nur Du geh nach rechts. Dein Vater muß nach links gehen." (No, only you to the right. Your father must go to the left.) They had condemned him to death. I tried to beg for their clemency once more. But I watched in horror as they began to select people in the next line. I was as close to tears as I could ever be in camp. They have just orphaned me, I thought.

Suddenly a commotion erupted as one man tried to escape the platform. He was quickly mowed down by gunfire. In that moment of confusion, I grabbed my father and tried to take him with me. He was frozen with fear and did not move. I tugged sharply and whispered, "Papa! Come with me." He followed. If we had been caught, it would have been death for both of us.

I still do not understand why none of them noticed me and stopped us. It all happened purely by chance. In writing about this incident I must add that survival, all else aside, was primarily luck. Sometimes more than luck was needed. Sometimes strange things had to happen, as if one's fate was guided by a mysterious hand.

We stood there, and each minute was an hour long. I felt as if I were standing on hot coals. We could hear praying: "O Lord, have mercy on thy children. We are truly thine and are pure in heart." But it didn't help. In the end, the doctors were all powerful. I held on to my father, amazed at what had happened. Seventy-five of us hopeful people were finally led away. The billows of smoke rose from the chimneys as the sky brightened. Our brothers in the other group were also led away, soon to be silenced.

After walking a hundred meters, we were loaded onto trucks and driven along a double fence, passing three-story brick buildings. We saw groups of people marching. Their clothes were dirty, and they wore striped miners' lamps on their heads. They were on their way to work. I was struck by the paradox: the coal they mined might have been used to move the trains that carried us here. Some looked lifeless, barely dragging their feet. In front of each group walked someone in the same striped clothes wearing a black armband, a Kapo.

This camp did not look like any I had seen before. The outside perimeter was fenced with heavy wire, with barbed wire on top. Along the inside ran what seemed to be an electric line. Perched above in towers were green-uniformed Waffen SS. Their guns pointed into the camp. As we were driven further, we heard an orchestra playing and people singing. "Today Poland. Tomorrow the entire world," they sang in German. Each refrain had a different verse and mentioned a different country. When the trucks stopped, we heard "We're marching on England today, and tomorrow on the entire world!"

A sign at the gate read "Stop, high voltage!" Above the gate another sign read "Auschwitz," and below it, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes you free). We knew it wasn't meant to be a promise, not even a pledge. The truth was that we were here to work until we died. In front of a small shack a conductor directed thirty musicians. The scene was grotesque. They followed his baton as if they were playing in a symphony orchestra.

Once inside, our truck turned left and stopped in front of one of the huge three-story brick buildings. A smartly dressed SS sergeant took charge of us. "Down," he shouted, as the rest of the SS began to enforce his order. I looked at my father. He was shivering, and his face was blue. We hoped, but we still didn't know what would happen to us.

Suddenly someone signaled to me. I looked and saw an inmate waving from the opposite side of a fence. He was staring at my boots. "You'll have to leave them anyhow. Throw them to me," he shouted. "I'll take care of you with some extra food when you get to the camp. I am a Blockkapo," he added. These were the first words I heard spoken by any prisoner in Auschwitz. It was a Kapo's introduction.

He wore a clean suit, a dark cap, and the Kapo's armband. I did not believe him at first. I thought he was only after my boots. But when the Scharführer ordered us to leave behind anything we still might have with us, I yielded to the inevitable. I removed the few photographs that I still had from one of my boots and threw the boots over the fence to him. In the aftermath I realized that I did not know how to find him. As it turned out, it really didn't matter. We were not allowed to mix with inmates in the main camp anyway.

I looked at my family photographs: my mother, sister, brother, and Aunt Rachel, Uncle Shlomo, and Aunt Sara. Also I looked at the picture of Uncle Izchak, whom everyone said I resembled. There was Uncle Mordechai, Uncle Chaim, cousins Toba, Balcia, Nachme, Josef, Mayer, and Mendel. Finally I looked at my grandfather's picture for the last time. Much later, when I remembered that August day in 1943, it was as if by my leaving those photographs, my relatives pictured there had also died at Auschwitz. We saw groups of inmates with their heads bowed low, and I decided that someday someone should tell the world what I saw. But, I thought, no epic drama could duplicate the sight that was before me. No one would be able to find such emaciated bodies to re-create the scene.

The morning mist remained. More trucks arrived. One group, also from our train, was from Lenzingen, the camp my brother had been in. They claimed to have seen him before the selection on the platform. Papa and I feared for him.

The Scharführer ordered us into the cell block we were facing. As we entered through a long corridor, we had to pass other SS men. They searched us once more, but this time they made us spread our legs and bend over. Further down the corridor, we walked through brackish fluid that smelled of kerosene or naphtha. Soon we had the same mixture showered on our heads and bodies. "Schnell! Schnell!" they urged. We ran like cornered sheep to avoid the German shepherds. Then we were led to the yard once again.

The sun shone. It had burned off the fog. Naked and wet, we were freezing. Scratches and scrapes on our bodies had reddened from the fluid, and these were painful. Next we were ordered into another building that had a sign: "Brause" (shower), which we feared most. The terrible word staring us in the face startled us. We are not safe, I thought. We are in their concealed gas chamber. "Los machen!" they yelled, and we were pushed in the door from all sides. The large metal door locked behind us with a clang. We were in a large hall. We saw the shower heads hanging down. The prisoners who were already there stood praying, perhaps for all of us. We heard another clang, and all became quiet. My father's eyes were fixed on me. He was thinking, like me, that this might be our last moment together. My heart raced. Light rings swirled in front of my eyes. For kilometers and days the train wheels had warned me of doom and death. That promise was about to come true. I closed my eyes and stopped breathing, fearing that the deadly gas would shower down on us at any minute. A passive silence persisted.

Suddenly I felt a trickle of water. I didn't dare to look up, afraid the miracle would stop. When I looked around, I saw that we were all still on our feet--alive. Soon the water flowed steadily, and it did not smell or taste odd. I gulped down a mouthful. Water had never tasted so good or meant as much to me. With a burst of relief, we all felt that a new life had been given to us. It was our only happy moment in Auschwitz. For Papa and me, this was the second miracle of the day.

When the water stopped, an inmate nearby said he had seen my brother in the hall. The man took me by the hand, and we both elbowed our way through the mass of wet bodies until we saw Josek. We looked at each other in disbelief. It was a third miracle! We returned to Papa, who was happy to be reunited with both his sons. Josek looked considerably thinner than he had when I had last seen him. His eyes were sunken, and he slouched. His health was delicate. This was not an asset in any camp. Now that we had found one another, we vowed to stay together no matter what.

As the doors opened, we were ordered into the next room, a large hall that was now a makeshift barbershop. It was full of inmates sitting on benches. The barbers were also inmates, but they wore clean, striped prison uniforms. They had crew cuts. "Sit. Stand. Turn around." Each of the eight barbers ordered inmates about. I overheard one man telling of an episode he had witnessed at the railroad station. He was from Vienna, and he said he saw a man about forty-five years old tell an SS officer that he had been arrested by mistake. "I fought in the First World War for Austria and lost both my legs. I am exempt from any deportation," the man had argued. He showed the officer his Iron Cross and his documents. The SS man, however, ripped them out of his hand and shredded them. Then he pushed the crippled man in front of an oncoming train. Another witness corroborated this story. "We all gasped," the storyteller continued, "as the train crushed him."

My turn came, and the barber began to clip me bald. He shook his head, pondering why so many of us managed to get in alive. "Auschwitz is full. You were lucky to escape the chimney." Inmates used the word chimney as a metaphor for being gassed and cremated. Konzentrationslager, the word for concentration camp, was difficult to pronounce, so they called it KZ. "Only if there is a demand for workers does Dr. Mengele pass Jews into camp," the barber said, adding, "At times they are short of gas."

I told him that most of us were veterans of other camps, having spent as much as two years in labor camps near Poznan, where we worked building railroad tracks. Perhaps that had helped us escape death.

"I doubt it," he said. Then he went on to tell me that we were now in Stammlager, the main camp of Auschwitz. He also said that there were many satellite camps around Auschwitz. "Buna, Trzebinia, Jawizowiec, Janinagrube, and Günthergrube, just to mention a few," he said. "Their organization will amaze you."

He stopped talking, but I wanted to know more. He answered my questions readily. "What is that number you have on your arm?"

"Everyone is known by a number here. You will get one too, and then," he said, "you'll be known only by a number. You'll have to remember it and respond to it when you're called."

I saw his number was tattooed. "Where do we get those numbers tattooed?" I asked.

"You will see where. You'll be tattooed as soon as you leave here." Then he told me that he had been in Auschwitz for a year and a half.

"How long can one survive here?" I wondered aloud. That question puzzled him.

"Auschwitz is a much different place now than it was when I came here," he said. "When we first arrived here, one sign read, 'You can expect to survive three months here, at most six. And if you don't like it, go to the fence and end it now.'" That confirmed my suspicions that deadly electricity did indeed flow in the inner fence of Auschwitz. He continued explaining that obeying was an inmate's unalterable duty. "Remember, never walk in Auschwitz. Run." He then urged me to learn the names of the SS rankings and use them correctly. "When you pass SS men, take your cap off and walk in military steps. Play by those rules regardless how ridiculous they may seem to you." Throughout it all he kept repeating to me how lucky we were. "At times you have to have luck here," he said. "Another reason that many of you passed the selection was because there were no women, children, or elderly among you." I knew he had survived eighteen months in Auschwitz, and that left me with a bit of hope. His final comments to me were "No matter how sick you are, never go to the infirmary. Working is the best recipe for not dying."

I then knew a lot more about Auschwitz and its special lingo. KZ meant concentration camp. KB (Krankenbau) was the infirmary. Kanada referred to the inmate groups that were gathering everything the arrivals were forced to leave on the platforms. The Kapos were inmate foremen. Bunker was a penal place. Sonderkommandos were inmates assigned to special work details. The barber, though, had dropped words that seemed strange: horse, rack, and others whose meanings I could not fully understand.

Naked and shaved from tip to toe, we followed one another into the next barracks. Pairs of clogs, jackets, and pants were thrown at us, regardless of the size or fit. "If these don't fit you, swap with others," the inmates behind the counters told us. The clothing reeked of the very same brew that we had been sprayed with earlier. We each received gray-striped underwear and a striped beret. The jackets were either too large or too small, and most of the pants pulled up to the chin. Papa, who had never been without a thread and needle, was helpless, for the button that was supposed to hold up his pants was missing. Josek's trousers didn't stay on his waist either. Robbing us of our names was a way to complete our dehumanization. Our names became numbers. In time we knew why. Numbers had no faces. They were much easier to deal with.

When the numbering process began, Josek, Papa, and I followed one another and received consecutive numbers. We thought that this would lessen the chance of our being separated. A prisoner with a tool similar to a fountain pen began to inject a black dye into my lower left arm. At first it wasn't painful, but as he progressed, it hurt. When I pulled my arm away, I saw a few drops of blood over the numbers he had just tattooed. He looked at me, and I knew he had to finish. Afterward we received cloth patches with our numbers and were told to sew them onto our jackets and pants. I became number 141129, my father number 141130, and Josek number 141131. The red triangle on the patch denoted a political crime. Three yellow corners were added to all patches of Jewish inmates. In time we learned even to distinguish what the alleged crime had been. Communists and former fighters of the Spanish Civil War who fought for a republic and against General Franco had a triangle pointing down, while the remaining political inmates had triangles pointing up. Green triangles denoted criminals, pink represented homosexuals, and purple stood for Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. Brown designated the gypsies. Those alleged to be escapees wore large black circles on their backs. Because a Jew was simply shot or hanged when caught escaping, there were no Jews among this last group. The first letter of one's country name in German--for example, D for Deutschland, F for Frankreich, and P for Polen--appeared in the center of the patch.

The Kapos were the ones we learned to fear first. Some were in charge of the blocks in camp. Others went with us to work and were in charge of us there. Nearly all were non-Jews, and most were German. They came from a wide variety of backgrounds: they were con men, desperados, convicted murderers, and petty criminals. Among them were also former soldiers from the International Legion. Though some of them had first been at odds with Hitler, they changed their allegiance when given the opportunity to leave the jails and become Kapos in concentration camps. All showed a certain contempt for newcomers and acted as if all Jews were their enemies. Although they faced the same life that we did, they seemed to us arrogant and harshly indifferent.

It was amazing how the Nazis had singled us out from the rest of the inmates. If there had ever been a thread of harmony between Jews and non-Jews in the camps, we did not see it in Auschwitz. In spite of our common plight, the others didn't associate with us. They did not have to fear selections. The gas chambers were purely for Jews and gypsies.

In assembling this time, we had to follow our numbers in consecutive order. "Los! Los!" the guards herded us through Auschwitz. We saw a group of inmates carrying stones in one direction and another doing the same going the opposite way. They looked toward us, but I was not sure that they could see us. Finally we came to the Quarantine Block. We had not eaten in two days and thought that having passed Auschwitz's symbolic baptism, our fellow inmates would find enough compassion for us to let us into the building. But the Kapo and three of his assistants marched us to the side of the building. There they chilled us with an unfriendly reception.

"Where were you all this time?" the Kapo growled. He sounded as if he was accusing us of not having come to Auschwitz sooner. Next the clerk checked to see if we were all there. He was tall, about two meters, skinny and bowlegged. He wore a red triangle with a capital P, which made him a political prisoner from Poland. His tattooed number was a little over 100000. One of his ears curled upward, and the other looked as if it was folded back. Of the three assistants to the Kapo in that block, he turned out to be the friendliest and the most decent.

In a hoarse, quivering voice, he encouraged us to be hopeful. "You will probably be sent to an Aussenlager [subcamp], of which there are thirty-nine here in a forty-kilometer radius." After two weeks, barring any problems, he said, we could expect to be sent out to work.

The Kapo, however, was different. When he began to speak, he demonstrated how, in Auschwitz, men became more aggressive than animals. He looked well-nourished. He laid down the rules. "Anyone who leaves this block will receive ten lashes. If anyone brings food in the barracks, ten lashes. If you leave your bunk unmade, ten lashes. Missing at a roll call, ten lashes. Stealing, twenty lashes." By the end of his tirade, we were numb with rules.

As noon neared, it was time to fetch food, and he allowed us to go into the rooms. Our pants were still loose. If we couldn't find something to keep them up, we knew we would get scolded by the Kapo. Luckily Josek had found a bit of string. Once we were in the barracks we quickly secured three adjacent bunks. For the first time since we became camp inmates, we were in a vermin-free block.

In both Steineck and Gutenbrunn we got our rations regularly. Here, however, even though we received soup morning and night, we got bread sporadically. Since no one could venture beyond the block, stealing was out of the question. Even Mendele, who had nearly always found ways to circumvent the system, had trouble. When the block orderly arrived with vats of soup, we each received two ladles of boiled water with bits of potatoes and an overcooked turnip in it. We had no spoons and had to drink from the bowl.

The roll call could last hours. One Sunday, just before noon, I heard my name being called. I didn't recognize who it was. I wondered how anyone would know my name. When I came to the door, I saw a Kapo. I didn't know why he was looking for me. After confirming that I was Bronek Jakubowicz and from Gutenbrunn, he said there was a girl outside who had asked him if he knew a Bronek Jakubowicz. After he described her briefly, I knew it could only be Zosia.

He said he had advised her to leave, after promising her that he would find me. I was curious to know how the Kapo had found me. "She told me when and from where you came, and I knew, if you were alive, you could only be here in the Quarantine Block," he said. He considered his mission completed and left. Our class distinction was such that it would have been too demeaning for him to stay and socialize with an ordinary inmate who had just come to Auschwitz. How Zosia knew where we had been sent I have never learned. Considering the extraordinarily tight security at Auschwitz, which would have discouraged her from coming back, she must have realized that she could not have met me even if she did return. What came back were my memories of our days together at Steineck and Gutenbrunn.

The Auschwitz veterans looked upon us as greenhorns. They answered all of our questions with questions of their own. When I asked a Kapo's aide where I could wash some of my clothes, he answered, "Where do you think you are, in a sanitorium?"

More people kept coming. We saw tattooed numbers upward of 150000. That meant that almost ten thousand people had been brought here since we had come. According to the normal pattern, only 25 percent actually passed into the camp. That meant that in the two weeks since we arrived, more than forty thousand people had been transported to Auschwitz. I wondered about the women's camp and the fate of Balcia and all the others.

One day a few civilian Germans, accompanied by SS men, came and looked us over. Our good-worker status, however, was apparently not known to them, and our isolation continued. We heard of Allied forces landing somewhere in Europe. One day late in the afternoon, twelve inmates went past our barracks. Usually inmates inside the camp were escorted by the Kapos, but these men were led by the SS. Their faces exuded fear. One of our room orderlies said that they were being taken to the Strafbunker (penalty bunker). "Few survive a long stay there," he said. "And if they do, they're physically and mentally broken for life." The Strafbunker had no light or toilet. It was barely big enough for one person to stand up in. "They would have been better off to have gone to the electric fence," the orderly said.

Another day we heard that there was no further need for inmate workers and we weren't to go anywhere. This was the worst news we could have been told. Being unneeded meant being dispensable. Passing Dr. Mengele's selection was just a temporary reprieve, we thought. We already knew that to remain alive we had to keep working. Being idle beyond a certain point was a threat to our lives. I was no longer optimistic that we would ever leave Auschwitz alive. After the years of living on the edge of existence, we were resigned to whatever fate had in store for us, and we didn't look at our lives in any long-term way.

One day the Kapo kept us outside in the cold rain for more than an hour. When we finally got back into the block, we were dripping wet. We hung our clothes around the room to dry. When the Kapo noticed, he asked us who had had that idea. Since we all did it simultaneously, no one admitted guilt. Then he ordered us to go outside naked and circle the block. As we passed by him standing at the door, he swung his whip at us. Mendele was hit badly, but even though some lashes on his back drew blood, he didn't whimper. I thought this teenager's heart was made of stone. Looking around and seeing the rain dripping off of us, I thought of cattle in a pasture. Here we were treated alike, driven, herded, and even branded like cattle. Later one of the prisoners, Moishe Chernicki, came down with a fever and was taken to the infirmary. No one ever saw or heard from him again.

We had been in this isolation for more than two weeks. The draconian rations barely kept us alive. When the sun didn't shine, the camp was draped in the black of the rising smoke. There had not been a shortage of courage before, but now we were at our lowest point ever. Reality seemed twisted and out of shape. At times we stared into space. Some wandered around the barracks in loneliness. Although we had passed Dr. Mengele's selection, we were destined to flunk life anyway. Suicides, though, were rarely heard of here. Only a few Jewish inmates succumbed in this way. Perhaps our generation's experiences had endowed us with extra ability to endure. The undaunted believers still prayed every day. It amazed me how they still remembered word-for-word the various prayers of shaharith, minhah, and maarib--the morning, afternoon, and evening liturgies.

Then a number of civilians came to the block. They were accompanied by Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz. The consensus of our block supervisors indicated that they were from I.G. Farben, a large German pharmaceutical company that already employed prisoners in the nearby Buna camp. At Buna, the I.G. Farben Company was making synthetic rubber. There, we were told, the inmate death rate was very high, and they had a continuous need for replacement workers. We believed that it could only be better than our present situation. We just wanted to get out of here.

Finally we got orders that we would leave the camp. A little after five the next morning, we were each given leather shoes with wooden soles to replace our clogs. After roll call we were given a generous portion of bread and were lined up. There were eight hundred of us who would be workers and twenty-five other prisoners, including Richard Grimm, who would take charge of us. We did not know where we were going. Except for Grimm, all the others had low prisoner numbers. The lowest I recall seeing was on Klaus Koch, who became our cook. Coincidentally, an SS man by the same name turned out to be his boss. Most of the workers wore green triangles, the color designated for criminals, but there were also political prisoners and even one homosexual bearing a pink triangle patch.

As we left, Josek and I walked on either side of our father. I looked up and saw the paradoxical Auschwitz sign, "Work makes you free." By leaving Auschwitz, I felt that we had a new lease on life. A large group of people were being led into the camp. They were gypsies, and I had to think of the contradiction, that they, people who loved so much their free spirit, were also chained in Auschwitz. I remembered when I was just a boy how I loved to listen to the gypsies' music. They would make the violin cry and laugh at the same time. While still in grammar school I learned to play the mandolin and had a unique experience with a gypsy girl. She was about twelve, my age, and very beautiful. When she came to the back of our house, where I played my mandolin, she stopped and listened for a while. Then she persuaded me to come with her to their camp, which was not far from our house. At first I felt fearful, because I had been warned that they abducted dark-haired children. But I went with her anyway and later visited her a few more times. In time I came to appreciate our differences. I liked the gypsies' communal, nomadic, exciting lifestyle. By the time they moved away, the gypsy girl and I were in love. About three weeks later she returned and insisted on living with us. It was a dilemma for my parents. Finally, after finding out where her tribe was, Papa bought a railroad ticket for her and sent her back to them.

We continued marching, seventy Croats and twenty German Waffen SS with us. They were mostly Rottenführer (privates) and Unterscharführer (corporals). Ahead of us walked a statuesque and fearless-looking SS man. He was Hauptscharführer Otto Moll, our future Kommandant. Rumor had it that Moll had played an important role in Auschwitz, where in less than six months he had risen from the rank of sergeant to Hauptscharführer and Kommandant. This meteoric ascension was due to his skill in killing. He had pioneered the dropping of canisters of the poison gas Zyklon B into the phony showers, which he accompanied with his favorite saying, "Laß sie fressen" (Let them eat).

It was the late summer of 1943, and to have escaped the Quarantine Block at Auschwitz alive was a metaphor for freedom. Our fate, we thought, had changed. We had been close to being pushed off the cliff, and now we had a new lease on life. I felt resentful as we passed people who were still allowed a near-normal life, and wished I was not born a Jew. I struggled in my wooden-soled shoes as we walked. It was noon, the sun was high, and we had just passed by a little town called Ldziny. We were ordered off the road and told to sit on the ground. There was an eerie sensation. The grass felt scorched, dead, as if just after a famine. Anyone lucky to have bread left finished it, and soon we continued our trek to the north, coming by another camp, Günthergrube. A few kilometers farther on, we came to the village of Piast. Not too far from there, visible from the road, was another camp with a strange name, Janina. In Polish this was a popular girl's name. One kilometer farther, across the road, were two more camps. One was Ostland, which housed Polish and Russian women. The second camp was Lager Nord, which had Russian war prisoners. Next we came to a place called Wesola, which means "happy" in Polish. This seemed to be a camp territory. Five kilometers farther was yet another camp. Most prisoners here worked for I.G. Farben. Finally we came to Fürstengrube, or "Noble Mine." This was to be our new home. We were only about sixteen kilometers from Auschwitz I.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/dentist/chapter-12.html

Who Were the Five Million Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims?

2009-02-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Who Were the Five Million Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims?
by Terese Pencak Schwartz
Who Were the Five Million Non-Jewish Holocaust Victims?

Of the 11 million people killed during the Holocaust, six million were Polish citizens. Three million were Polish Jews and another three million were Polish Christians and Catholics. Most of the remaining mortal victims were from other countries including Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Holland, France and even Germany.
Why Did Hitler Cause 11 Million to Die?

First we need to examine Hitler’s egocentric and maniac ideology. Hitler, who was Chancellor of Germany during the Holocaust, came to power in 1933 when Germany was experiencing severe economic hardship. Hitler promised the Germans that he would bring them prosperity and that his military actions would restore Germany to a position of power in Europe.

Hitler had a vision of a Master Race of Aryans that would control Europe. He used very powerful propaganda techniques to convince not only the German people, but countless others, that if they eliminated the people who stood in their way and the degenerates and racially inferior, they - the great Germans would prosper.
Neighboring Poland - The First Target: “All Poles will disappear from the world.... It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.” Heinrich Himmler

Hitler’s first target was Germany’s closest neighbor to the east, Poland. An agricultural country with little military power. Hitler attacked Poland from three directions on September 1, 1939 and in just over one month, Poland surrendered -- unable to defend itself against the powerful German prowess.

In Poland, Hitler saw an agricultural land in close proximity to Germany, populated by modest but strong and healthy farmers. Hitler quickly took control of Poland by specifically wiping out the Polish leading class -- the Intelligentsia. During the next few years, millions of other Polish citizens were rounded up and either placed in slave labor for German farmers and factories or taken to concentration camps where many were either starved and worked to death or used for scientific experiments.

The Jews in Poland were forced inside ghettos, but the non-Jews were made prisoners inside their own country. No one was allowed out. The Germans took over the ranches, farms and Polish factories. Most healthy citizens were forced into slave labor. Young Polish men were drafted into the German army. Blond haired children were “Germanized” and trained from an early age to be Nazi supporters.
For Their Religious Belief, They Stood Firm

Every European country, even Germany, had those who did not believe in the Nazi ideology and who were willing to die for their beliefs. Perhaps no other group stood so firmly in their beliefs as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Hitler felt particularly threatened by this strong group of Christians because they, from the very beginning, refused to recognize any God other than Jehovah. When asked to sign documents of loyalty to the Nazi ideology, they refused. Jehovah’s Witnesses were forced to wear purple armbands and thousands were imprisoned as “dangerous” traitors because they refused to take a pledge of loyalty to the Third Reich.
For Their Race They Were Executed
Like the Jews, the Roma Gypsies were chosen for total annihilation just because of their race. Even though Jews are defined by religion, Hitler saw the Jewish people as a race that he believed needed to be completely annihilated. Like the Jews, the Roma Gypsies also were a nomadic people that were persecuted throughout history. Both groups were denied certain privileges in many European countries. The Germans believed both the Jews and the Gypsies were racially inferior and degenerate and therefore worthless. Like the Jews, the Gypsies were also moved into special areas set up by the Nazis. Half a million Gypsies, almost the entire Eastern European Gypsy population, was wiped out during the Holocaust.
Men and Women of Courage From All Nations

Every European nation had its courageous resisters. Poland’s Underground army - made up of children, teenagers, and regular men and women - was responsible for defending the lives of thousand of its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Many were killed for their acts of courage against the Nazis. Even though most German citizens were supportive of Hitler’s plan to control Europe, there were German citizens who died because they refused to go along with Hitler’s plan.
Priests and Pastors Died for Their Beliefs

Hitler wanted not only to conquer all of Europe, but Hitler also wanted to create a new religion and to replace Jesus Christ as a person to be worshipped. Hitler expected his followers to worship the Nazi ideology. Since Catholic priests and Christian pastors were often influential leaders in their community, they were sought out by the Nazis very early. Thousands of Catholic priests and Christian pastors were forced into concentration camps. A special barracks was set up at Dachau, the camp near Munich, Germany, for clergymen. A few survived; some were executed, but most were allowed to die slowly of starvation or disease.
Pink Triangles for Homosexuals

Because Hitler’s plan for a great Master Race had no room for any homosexuals, many males from all nations, including Germany, were persecuted, tortured and executed. Hitler even searched his own men and found suspected homosexuals that were sent to concentration camps wearing their SS uniforms and medals. The homosexual inmates were forced to wear pink triangles on their clothes so they could be easily recognized and further humiliated inside the camps. Between 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals died in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
No Place for the Disabled

The Nazis decided that it was a waste of time and money to support the disabled. During Hitler’s “cleansing program”, thousands of people with various handicaps were deemed useless and simply put to death like dogs and cats.
Sterilization for Black Children

Prior to World War I, there were very few dark-skinned people of African descent in Germany. But, during World War I, black African soldiers were brought in by the French during the Allied occupation. Most of the Germans, who were very race conscious, despised the dark-skinned “invasion”. Some of these black soldiers married white German women that bore children referred to as “Rhineland Bastards” or the “Black Disgrace”. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said he would eliminate all the children born of African-German descent because he considered them an “insult” to the German nation.
“The mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore,” Hitler wrote. “In both cases, there is not the slightest moral duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race.” The Nazis set up a secret group, Commission Number 3, to organize the sterilization of these “Rhineland Bastards” to keep intact the purity of the Aryan race. In 1937, all local authorities in Germany were to submit a list of all the mulattos. Then, these children were taken from their homes or schools without parental permission and put before the commission. Once a child was decided to be of black descent, the child was taken immediately to a hospital and sterilized. About 400 children were medically sterilized -- many times without their parents’ knowledge.
Death or Divorce - A Choice for Many

Many husbands and wives of Jews in Germany were forced to choose between divorce or concentration camps. Hitler would not allow “interracial” marriages. Those that chose to remain married were punished by imprisonment in camps where many died.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/NonJewishVictims.html

Into The Arms Of Strangers

2009-02-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

Here is the Website...They also have where you may read an excerpt of the Book as well!I have this on my Netflix Queue and am VERY eager to watch it!

http://www2.warnerbros.com/intothearmsofstrangers/

Here is the Netflix Info on it

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport(2000) PG

Mark Jonathan Harris' Oscar-winning documentary tells the story of an underground railroad -- the Kindertransport -- that saved the lives of more than 10,000 Jewish children at the dawn of World War II. Through interviews and archival footage, the survivors movingly recount being taken from their families and sent to live with strangers in the relative safety of England. Judi Dench narrates.

Then and Now Exhibit

2009-02-07T22:06:00.000-08:00

I just had to post this...This is so moving and amazing how they recreated it.

http://remember.org/then-and-now/

Remember.org

2009-02-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

http://remember.org/

A Virtual Tour of Auschwitz/Birkenau
http://www.remember.org/auschwitz/

Holocaust Timeline

2009-02-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

1933

Jan 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

Feb 22, 1933 - 40,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as auxiliary police.

Feb 27, 1933 - Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere.

Feb 28, 1933 - Emergency powers granted to Hitler as a result of the Reichstag fire.

March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women.

March 24, 1933 - German Parliament passes Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

April 1, 1933 - Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

April 11, 1933 - Nazis issue a decree defining a non-Aryan as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith."

April 26, 1933 - The Gestapo is born, created by Hermann Göring in the German state of Prussia.

May 10, 1933 - Burning of books in Berlin and throughout Germany.

July 14, 1933 - Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

In July - Nazis pass law allowing for forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects.

In Sept - Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture, then exclude Jews from the Arts.

Sept 29, 1933 - Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land.

Oct 4, 1933 - Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors.

Nov 24, 1933 - Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps.

1934

Jan 24, 1934 - Jews are banned from the German Labor Front.

May 17, 1934 - Jews not allowed national health insurance.

June 30, 1934 - The Night of Long Knives occurs as Hitler, Göring and Himmler conduct a purge of the SA (storm trooper) leadership.

July 20, 1934 - The SS (Schutzstaffel) is made an independent organization from the SA.

July 22, 1934 - Jews are prohibited from getting legal qualifications.

Aug 2, 1934 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer.

Aug 19, 1934 - Hitler receives a 90 percent 'Yes' vote from German voters approving his new powers.

1935

May 21, 1935 - Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military.

June 26, 1935 - Nazis pass law allowing forced abortions on women to prevent them from passing on hereditary diseases.

Aug 6, 1935 - Nazis force Jewish performers/artists to join Jewish Cultural Unions.

Sept 15, 1935 - Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed.

1936

Feb 10, 1936 - The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

In March - SS Deathshead division is established to guard concentration camps.

March 7, 1936 - Nazis occupy the Rhineland.

June 17, 1936 - Heinrich Himmler is appointed chief of the German Police.

Aug 1, 1936 - Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from foreign visitors and thus temporarily refrain from actions against Jews.

In Aug - Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).

937

In Jan - Jews are banned from many professional occupations including teaching Germans, and from being accountants or dentists. They are also denied tax reductions and child allowances.

Nov 8, 1937 - 'Eternal Jew' travelling exhibition opens in Munich.

1938 Return to Top of Page

March 12/13, 1938 - Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. Hitler announces Anschluss (union) with Austria.

In March - After the Anschluss, the SS is placed in charge of Jewish affairs in Austria with Adolf Eichmann establishing an Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. Himmler then establishes Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz.

April 22, 1938 - Nazis prohibit Aryan 'front-ownership' of Jewish businesses.

April 26, 1938 - Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property.

June 14, 1938 - Nazis order Jewish owned businesses to register.

In July - At Evian, France, the U.S. convenes a League of Nations conference with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but results in inaction as no country will accept them.

July 6, 1938 - Nazis prohibited Jews from trading and providing a variety of specified commercial services.

July 23, 1938 - Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.

July 25, 1938 - Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine.

Aug 11, 1938 - Nazis destroy the synagogue in Nuremberg.

Aug 17, 1938 - Nazis require Jewish women to add Sarah and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports.

Sept 27, 1938 - Jews are prohibited from all legal practices.

Oct 5, 1938 - Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."

Oct 15, 1938 - Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland.

Oct 28, 1938 - Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry, leaving them in 'no-man's land' near the Polish border for several months.

Nov 7, 1938 - Ernst vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, is shot and mortally wounded by Herschel Grynszpan, the 17 year old son of one of the deported Polish Jews. Rath dies on November 9, precipitating Kristallnacht.

Nov 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass.

Nov 12, 1938 - Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for damages related to Kristallnacht.

Nov 15, 1938 - Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

Dec 3, 1938 - Law for compulsory Aryanization of all Jewish businesses.

Dec 14, 1938 - Hermann Göring takes charge of resolving the "Jewish Question."

1939 Return to Top of Page

Jan 24, 1939 - SS leader Reinhard Heydrich is ordered by Göring to speed up emigration of Jews.

Jan 30, 1939 - Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.

Feb 21, 1939 - Nazis force Jews to hand over all gold and silver items.

March 15/16 - Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish pop. 350,000).

April 19, 1939 - Slovakia passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

April 30, 1939 - Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses.

In May - The St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe.

July 4, 1939 - German Jews denied the right to hold government jobs.

July 21, 1939 - Adolf Eichmann is appointed director of the Prague Office of Jewish Emigration.

Sept 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

See also - World War Two in Europe Timeline

Sept 1, 1939 - Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer.

Sept 3, 1939 - England and France declare war on Germany.

Sept 4, 1939 - Warsaw is cut off by the German Army.

Sept 17, 1939 - Soviet troops invade eastern Poland.

Sept 21, 1939 - Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the future "final goal." He also orders a census and the establishment of Jewish administrative councils within the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.

Sept 23, 1939 - German Jews are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets.

Sept 27, 1939 - Warsaw surrenders; Heydrich becomes leader of RSHA.

Sept 29, 1939 - Nazis and Soviets divide up Poland. Over two million Jews reside in Nazi controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet area.

In Sept - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "The Jewish people ought to be exterminated root and branch. Then the plague of pests would have disappeared in Poland at one stroke."

In Oct - Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany.

Oct 6, 1939 - Proclamation by Hitler on the isolation of Jews.

Oct 12, 1939 - Evacuation of Jews from Vienna.

Oct 12, 1939 - Hans Frank appointed Nazi Gauleiter (governor) of Poland.

Oct 26, 1939 - Forced labor decree issued for Polish Jews aged 14 to 60.

Nov 23, 1939 - Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

In Dec - Adolf Eichmann takes over section IV B4 of the Gestapo dealing solely with Jewish affairs and evacuations.

1940 Return to Top of Page

Jan 25, 1940 - Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as site of new concentration camp.

In Jan - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "...The time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the world's criminal - Judah - from which there will be no resurrection."

Feb 12, 1940 - First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

April 9, 1940 - Nazis invade Denmark (Jewish pop. 8,000) and Norway (Jewish pop. 2,000).

April 30, 1940 - The Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland is sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.

May 1, 1940 - Rudolf Höss is chosen to be kommandant of Auschwitz.

May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500).

June 14, 1940 - Paris is occupied by the Nazis.

June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice with Hitler.

In July - Eichmann's Madagascar Plan presented, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

July 17, 1940 - The first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France.

Aug 8, 1940 - Romania introduces anti-Jewish measures restricting education and employment, then later begins "Romanianization" of Jewish businesses.

Sept 27, 1940 - Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

Oct 3, 1940 - Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

Oct 7, 1940 - Nazis invade Romania (Jewish pop. 34,000).

Oct 22, 1940 - Deportation of 29,000 German Jews from Baden, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France.

In Nov - Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia become Nazi Allies.

In Nov - The Krakow Ghetto is sealed off containing 70,000 Jews.

Nov 15, 1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.

1941 Return to Top of Page

In 1941 - Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states, "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear."

In Jan - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."

In Jan - A pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed.

Feb 22, 1941 - 430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.

In March - Hitler's Commissar Order authorizes execution of anyone suspected of being a Communist official in territories about to be seized from the Soviets.

March 1, 1941 - Himmler makes his first visit to Auschwitz, during which he orders Kommandant Höss to begin massive expansion, including a new compound to be built at nearby Birkenau that can hold 100,000 prisoners.

March 2, 1941 - Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish pop. 50,000).

March 7, 1941 - German Jews ordered into forced labor.

March 26, 1941 - The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.

March 29, 1941 - A 'Commissariat' for Jewish Affairs is set up in Vichy France.

April 6, 1941 - Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish pop. 75,000) and Greece (Jewish pop. 77,000).

May 14, 1941 - 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

May 16, 1941 - French Marshal Petain issues a radio broadcast approving collaboration with Hitler.

June 22, 1941 - Nazis invade the Soviet Union (Jewish pop. 3 million).

June 29/30 - Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.

Summer - Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant Höss to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."

In July - As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct mass murder of Jews in seized lands.

In July - Ghettos established at Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Zhitomer. Also in July, the government of Vichy France seizes Jewish owned property.

July 17, 1941 - Nazi racial 'philosopher' Alfred Rosenberg is appointed Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories to administer territories seized from the Soviet Union.

July 21, 1941 - In occupied Poland near Lublin, Majdanek concentration camp becomes operational.

July 25/26 - 3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.

July 31, 1941 - Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.

In Aug - Jews in Romania forced into Transnistria. By December, 70,000 perish.

In Aug - Ghettos established at Bialystok and Lvov.

Aug 26, 1941 - The Hungarian Army rounds up 18,000 Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk.

Sept 3, 1941 - The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.

Sept 1, 1941 - German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars.

Sept 6, 1941 - The Vilna Ghetto is established containing 40,000 Jews.

Sept 17, 1941 - Beginning of general deportation of German Jews.

Sept 19, 1941 - Nazis take Kiev.

Sept 27/28 - 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine.

Sept 29/30 - SS Einsatzgruppen murder 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev.

In Oct - 35,000 Jews from Odessa shot.

Oct 2, 1941 - Beginning of the German Army drive on Moscow.

Oct 23, 1941 - Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.

In Nov - SS Einsatzgruppe B reports a tally of 45,476 Jews killed.

Nov 24, 1941 - Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes.

Nov 30, 1941 - Near Riga, a mass shooting of Latvian and German Jews.

Dec 7, 1941 - Japanese attack United States at Pearl Harbor. The next day the U.S. and Britain declare war on Japan.

Dec 8, 1941 - In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Jews taken there are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them. The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who had been deported from the Reich to Lodz.

Dec 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States. Roosevelt then declares war on Germany saying, "Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization." The U.S.A. then enters the war in Europe and will concentrate nearly 90 percent of its military resources to defeat Hitler.

Dec 12, 1941 - The ship "Struma" leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

Dec 16, 1941 - During a cabinet meeting, Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states - "Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole..."

1942 Return to Top of Page

In Jan - Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow.

Jan 20, 1942 - Wannsee Conference to coordinate the "Final Solution."

Jan 31, 1942 - SS Einsatzgruppe A reports a tally of 229,052 Jews killed.

In March - In occupied Poland, Belzec extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with permanent gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

March 17, 1942 - The deportation of Jews from Lublin to Belzec.

March 24, 1942 - The start of deportation of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz.

March 27, 1942 - The start of deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz.

March 28, 1942 - Fritz Sauckel named Chief of Manpower to expedite recruitment of slave labor.

March 30, 1942 - First trainloads of Jews from Paris arrive at Auschwitz.

In April - First transports of Jews arrive at Majdanek.

April 20, 1942 - German Jews are banned from using public transportation.

In May - In occupied Poland, Sobibor extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with three gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

May 18, 1942 - The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

May 27, 1942 - SS leader Heydrich is mortally wounded by Czech Underground agents.

In June - Gas vans used in Riga.

June 1, 1942 - Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania ordered to wear yellow stars.

June 4, 1942 - Heydrich dies of his wounds.

June 5, 1942 - SS report 97,000 persons have been "processed" in mobile gas vans.

June 10, 1942 - Nazis liquidate Lidice in retaliation for Heydrich's death.

June 11, 1942 - Eichmann meets with representatives from France, Belgium and Holland to coordinate deportation plans for Jews.

June 30, 1942 - At Auschwitz, a second gas chamber, Bunker II (the white farmhouse), is made operational at Birkenau due to the number of Jews arriving.

June 30 and July 2 - The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

Summer - Swiss representatives of the World Jewish Congress receive information from a German industrialist regarding the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. They then pass the information on to London and Washington.

July 2, 1942 - Jews from Berlin sent to Theresienstadt.

July 7, 1942 - Himmler grants permission for sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

July 14, 1942 - Beginning of deportation of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz.

July 16/17 - 12,887 Jews of Paris are rounded up and sent to Drancy Internment Camp located outside the city. A total of approximately 74,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, will eventually be transported from Drancy to Auschwitz, Majdanek and Sobibor.

July 17/18 - Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau for two days, inspecting all ongoing construction and expansion, then observes the extermination process from start to finish as two trainloads of Jews arrive from Holland. Kommandant Höss is then promoted. Construction includes four large gas chamber/crematories.

July 19, 1942 - Himmler orders Operation Reinhard, mass deportations of Jews in Poland to extermination camps.

July 22, 1942 - Beginning of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the new extermination camp, Treblinka. Also, beginning of the deportation of Belgian Jews to Auschwitz.

July 23, 1942 - Treblinka extermination camp opened in occupied Poland, east of Warsaw. The camp is fitted with two buildings containing 10 gas chambers, each holding 200 persons. Carbon monoxide gas is piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but Zyklon-B will later be substituted. Bodies are burned in open pits.

In Aug - The start of deportations of Croatian Jews to Auschwitz.

Aug 23, 1942 - Beginning of German Army attack on Stalingrad.

Aug 26-28 - 7,000 Jews arrested in unoccupied France.

Sept 9, 1942 - Open pit burning of bodies begins at Auschwitz in place of burial. The decision is made to dig up and burn those already buried, 107,000 corpses, to prevent fouling of ground water.

Sept 18, 1942 - Reduction of food rations for Jews in Germany.

Sept 26, 1942 - SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews from Auschwitz and Majdanek. German banknotes are sent to the Reichs Bank. Foreign currency, gold, jewels and other valuables are sent to SS Headquarters of the Economic Administration. Watches, clocks and pens are distributed to troops at the front. Clothing is distributed to German families. By Feb. 1943, over 800 boxcars of confiscated goods will have left Auschwitz.

Oct 5, 1942 - Himmler orders all Jews in concentration camps in Germany to be sent to Auschwitz and Majdanek.

Oct 5, 1942 - A German eyewitness observes SS mass murder.

Oct 14, 1942 - Mass killing of Jews from Mizocz Ghetto in the Ukraine.

Oct 22, 1942 - SS put down a revolt at Sachsenhausen by a group of Jews about to be sent to Auschwitz.

Oct 25, 1942 - Deportations of Jews from Norway to Auschwitz begin.

Oct 28, 1942 - The first transport from Theresienstadt arrives at Auschwitz.

In Nov - The mass killing of 170,000 Jews in the area of Bialystok.

Dec 10, 1942 - The first transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.

In Dec - Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted.

Dec 17, 1942 - British Foreign Secretary Eden tells the British House of Commons the Nazis are "now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe." U.S. declares those crimes will be avenged.

Dec 28, 1942 - Sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin.

Map of Concentration/Death Camps

1943 Return to Top of Page

In 1943 - The number of Jews killed by SS Einsatzgruppen passes one million. Nazis then use special units of slave laborers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.

Jan 18, 1943 - First resistance by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jan 29, 1943 - Nazis order all Gypsies arrested and sent to extermination camps.

Jan 30, 1943 - Ernst Kaltenbrunner succeeds Heydrich as head of RSHA.

In Feb - The Romanian government proposes to the Allies the transfer of 70,000 Jews to Palestine, but receives no response from Britain or the U.S.

In Feb - Greek Jews are ordered into ghettos.

Feb 2, 1943 - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.

Feb 27, 1943 - Jews working in Berlin armaments industry are sent to Auschwitz.

In March - The start of deportations of Jews from Greece to Auschwitz, lasting until August, totaling 49,900 persons.

March 1, 1943 - In New York, American Jews hold a mass rally at Madison Square Garden to pressure the U.S. government into helping the Jews of Europe

March 14, 1943 - The Krakow Ghetto is liquidated.

March 17, 1943 - Bulgaria states opposition to deportation of its Jews.

March 22, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory IV opens at Auschwitz.

March 31, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory II opens at Auschwitz.

April 4, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory V opens at Auschwitz.

April 9, 1943 - Exterminations at Chelmno cease. The camp will be reactivated in the spring of 1944 to liquidate ghettos. In all, Chelmno will total 300,000 deaths.

April 19-30 - The Bermuda Conference occurs as representatives from the U.S. and Britain discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries, but results in inaction concerning the plight of the Jews.

April 19, 1943 - Waffen SS attacks Jewish Resistance in Warsaw Ghetto.

In May - SS Dr. Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz.

May 13, 1943 - German and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allies.

May 19, 1943 - Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews).

June 11, 1943 - Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland.

June 25, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory III opens at Auschwitz. With its completion, the four new crematories at Auschwitz have a daily capacity of 4,756 bodies.

July 9/10 - Allies land in Sicily.

Aug 2, 1943 - Two hundred Jews escape from Treblinka extermination camp during a revolt. Nazis then hunt them down one by one.

Aug 16, 1943 - The Bialystok Ghetto is liquidated.

In Aug - Exterminations cease at Treblinka, after an estimated 870,000 deaths.

In Sept - The Vilna and Minsk Ghettos are liquidated.

Sept 11, 1943 - Germans occupy Rome, after occupying northern and central Italy, containing in all about 35,000 Jews.

Sept 11, 1943 - Beginning of Jewish family transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

In Oct - The Danish Underground helps transport 7,220 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden by sea.

Oct 4 - Himmler talks openly about the Final Solution at Posen.

Oct 14, 1943 - Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive. Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted.

Oct 16, 1943 - Jews in Rome rounded up, with over 1,000 sent to Auschwitz.

In Nov - The Riga Ghetto is liquidated.

In Nov - The U.S. Congress holds hearings regarding the U.S. State Department's inaction regarding European Jews, despite mounting reports of mass extermination.

Nov 3, 1943 - Nazis carry out Operation Harvest Festival in occupied Poland, killing 42,000 Jews.

Nov 4, 1943 - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "It is actually true that the Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass."

Nov 11, 1943 - Auschwitz Kommandant Höss is promoted to chief inspector of concentration camps. The new kommandant, Liebehenschel, then divides up the vast Auschwitz complex of over 30 sub-camps into three main sections.

Dec 2, 1943 - The first transport of Jews from Vienna arrives at Auschwitz.

Dec 16, 1943 - The chief surgeon at Auschwitz reports that 106 castration operations have been performed.

1944 Return to Top of Page

Jan 3, 1944 - Soviet troops reach former Polish border.

Jan 24, 1944 - In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi control, Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board.

Jan 25, 1944 - Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews."

In Feb - Eichmann visits Auschwitz.

March 19, 1944 - Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000). Eichmann arrives with Gestapo "Special Section Commandos."

March 24, 1944 - President Roosevelt issues a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity."

April 5, 1944 - A Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and makes it safely to Czechoslovakia. He then warns the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about Auschwitz.

April 6, 1944 - Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children.

April 7, 1944 - Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which is forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June.

April 14, 1944 - First transports of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, totaling 5,200 persons.

In May - Himmler's agents secretly propose to the western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.

May 8, 1944 - Rudolf Höss returns to Auschwitz, ordered by Himmler to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews.

May 15, 1944 - Beginning of deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.

May 16, 1944 - Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.

In June - A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report.

June 6, 1944 - D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy.

June 12, 1944 - Rosenberg orders Hay Action the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich.

Summer - Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.

In July - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.'

July 24, 1944 - Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.

Aug 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family arrested by Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

Aug 6, 1944 - The last Jewish ghetto in Poland, Lodz, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.

Oct 7, 1944 - A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV.

Oct 15, 1944 - Nazis seize control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resume deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.

Oct 17, 1944 - Eichmann arrives in Hungary.

Oct 28, 1944 - The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz.

Oct 30, 1944 - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Nov 8, 1944 - Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.

Nov 25, 1944 - Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.

Late 1944 - Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.

1945 Return to Top of Page

In 1945 - As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas.

Jan 6, 1945 - Soviets liberate Budapest, freeing over 80,000 Jews.

Jan 14, 1945 - Invasion of eastern Germany by Soviet troops.

Jan 17, 1945 - Liberation of Warsaw by the Soviets.

Jan 18, 1945 - Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz.

Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.

April 4, 1945 - Ohrdruf camp is liberated, later visited by General Eisenhower.

April 10, 1945 - Allies liberate Buchenwald.

April 15, 1945 - Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."

April 23, 1945 - Berlin reached by Soviet troops.

April 29, 1945 - U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.

April 30, 1945 - Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.

April 30, 1945 - Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.

May 2, 1945 - Theresienstadt taken over by the Red Cross.

May 5, 1945 - Mauthausen liberated.

May 7, 1945 - Unconditional German surrender signed by Gen. Jodl at Reims.

May 9, 1945 - Hermann Göring captured by members of U.S. 7th Army.

May 23, 1945 - SS Reichsführer Himmler commits suicide.

Nov 20, 1945 - Opening of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

Holocaust Statistics

1946 Return to Top of Page

March 11, 1946 - Former Auschwitz Kommandant Höss, posing as a farm worker, is arrested by the British. He testifies at Nuremberg, then is later tried in Warsaw, found guilty and hanged at Auschwitz, April 16, 1947, near Crematory I. "History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of all time," Höss writes while in prison, along with his memoirs about Auschwitz.

Oct 16, 1946 - Göring commits suicide two hours before the scheduled execution of the first group of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. During his imprisonment, a (now repentant) Hans Frank states, "A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Frank and the others are hanged and the bodies are brought to Dachau and burned (the final use of the crematories there) with the ashes then scattered into a river.

Dec 9, 1946 - 23 former SS doctors and scientists go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty, with 7 being hanged.

1947

Sept 15, 1947 - Twenty one former SS Einsatz leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Fourteen are sentenced to death, with only 4 (the group commanders) actually being executed. The other death sentences are commuted.

1960

May 11, 1960 - Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by Israeli secret service.

1961

April 11 - August 14 - Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962. A fellow Nazi reported Eichmann once said "he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction."

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html

Pictures Of the Holocaust-From Auschwitz

2009-02-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.shamash.org/holocaust/photos/

German Report Claims World's Most Wanted Nazi War Criminal Died in 1992

2009-02-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

German Report Claims World's Most Wanted Nazi War Criminal Died in 1992

German Report Claims World's Most Wanted Nazi War Criminal Died in 1992

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

AP

BERLIN —
Documents have surfaced in Egypt showing the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminal, concentration camp doctor Aribert Heim, died in Cairo in 1992, Germany's ZDF television and The New York Times reported.

Wednesday's reports said Heim, known as 'Dr. Death,' was living under a pseudonym and had converted to Islam by the time of his death from intestinal cancer.

ZDF said that in a joint effort with the New York Times, it located a passport, application for a residence permit, bank slips, personal letters and medical papers — in all more than 100 documents — left behind by Heim in a briefcase in the hotel room where he lived under the name Tarek Hussein Farid.

Though he did not know Heim's real identity, Egyptian dentist Tarek Abdelmoneim el Rifai said he knew him through his father, Abdelmoneim el Rifai, 88, who was Heim's dentist in Cairo.

He told the AP on Wednesday that he only met Heim a few times, 20 years ago, but confirmed that he knew of his death.

"He died in 1992. I didn't know that he was a doctor and that he is the most wanted Nazi war criminal. I am surprised," he said in a telephone interview.

"He introduced himself to my father as a German and I know that he converted to Islam and changed his name."

When he met Heim two decades ago at his father's clinic, el Rifai said he had the impression he was on the run.

"The only thing I knew about him is that he fled from the Jews," el Rifai said.

ZDF quoted Heim's son Ruediger Heim as confirming the pseudonym Tarek Hussein Farid as his father's assumed name and the documents as belonging to him. Heim said he visited his father regularly in Cairo and had taken care of him after an operation related to his cancer in 1990.

Simon Wiesenthal Center head Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said he has not seen the documents and that while it seems that there is "definitely a strong possibility" they point to Heim's death in Cairo 16 years ago, they need to be examined by experts.

If it turns out to be true, however, he said that "the German police have a very important investigation on their hands in terms of prosecuting people who helped Aribert Heim escape justice."

He pointed out that Ruediger Heim has previously said that the only contact he had since his father went into hiding in 1962 were two notes that appeared in his family's mailbox, and that he had no idea if he was alive or dead.

"Ruediger has been lying," Zuroff told The Associated Press in an interview from Jerusalem. "Either he is lying now or he was lying before, and he has a vested interest in this so anything he says has to be taken with a certain amount of skepticism and suspicion — and the most important thing is missing: the body. There's no grave, there's no corpse, there's no DNA tests."

Ruediger Heim refused to comment on the discrepancies in what he has said, or on the assertion that his father had died in 1992, when contacted at his home by the AP.

"The whole story is very emotional, and I'm not able to say anything at this time," he said.

ZDF reported that Heim was buried in a cemetery for the poor in Cairo, where graves are reused after several years "so that the chance of finding remains is unlikely."

Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.

He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.

While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.

In 1961, German authorities were alerted that Heim was living in Baden-Baden and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him — he apparently had been tipped off.

Heim would be 94 today if still alive.

Heim fled through France and Spain before crossing into Morocco, and eventually settling in Egypt, ZDF and the Times reported, citing Ruediger Heim.

He lived in Cairo at the Kasr el Madina hotel for the 10 years leading up to his death, the report said.

Ruediger Heim told ZDF that he first visited his father in 1976, organizing the visit through his aunt and arranging to meet with him in a hotel.

"He recognized me right away," Heim recalled. "It was a meeting of worlds. I was there for 14 days."

But, he said, he did not talk with his father about the allegations against him — largely because he said he wasn't fully aware of them himself.

"I didn't ask him 'how many people did you kill' because I didn't know, I didn't know any concrete details," he told ZDF. "Later, on other visits, I got to know his life better."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,488005,00.html

Yom Hashoah Tuesday 21 April 2009

2009-02-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

Here is the 2009 date
Tuesday 21 April

Yom Hashoah

The Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day. The date is chosen as the closest date (in the Jewish calendar) to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

This is the 2008 Calendar
Yom Hashoah
Holocaust Remembrance Day
By Jennifer Rosenberg, About.com

It has been over 60 years since the Holocaust. To survivors, the Holocaust remains real and ever-present, but for some others, sixty years makes the Holocaust seem part of ancient history. Year-round we try to teach and inform others about the horrors of the Holocaust. We confront the questions of what happened? How did it happen? How could it happen? Could it happen again? We attempt to fight against ignorance with education and against disbelief with proof.

But there is one day in the year when we make a special effort to remember (Zachor). Upon this one day, we remember those that suffered, those that fought, and those that died. Six million Jews were murdered. Many families were completely decimated.

Why this day?

Jewish history is long and filled with many stories of slavery and freedom, sorrow and joy, persecution and redemption. For Jews, their history, their family, and their relationship with God have shaped their religion and their identity. The Hebrew calendar is filled with varied holidays that incorporate and reiterate the history and tradition of the Jewish people.

After the horrors of the Holocaust, Jews wanted a day to memorialize this tragedy. But what day? The Holocaust spanned years with suffering and death spread throughout these years of terror. No one day stood out as representative of this destruction.

So various days were suggested.

* The tenth of Tevet was proffered. This day is Asarah B'Tevet and marks the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. But this day holds no direct relation or tie to the Holocaust.
* The Zionists in Israel, many of whom had fought in the ghettos or as partisans, wanted to commemorate the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising - April 19, 1943. But this date on the Hebrew calendar is the 15th of Nissan - the beginning of Passover, a very important and happy holiday. Orthodox Jews objected to this date.

For two years, the date was debated. Finally, in 1950, compromises and bargaining began. The 27th of Nissan was chosen, which falls beyond Passover but within the time span of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Orthodox Jews still did not like this date because it was a day of mourning within the traditionally happy month of Nissan. As a final effort to compromise, it was decided that if the 27th of Nissan would affect Shabbat (fall on Friday or Saturday), then it would be moved. If the 27th of Nissan falls on a Friday, Holocaust Remembrance Day is moved to the preceding Thursday. If the 27th of Nissan falls on a Sunday, then Holocaust Remembrance Day is moved to the following Monday.

On April 12, 1951, the Knesset (Israel's parliament) proclaimed Yom Hashoah U'Mered HaGetaot (Holocaust and Ghetto Revolt Remembrance Day) to be the 27th of Nissan. The name later became known as Yom Hashoah Ve Hagevurah (Devastation and Heroism Day) and even later simplified to Yom Hashoah.

This year, the Yom Hashoah will be on May 1, 2008.

How is it observed?

Since Yom Hashoah is a relatively new holiday, there are no set rules or rituals. What kind of ritual could represent the Holocaust?

There are various beliefs about what is and is not appropriate on this day - and many of them are conflicting. In general, Yom Hashoah has been observed with candlelighting, speakers, poems, prayers, and singing. Often, six candles are lighted to represent the six million. Holocaust survivors speak about their experiences or share in the readings. Some ceremonies have people read from the Book of Names for certain lengths of time in an effort to remember those that died and to give an understanding of the huge number of victims. Sometimes these ceremonies are held in a cemetery or near a Holocaust memorial.

In Israel, the Knesset made Yom Hashoah a national public holiday in 1959 and in 1961 a law was passed that closed all public entertainment on Yom Hashoah. At ten in the morning, a siren is sounded where everyone stops what they are doing, pull over in their cars, and stand in remembrance.

In whatever form you observe Yom Hashoah, the memory of the Jewish victims will live on.

Yom Hashoah Dates
Year 27th of Nissan Date for Yom Hashoah
2007 Sunday, April 15 Monday, April 16
2008 Friday, May 2 Thursday, May 1
2009 Tuesday, April 21 Tuesday, April 21
2010 Sunday, April 11 Monday, April 12
2011 Sunday, May 1 Monday, May 2
2012 Thursday, April 19 Thursday, April 19
2013 Sunday, April 7 Monday, April 8
2014 Sunday, April 27 Monday, April 28
2015 Thursday, April 16 Thursday, April 16
2016 Thursday, May 5 Thursday, May 5

Holocaust Surivors website

2009-02-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/

Excellent website!

Rabbi Heir Interview

2009-02-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

Holocaust Memorial Day- jan 27th

2009-02-04T08:06:00.001-08:00

What is Holocaust Memorial Day?

About: Holocaust Memorial Day

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides. On it, we commemorate victims, honour survivors and commit to tackling prejudice, discrimination and racism in the present day. We encourage nations to conquer genocide and atrocity and individuals to stand up against hatred.

HMD is marked each year on 27 January – the anniversary of the date of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

HMD sets out to motivate people to make sure that the horrendous crimes committed during the Holocaust and in more recent genocides, are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

The Holocaust

Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in a systematic, state-sponsored campaign of persecution and extermination now known as the Holocaust. It persecuted, incarcerated and murdered millions of its own citizens, and those of the countries it invaded, on the basis of skin colour; disability; sexual orientation; ethnicity; religious belief or political affiliation.

In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. The Nazi campaign to exclude and persecute Jews, and others, as “life unworthy of life” began. By May 1945 close to two out of every three Jews in Europe had been murdered in the Holocaust.

During World War II (1939-45), the Nazis created ghettos to isolate Jews and established concentration camps to imprison all people targeted on ethnic, racial or political grounds. Between 1942 and 1944 Nazi Germany deported millions of people from the territories it occupied to extermination camps to be murdered in gas chambers. At the largest killing centre, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports of Jews arrived almost daily from across Europe.

Although Jews were the primary victims of Nazi racism, others targeted for death included upwards of two hundred thousand Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) and almost quarter of a million mentally or physically disabled people. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, millions of people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, or maltreatment. The Nazis killed tens of thousands of Polish intellectual and religious leaders; deported millions of Polish and Soviet citizens for forced labour and persecuted and incarcerated gay men and lesbians*.

Millions of lives were lost, or changed beyond recognition. The consequences of this loss and persecution are felt today by Holocaust survivors, their children and grand-children, in the UK and around the world.

About: Genocides

Genocide – the killing of or causing serious harm with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group

Genocide is recognised as a crime in international law, under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, first ratified in 1948.

1975-1979 Cambodia

The fate of Cambodia shocked the world when the radical communist Khmer Rouge, under their leader Pol Pot, seized power in 1975 after years of guerrilla warfare. The Khmer Rouge ruthlessly imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia (now under its Khmer name Kampuchea) on the communist model of Mao’s China – creating “Year Zero”. The population was made to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. The inhabitants of towns and cities were forced to leave. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out, regardless of their physical condition. No-one was spared the exodus. People who refused to leave were killed, so were those who did not leave fast enough and those who would not obey orders.

Also targeted were minority groups, victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai, and also Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. Half the Cham Muslim population was murdered, as were 8,000 Christians. Buddhism was eliminated from the country and by 1977 there were no functioning monasteries left in Cambodia.

All political and civil rights were abolished. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps. Factories, schools and universities were shut down, so were hospitals. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field were murdered, together with their extended families. Religion was banned, so were music and radio sets. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. One Khmer slogan ran ‘To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.’

Civilian deaths in this period, from executions, disease, exhaustion and starvation, have been estimated at well over 2 million.

1992 Bosnia

In 1980, the population of Bosnia consisted of Serbs, Bosniaks (Sunni Muslim), and Croats. In the turmoil following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Bosnia declared independence (1992). This was resisted by the Bosnian Serb population who saw their future as part of “Greater Serbia”. Bosnia became the victim of the Serbs’ determined wish for political domination, which it was prepared to achieve by isolating ethnic groups and, if necessary, exterminating them. In July 1995 Serb troops and paramilitaries led by Ratko Mladic descended on Srebrenica and began shelling it. Despite being declared a safe zone by the United Nations, Serb forces prevailed. Women and children were forced onto trucks and buses, men and boys remained. The deportation of Srebrenica’s population took 4 days.

Up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. Up to 3,000, many in the act of trying to escape, were shot or decapitated in the fields. Mladic had sent out his written order to ‘block, crush and destroy the straggling parts of the Muslim group’ – it was carried out. 1,500 were locked in a warehouse and sprayed with machine gun fire and grenades. Others died in their thousands on farms, football fields and school playgrounds. The whole action was carried out with military efficiency.

1994 Rwanda

In 100 days in 1994 1,000, 000 Tutsis, and some moderate Hutus, were murdered in the Rwandan genocide. On April 6 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda’s president was shot down. The Tutsis were accused of killing the president, and Hutu civilians were told, by radio and word of mouth, that it was their duty to wipe out the Tutsis. First, though, moderate Hutus who weren’t anti-Tutsi should be killed. So should Tutsi wives or husbands. Although on a large scale, this genocide was carried out entirely by hand, often using machetes and clubs. The men who’d been trained to massacre were members of civilian death squads, the Interahamwe. The State provided supporting organisation – politicians, officials, intellectuals and professional soldiers incited the killers to do their work. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for slaughter.

Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools and churches. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact, their cold-blooded killers were people they knew – neighbours, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.

HMD—Relevant to us, today

Nazi ideology was founded on racism, anti-semitism and discrimination, creating a fascist state that rejected human and civil rights. The evils of prejudice, discrimination and intolerance continue to exist in Britain. We categorise, stereotype, discriminate, exclude, bully, persecute, attack – because of race, religion, disability, sexuality. We damage, and are damaged, as a result of our refusal to accept our common humanity. We murder. Nations commit genocide. HMD acts as a reminder to all of us of our responsibility to protect the civil and human rights of all people in our society and across the world.

HMD: YOUR INVITATION

HMD – 27th January – is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides.

Hundreds of events, open to all, are held across the UK to mark HMD. You can join in one of these or create one of your own. Anyone can organise an activity to commemorate HMD.

Individual symbolic acts, like lighting a candle or observing a silence also signify your commitment to remember the past and create a better future.

In hundreds of places across the UK, and in thousands around the world, people come together to honour the past and build a safer, fairer world.

http://www.hmd.org.uk/about/

Online Exhibitions

2009-02-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/

You can visit the Holocaust Museum online.

SIMON WIESENTHAL 1908-2005-This is a man i have GREAT RESPECT for.

2009-02-03T10:23:00.000-08:00

SIMON WIESENTHAL
1908-2005

At the end of World War II, thousands of Nazis who participated in the systematic murder of some 6,000,000 Jews and millions of Gypsies, Poles and other "inferior" peoples, slipped through the Allied net and escaped to countries around the globe, where many still live in freedom.

Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, dedicated his life to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust and to hunting down the perpetrators still at large. "When history looks back," Wiesenthal explained, "I want people to know the Nazis weren’t able to kill millions of people and get away with it." His work stands as a reminder and a warning for future generations.

As founder and head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, the freelance Nazi hunter, usually with the cooperation of the Israeli, Austrian, former West German and other governments, ferreted out nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, the administrator of the slaughter of the Jews; Franz Murer, "The Butcher of Wilno," and Erich Rajakowitsch, in charge of the "death transports" in Holland. Accounts of his grim sleuthing are detailed in his memoirs, The Murderers Among Us (1967). His other books include, Sails of Hope (1973), Sunflower (1970), Max and Helen" (1982), Krystyna (1987), Every Day Remembrance Day (1987), and Justice Not Vengeance (1989). In 1989, a film based on Mr. Wiesenthal’s life entitled, Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story was produced by Home Box Office and starred Academy Award-winning actor Ben Kingsley as Simon Wiesenthal.

Simon Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908 in Buczacz, in what is now the Lvov Oblast section of the Ukraine. When Wiesenthal's father was killed in World War I, Mrs. Wiesenthal took her family and fled to Vienna for a brief period, returning to Buczacz when she remarried. The young Wiesenthal graduated from the Gymnasium in 1928 and applied for admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov. Turned away because of quota restrictions on Jewish students, he went instead to the Technical University of Prague, from which he received his degree in architectural engineering in 1932.

In 1936, Simon married Cyla Mueller and worked in an architectural office in Lvov. Their life together was happy until 1939 when Germany and Russia signed their "non-aggression" pact and agreed to partition Poland between them; the Russian army soon occupied Lvov, and shortly afterward began the Red purge of Jewish merchants, factory owners and other professionals. In the purge of "bourgeois" elements that followed the Soviet occupation of Lvov Oblast at the beginning of World War II, Wiesenthal's stepfather was arrested by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs - Soviet Secret Police) and eventually died in prison, his stepbrother was shot, and Wiesenthal himself, forced to close his business, became a mechanic in a bedspring factory. Later he saved himself, his wife, and his mother from deportation to Siberia by bribing an NKVD commissar. When the Germans displaced the Russians in 1941, a former employee of his, then serving the collaborationist Ukrainian Auxiliary police, helped him to escape execution by the Nazis. But he did not escape incarceration. Following initial detention in the Janowska concentration camp just outside Lvov, he and his wife were assigned to the forced labor camp serving the Ostbahn Works, the repair shop for Lvov's Eastern Railroad.

Early in 1942, the Nazi hierarchy formally decided on the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem" -- annihilation. Throughout occupied Europe a terrifying genocide machine was put into operation. In August 1942, Wiesenthal's mother was sent to the Belzec death camp. By September, most of his and his wife's relatives were dead; a total of eighty-nine members of both families perished.

Because his wife's blonde hair gave her a chance of passing as an "Aryan," Wiesenthal made a deal with the Polish underground. In return for detailed charts of railroad junction points made by him for use by saboteurs, his wife was provided with false papers identifying her as "Irene Kowalska," a Pole, and spirited out of the camp in the autumn of 1942. She lived in Warsaw for two years and then worked in the Rhineland as a forced laborer, without her true identity ever being discovered.

With the help of the deputy director, Wiesenthal himself escaped the Ostbahn camp in October 1943, just before the Germans began liquidating all the inmates. In June 1944, he was recaptured and sent back to Janowska where he would almost certainly have been killed had the German eastern front not collapsed under the advancing Red Army. Knowing they would be sent into combat if they had no prisoners to justify their rear-echelon assignment, the SS guards at Janowska decided to keep the few remaining inmates alive. With 34 prisoners out of an original 149,000, the 200 guards joined the general retreat westward, picking up the entire population of the village of Chelmiec along the way to adjust the prisoner-guard ratio.

Very few of the prisoners survived the westward trek through Plaszow, Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald, which ended at Mauthausen in upper Austria. Weighing less than 100 pounds and lying helplessly in a barracks where the stench was so strong that even hardboiled SS guards would not enter, Wiesenthal was barely alive when Mauthausen was liberated by the 11th Armored Division of the Third U.S. Army on May 5, 1945.

As soon as his health was sufficiently restored, Wiesenthal began gathering and preparing evidence on Nazi atrocities for the War Crimes Section of the United States Army. After the war, he also worked for the Army's Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps and headed the Jewish Central Committee of the United States Zone of Austria, a relief and welfare organization. Late in 1945, he and his wife, each of whom had believed the other to be dead, were reunited, and in 1946, their daughter Pauline was born.

The evidence supplied by Wiesenthal was utilized in the American zone war crime trials. When his association with the United States Army ended in 1947, Wiesenthal and thirty volunteers opened the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling evidence for future trials. But, as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified, both sides lost interest in prosecuting Germans, and Wiesenthal's volunteers, succumbing to frustration, drifted away to more ordinary pursuits. In 1954, the office in Linz was closed and its files were given to the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel, except for one - the dossier on Adolf Eichmann, the inconspicuous technocrat who, as chief of the Gestapo's Jewish Department, had supervised the implementation of the "Final Solution."

While continuing his salaried relief and welfare work, including the running of an occupational training school for Hungarian and other Iron Curtain refugees, Wiesenthal never relaxed in his pursuit of the elusive Eichmann who had disappeared at the time of Germany's defeat in World War II. In 1953, Wiesenthal received information that Eichmann was in Argentina from people who had spoken to him there. He passed this information on to Israel through the Israeli embassy in Vienna and in 1954 also informed Nahum Goldmann, but the FBI had received information that Eichmann was in Damascus, Syria. It was not until 1959 that Israel was informed by Germany that Eichmann was in Buenos Aires living under the alias of Ricardo Klement. He was captured there by Israeli agents and brought to Israel for trial. Eichmann was found guilty of mass murder and executed on May 31, 1961.

Encouraged by the capture of Eichmann, Wiesenthal reopened the Jewish Documentation Center, this time in Vienna, and concentrated exclusively on the hunting of war criminals. One of his high priority cases was Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank, the fourteen year-old German-Jewish girl who was murdered by the Nazis after hiding in an Amsterdam attic for two years. Dutch neo-Nazi propagandists were fairly successful in their attempts to discredit the authenticity of Anne Frank's famous diary until Wiesenthal located Silberbauer, then a police inspector in Austria, in 1963. "Yes," Silberbauer confessed, when confronted, "I arrested Anne Frank."

In October 1966, sixteen SS officers, nine of them found by Wiesenthal, went on trial in Stuttgart, West Germany, for participation in the extermination of Jews in Lvov. High on Wiesenthal's most-wanted list was Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps in Poland. After three years of patient undercover work by Wiesenthal, Stangl was located in Brazil and remanded to West Germany for imprisonment in 1967. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison.

Wiesenthal's book of memoirs, The Murderers Among Us, was published in 1967. During a visit to the United States to promote the book, Wiesenthal announced that he had found Mrs. Hermine Ryan, nee Braunsteiner, a housewife living in Queens, New York. According to the dossier, Mrs. Ryan had supervised the killings of several hundred children at Majdanek. She was extradited to Germany for trial as a war criminal in 1973 and received life imprisonment.

The Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna was a nondescript, sparsely furnished three-room office with a staff of four, including Wiesenthal. Contrary to belief, Wiesenthal did not usually track down the Nazi fugitives himself. His chief task was gathering and analyzing information. In that work he was aided by a vast, informal, international network of friends, colleagues, and sympathizers, including German World War II veterans, appalled by the horrors they witnessed. He even received tips from former Nazis with grudges against other former Nazis. A special branch of his Vienna office documented the activities of right-wing groups, neo-Nazis and similar organizations.

Painstakingly, Wiesenthal culled every pertinent document and record he got and listened to the many personal accounts told him by individual survivors. With an architect's structural acumen, a Talmudist's thoroughness, and a brilliant talent for investigative thinking, he pieced together the most obscure, incomplete, and apparently irrelevant and unconnected data to build cases solid enough to stand up in a court of law. The dossiers were then presented to the appropriate authorities. When, as often happens, they failed to take action, whether from indifference, pro-Nazi sentiment, or some other consideration, Wiesenthal went to the press and other media, for experience taught him that publicity and an outraged public opinion are powerful weapons.

The work yet to be done was enormous. Germany’s war criminal files contained more than 90,000 names, most of them of people who have never been tried. Thousands of former Nazis, not named in any files, are also known to be at large, often in positions of prominence, throughout Germany. Aside from the cases themselves, there is the tremendous task of persuading authorities and the public that the Nazi Holocaust was massive and pervasive. In the final paragraph of his memoirs, he quotes what an SS corporal told him in 1944: "You would tell the truth [about the death camps] to the people in America. That's right. And you know what would happen, Wiesenthal? They wouldn't believe you. They’d say you were mad. Might even put you into an asylum. How can anyone believe this terrible business - unless he has lived through it?"

Among Mr. Wiesenthal's many honors include an Honorary Knighthood of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, decorations from the Austrian and French resistance movements, the Dutch Freedom Medal, the Luxembourg Freedom Medal, the United Nations League for the Help of Refugees Award, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal presented to him by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the French Legion of Honor which he received in 1986. Wiesenthal was a consultant for the motion picture thriller, The Odessa File(Paramount, 1974). The Boys from Brazil (Twentieth Century Fox, 1978), a major motion picture based on Ira Levin's book of the same name, starring Sir Laurence Olivier as Herr Lieberman, a character styled after Wiesenthal.

In November 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded. Today, together with its world renowned Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the New York Tolerancenter, it is an international center for Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish people. With offices throughout the world, the Wiesenthal Center carries on the continuing fight against bigotry and antisemitism and pursues an active agenda of related contemporary issues. "I have received many honors in my lifetime," said Mr. Wiesenthal. "When I die, these honors will die with me. But the Simon Wiesenthal Center will live on as my legacy."

In 1981, the Wiesenthal Center produced the Academy AwardTM-winning documentary, Genocide, narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and the late Orson Welles, and introduced by Simon Wiesenthal.

Wiesenthal lived in a modest apartment in Vienna and spent his evenings answering letters, studying books and files, and working on his stamp collection. He lived there with his wife Cyla until her death on November 10, 2003.

Simon Wiesenthal received numerous anonymous threats and insulting letters. In June 1982, a bomb exploded at the front door of his house causing a great deal of damage. Fortunately, no one was hurt. After that, his house and office were guarded by an armed policeman. One German and several Austrian neo-Nazis were arrested for the bombing. The German, who was found to be the main perpetrator, was sentenced to five years in prison.

Wiesenthal was often asked to explain his motives for becoming a Nazi hunter. According to Clyde Farnsworth in the New York Times Magazine (February 2, 1964), Wiesenthal once spent the Sabbath at the home of a former Mauthausen inmate, now a well-to-do jewelry manufacturer. After dinner his host said, "Simon, if you had gone back to building houses, you'd be a millionaire. Why didn't you?" "You're a religious man," replied Wiesenthal. "You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, ‘What have you done?,’ there will be many answers. You will say, ‘I became a jeweler,’ Another will say, ‘I have smuggled coffee and American cigarettes,’ Another will say, ‘I built houses,’ But I will say, ‘I did not forget you’."

On September 20, 2005, Simon Wiesenthal died peacefully in his sleep at his home. After a service at Vienna’s Central Cemetery attended by Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schuessel, government officials, diplomats and leaders of religious communities, he was taken to Israel and laid to rest in Herzliya.

In his eulogy, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said, "As you go to your eternal repose, I am sure there is a great stirring in heaven as the soul of the millions murdered during the Nazi Holocaust get ready to welcome Simon Wiesenthal, the man who stood up for their honor and never let the world forget them."

Biography
To learn more about Simon Wiesenthal and his courageous fight to hunt down the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust, check out the short biography we've prepared.

Photos
We have also put together a selection of archival photos spanning seven decades of Mr. Wiesenthal's life, from a 1923 photograph as a Boy Scout leader in Poland to a recent photograph at the opening of the Museum of Tolerance.

Quotes
A prolific and moving writer, Simon Wiesenthal has a facility to put into words the difficult truths of the Holocaust. Here's a selection of quotes from his writings as well as interviews.

Bibliography
There are a great number of books, articles and movies by and about Mr. Wiesenthal. This selected bibliography provides information on the most important of these works.

SWC : About Simon Wiesenthal : Honors

http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242614

Concentration Camp Listing

2009-02-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/cclist.html

Concentration Camp Listing

The camps are classified by countries, based on the 1939-1945 borders. When known, the name of each sub-camp or external kommando is followed by the name of the company which used inmates as slave. A star means that the inmates of the camp were women.

This list is far from complete. It is estimated that the Nazis established 15,000 camps in the occupied countries. There were several small camps which were created for limited in time operations against local population. Most of these camps were destroyed by the Nazis themselves, sometimes after two or three months of activity. This list does not contain the names of the ghettos created by the Nazis, even if several ghettos (i.e. Theresienstadt ghetto) had their own external kommandos (work team).

This list is based on information found in two books:
- The first one is "Le livre des Camps" by Ludo Van Eck, published in 1979, editions Kritak (Belgium. As far as I know, this book has never been published again or translated in English but it is still possible to purchase it at the museum of Breendonck, Belgium),
- The second one is the excellent Atlas Of The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert.

# Germany:

* Bergen-Belsen (probably 2 subcamps but location is unknown)
* Börgermoor (no sub-camp known)
* Buchenwald ( 174 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Dachau (123 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Dieburg (no sub-camp known)
* Esterwegen (1 sub-camp)
* Flossenburg (94 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Gundelsheim (no sub-camp known)
* Neuengamme (96 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Papenburg (no sub-camp known)
* Ravensbruck (31 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Sachsenhausen (44 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Sachsenburg (no sub-camp known)

# Austria:

* Mauthausen (49 subcamps and external kommandos)

# Belgium:

* Breendonck (no sub-camp known)

# Czechoslovakia:

* Theresienstadt (9 external kommandos)

# Estonia:

* Klooga
* Vivara

# Finland:

* Kangasjarvi
* Koveri

# France:

* Argeles
* Brens
* Drancy
* Gurs
* Les Milles
* Le Vernet
* Natzweiler-Struthof (70 camps satellites et kommandos)
* Noé
* Récébédou
* Rieucros
* Rivesaltes
* Suresnes
* Thill
o for these camps, no sub-camp known

Work camps created by the Government of Vichy in Maroco and Algeria. Thousands of jews were sent to these camps by the French pro-nazi government of Petain:
* Abadla
* Ain el Ourak
* Bechar
* Berguent
* Bogari
* Bouarfa
* Djelfa
* Kenadsa
* Meridja
* Missour
* Tendrara

# Great Britain (*Note: Alderney in the Channel Islands was the only place in the British Isles where German concentration camps were established. In January 1942, the occupying German forces established four camps, called Helgoland, Norderney, Borkum and Sylt.)

* Aurigny

# Holland:

* Amersfoort
* Ommen
* Vught
o Arnhem
o Breda
o Eindhoven
o Gilze-Rijen
o 's Gravenhage (The Hague)
o Haaren par Tilburg
o Leeuwarden
o Moerdijk
o Rozendaal
o Sint Michielsgestel
o Valkenburg par Leiden
o Venlo (Luftwaffe airfield)
* Westerbork (transit camp)

# Italy:

* Bolzano
* Fossoli
* Risiera di San Sabba (no sub-camp known)

# Latvia:

* Riga
* Riga-Kaiserwald
* Dundaga
* Eleje-Meitenes
* Jungfernhof
* Lenta
* Spilwe

# Lithuania:

* Kaunas
* Aleksotaskowno
* Palemonas
* Pravieniskès
* Volary

# Norway:

* Baerum
* Berg
* Bredtvet
* Falstadt
* Tromsdalen
* Ulven

# Poland:

* Auschwitz-Birkenau - Oswiecim-Brzezinka (extermination camp - 51 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Belzec (extermination camp - 1 subcamp)
* Bierznow
* Biesiadka
* Dzierzazna & Litzmannstadt (These two camps were "Jugenverwahrlage", children camps. Hundreds of children and teenagers considered as not good enough to be "Germanized" were transfered to these places - see our article about the The “Lebensborn ” — and later sent to the extermination canters)
* Gross-Rosen - Rogoznica (77 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Huta-Komarowska
* Janowska
* Krakow
* Kulmhof - Chelmno (extermination camp - no sub-camp known)
* Lublin (prison - no subcamp known)
* Lwow (Lemberg)
o Czwartaki
o Lemberg
* Maidanek (extermination camp - 3 subcamps)
* Mielec
* Pawiak (prison - no subcamp known)
* Plaszow (work camp but became later subcamp of Maidanek)
* Poniatowa
* Pustkow (work camp - no subcamp known)
* Radogosz (prison - no subcamp known)
* Radom
* Schmolz
* Schokken
* Sobibor (extermination camp - no subcamp known)
* Stutthof - Sztutowo (40 subcamps and external kommandos)
* Treblinka (extermination camp - no subcamp known)
* Wieliczka
* Zabiwoko (work camp - no subcamp known)
* Zakopane

# Russia: (The real number of concentration and extermination camps established in occupied Soviet Union by the Nazies is unknown. The following list contains the name of the major camps. Some of these camps were under Romanian control; e.g. Akmétchetka or Bogdanovka where 54,000 were executed between December 21th and December 31th, 1941)

* Akmétchetka
* Balanowka
* Bar
* Bisjumujsje
* Bogdanovka
* "Citadelle" (The real name of this camp is unknown. The camp was located near Lvov. Thousands of Russians POW were killed in this camp)
* Czwartaki
* Daugavpils
* Domanievka
* Edineti
* Kielbasin (or Kelbassino)
* Khorol
* Lemberg
* Mezjapark
* Ponary
* Rawa-Russkaja
* Salapils
* Strazdumujsje
* Yanowski
* Vertugen
(for all these camps, no subcamp known).

# Yugoslavia:

* Banjica
* Brocice
* Chabatz
* Danica
* Dakovo
* Gornja reka
* Gradiska
* Jadovno
* Jasenovac
* Jastrebarsko
* Kragujevac
* Krapje
* Kruscica
* Lepoglava
* Loborgrad
* Sajmite
* Sisak
* Slano
* Slavonska-Pozega
* Stara-Gradiska
* Tasmajdan
* Zemun

Treblinka (Poland)

2009-02-02T17:36:00.000-08:00

This article was written by Caren Keller Niss

As with all villages and towns within a twenty to thirty mile radius of this death camp, Treblinka was the final destination for the nearly 2500 Jews of Bransk. They were transported there by train via Bielsk on November 8, 1942.

Treblinka, established in 1941 as a forced labor camp for those accused of crimes by the occupation authorities was located 50 miles northeast of Warsaw, Poland. Within a year of opening what would be referred to as Treblinka I, a second camp was built that would become a critical link in the Third Reich's plan to exterminate the Jewish people. Treblinka II, constructed using German firms, Polish prisoners and Jews, would serve as an elimination center for the Jews of central Europe. Only a mile away from the original camp, this new section would become one of the main extermination centers of the Nazi regime. In his landmark book, "The Destruction of the European Jews," historian Raul Hilberg reports that Jewish labor, in addition to materials, was taken from within the Warsaw ghetto to help build this upper camp.(1 - see footnotes at the end of this text) Opening for operation on July 23, 1942, as the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto began, the upper camp would house the machinery that would exterminate some 265,000 Jews of Warsaw. Handled with the utmost of secrecy, the perimeter of the camp was surrounded by two barbed wire fences. The inner fence was kept covered with tree branches to conceal the activities within.

Like all of the other death camps, Treblinka adhered to a specific routine that supported the ruse of resettlement and which minimized the chances of Jewish rebellion or resistance. Details were added in each of the death centers to support the lie of Jewish resettlement. The Star of David on the front wall of Treblinka's gas house, and the Hebrew inscriptions on the curtain that hung at the entrance that read, "This is the gate through which the righteous pass," are just two examples.(2)(3) Variations to the set routine only occurred as was needed to accommodate the physical layout of a particular camp. For instance, the upper camp at Treblinka was unable to receive lengthy trains because of its' short ramps. Therefore, only a few cars at a time were backed in to the camp compound and unloaded. (4)

As trainloads of five to seven thousand people arrived at the camp the deportees would hear a speech by an SS officer that told them they had arrived at a transit camp. Prisoners were then moved through a selection process in which women and children were separated from the men. Those too sick to walk on their own, unbeknownst to the others, were taken to a pit near the infirmary and shot.(5) All of the victims were then taken to a barracks where their hair was shorn. Postcards were often written by the prisoners, and were later sent by the camp personnel. That encouraged relatives to move east for resettlement. (6) From here they would be directed to the gas chambers.

Treblinka opened with three gas chambers in operation but quickly expanded to at least six. (7) Housed in a brick building, the chambers appeared at first sight to be showers. Pipes attached to the ceiling brought the gas in to the death chambers through what looked like shower heads. (8) Prisoners were told that they were going in to a bath house to be cleansed. They would enter through one door. Once the prisoners were inside the chambers, the order "Ivan, water!" shouted from a German to a Ukrainian guard would begin the gassing. The gassing did not always happen quickly. Because the victims were packed in to the room tightly, there was no room to move around. Consequently, the victims might stand for thirty to forty minutes before they actually died. (9) After death, the bodies would be removed through a door opposite the entrance of the chamber where all the body cavities would be searched for hidden valuables. After this search the bodies would be dragged to mass graves for burial. When the mass graves became a problem, the Germans ordered the graves to be excavated and that the bodies be disposed of in a more efficient way. Starting in the Fall of 1942, this meant dragging the bodies and stacking them on a grid of old railway tracks for burning. (10) Once emptied of the bodies, the chambers would be cleaned and made ready for the next group of prisoners.

While the victims were being gassed, some of the male prisoners emptied and cleaned the train cars of the corpses of those who died en route as well as any objects or dirt that was left behind. Once this work was completed, the train cars left the camp to make room for the next round of rail cars. All the personal belongings, clothes and luggage, that came with the prisoners were gathered and sent to Germany. (11)

Not all of the deportees arriving at Treblinka met their fate in the gas house. Some were forced to work jobs to keep the killing business in motion. They would be used as laborers for a period of days and then selected out for gassing.

The camp was initially supervised by SS-Obersturmfuhrer Imfried Eberl. SS-Obersturmfuhrer Franz Stangl replaced him in August 1942. The camp was staffed by a combination of Germans, Ukrainians and Jewish prisoners. Twenty or thirty SS men served as the core leadership in the camp. Ninety to one hundred and twenty Ukrainians acted as camp guards, security personnel and other jobs like operating the gas chambers. Seven hundred to one thousand Jewish prisoners performed the manual labor, including the work described above as part of the killing process, and these prisoners were expected to tend to the personal needs of the German and Ukrainian staff. (12)

Opening for "business" on July 23, 1942, with the beginning of the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto, some 245,000 Warsaw Jews and 112,000 Jews from other places in the Warsaw district were murdered in Treblinka by September 21.(13) 337,000 Jews from the Radom district, 35,000 from the Lublin district and 107,000 from the Bialystok district also met their death in Treblinka with 738,000 Jews who had been residents of the General gouvernement. From outside Poland many thousands of Jews were transported to and killed in Treblinka: 7.000 from Slovakia, 8,000 from Theresienstadt concentration camp, 4,000 Jews from Greece, and 7,000 Jews from the Macedonia portion of Bulgaria. In addition to the Jews, some 2,000 gypsies were killed in Treblinka. (14)

There were some acts of resistance in Treblinka. Several incidents by individuals or transports would result in the wounding or death of SS men and Ukrainians. An underground resistance movement existed which included inmates from both camps at Treblinka. The biggest resistance effort came in August 1943. A core group of fifty to seventy men planned to take weapons from the camp armory to destroy the camp installations and allow inmates to flee to the surrounding forests. It was anticipated that once an uprising was begun, many other prisoners would join. While the beginning of the plan went smoothly, a suspicious SS guard forced the resistance in to action sooner than planned. Before the guard, SS officer Kurt Kuttner, could alarm other guards some resistance fighters opened fire and set some camp buildings on fire. Masses of prisoners tried to storm the fence and escape. They were fired upon and mostly killed by guards in the watchtowers and other security forces searching the area. Of the seven hundred and fifty prisoners who tried to escape, only seventy survived to see liberation. (15)

Jews from the Polish Districts of Warsaw, Radom, Bialystok and Lublin as well as others from Theresienstadt concentration camp, Macedonia and the Reich comprised he nearly 750,000 people who would die in the gas chambers of Treblinka between July 1942 and April 1943. (16) Primarily Jews, the victims would often die within two hours of their arrival.

As the Allied forces got closer in the Fall of 1943 evacuation of the camp was begun. Orders were given to destroy the camp so that no traces of its existence would remain. A farm was built on the Treblinka site and it was offered to a Ukrainian to run it for income. (17)

Visitors to Treblinka today are likely to have a very powerful and somewhat eerie experience. Visitors enter the camp through the same spot where deported Jews and others exited the trains. Standing there you face an open field with solid rock structures that serve as tombstones. On each stone is engraved the name of a town and the number of people from that town that were killed by the Nazis at Treblinka. In the center of the field lies a mass grave and a memorial with a big crack in it intended to express the wickedness of the place.

This article was written by Caren Keller Niss based on the writings of:

* Prof. Israel Gutman, Yad Vashem - International Center for Holocaust Studies;
* Raul Hilberg's book, "The Destruction of the European Jews"; and Lucy Dawidowicz's book, "The War Against the Jews."
* Ms. Keller Niss, formerly a teacher, is an educational consultant who has developed and written curriculum and outreach materials for numerous public television projects including FRONTLINE, Reading Rainbow and The Puzzle Place.

To learn more about Treblinka or the Holocaust you can read the following books:
o Gutman, Israel, editor, "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust." New York: Macmillan: 1990.
o Gilbert, Martin. "The Macmillan Atlas of the Holocaust." New York: Macmillan, 1982. Outline maps and statistical information.
o Friedman, Philip. "Martyrs and Fighters." Frederick Praeger, 1954. Memoirs and other sources about the Warsaw ghetto.
o Hilberg, Raul; Staron, Stanislaw; and Kermisz, Josef, eds. "The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakaw." New York: Stein & Day, 1979. Diary of the chairman of the Jewish council in the Warsaw ghetto.
o Ringelblum, Emmanuel. "Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto." New York: McGraw Hill, 1959. Diary of a Jewish historian in ghetto.
o Donat, Alexander, ed. "The Death Camp Treblinka." New York: Holocaust Library, 1979. Survivor accounts.
o Hilberg, Raul, "The Destruction of the European Jews." New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1985. A single volume student edition based on the original three volume set.
o Dawidowicz, Lucy, "The War Against the Jews." New York: Bantam Books, 1975. Chronicles German and Jewish sides of the war.
o Steiner, Jean-Francois, "Treblinka." New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967. Paperback edition by The New American Library, Inc., 1979.

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/TreblinkaEng.html

Sobibor (Poland)

2009-02-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

Sobibor was established March 1942. First commandant: Franz Stangl. About 700 Jewish workers engaged temporarily to service the camp. Actually consisted of two camps divided into three parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods, extermination, burial and cremation section. Initially, three gas chambers housed in a brick building using carbon monoxide, three gas chambers added later. Operations Began April 1942. Operations ended following inmate revolt October 14, 1943. Estimated number of deaths, 250,000, the majority being Jews.

Sobibor was the second extermination camp to come into operation in the Aktion Reinhard program. It was located in a low populated area, but was strategically placed in relation to the concentrations of Jewish population in the Chelm and Lublin districts. Local Polish workers and Jewish slave laborers began construction work on the site in March 1942. The planners were able to incorporate the experience already gained at Belzec.

The site measured roughly 1,300 by 2,000 feet, surrounded by a triple line of barbed wire fencing and guarded by watchtowers. It was sub- divided into a reception area and three camps. The reception area included the spur line and platform which could accommodate up to 20 railroad wagons. Here were also located the administration buildings, armory, and living quarters for the SS and the Ukrainians.

The first camp held the Jewish prisoners required to service the SS men and Ukrainians. Enroute to the second camp from the platform where buildings were the deportees left their luggage and clothing. Within the second camp was an enclosed area, entirely shielded by tree branches intertwined with the barbed wire, where deportees undressed in the open before proceeding up a fenced in passageway called the tube1 towards the shaving hut for women and the gas chambers. Also in camp two were storage huts for clothing and valuables.

The third camp was the most remote area and was screened by trees. Inside was the brick building housing three gas chambers, about 12 feet by 12 feet, each of which could hold about 160-180 people. Carbon monoxide generated by a diesel engine mounted outside was piped into the gas chambers. The corpses were removed from a second door and buried in huge, specially excavated pits. Carts, and later trolleys on a small rail track, were used to carry deportees who were too infirm to walk to the burial pits where they were shot so as not to delay the killing process.

In April 1942, Franz Stangl, an SS officer with a background in Operation T4, arrived to take command. Stangl commanded a mere 20-30 SS men, mainly from the T4 program. There was also a guard company of Ukrainians. About 200 to 300 Jews worked in teams at the gas chambers and burial pits. They cleaned out the killing rooms, removed gold teeth from the corpses and pushed trolleys heaped with bodies towards the pits. About 1,000 Jews worked at the platform cleaning up the rail trucks and removing debris, and in teams at the shaving hut, the undressing barracks and in the sorting sheds.

From May 1942 to July 1942, approximately 100,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor. They came from Lublin, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria (mostly via ghettos in Poland or Theresienstadt). They were told on arrival that they had arrived at a transit camp1. The platform and adjacent building was designed to reassure them. They were then separated according to gender and age: children went with the women. They were divested of their luggage and valuables, forced to undress and driven up the tube1, men first, to the gas chambers. Women were shaved at a hut situated along the tube1. The actual killing process took about 20-30 minutes. The processing1 of a convoy of 20 wagons took about 2-3 hours.

Between August and September 1942, the murdering stopped while repairs were made to the main rail track feeding Sobibor, and the number of gas chambers was increased to six, three on either side of a central corridor. This enabled the SS to kill about 1,200 people at the same time. The bodies were burned in the former burial pits. The camp, now under the command of Franz Reichsleiter, continued operations in October 1942 and worked through to spring 1943.

Over this period, about 70-80,000 Galician Jews, 145-150,000 Jews from the General-Government and 25,000 Slovak Jews were murdered. In March 1943 the first transport of French Jews arrived. Between March and July 1943, 19 Dutch transports brought 35,000 Jews from Holland. In the last months of its operation, Sobibor was used to murder the Jews of the Vilna, Minsk, and Lida ghettos. It is estimated that 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor.

In July 1943, Himmler, who had visited the camp in February, ordered that it be converted into a concentration camp. This edict effectively served a death notice on the Jewish workers who then organized a resistance movement and worked out an escape plan. It was led by Leon Feldhendler.

He was subsequently assisted by Alexander Pechersky, a Jewish officer in a transport of Red Army POWs which arrived in the camp in September 1943. The uprising was launched on October 14, 1943. In the fighting, 11 SS men and a number of Ukrainian guards were killed. Three hundred Jews escaped, but dozens were killed in the mine field around the camp and dozens more were hunted down over subsequent days. Of the Jews who broke out, 50 survived to the end of the war. The camp was liquidated in October 1943 and the site disguised as a farm.

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/SobiborEng.html

Majdanek (Poland)

2009-02-02T14:51:00.000-08:00

Majdanek was established October 1941 as SS-run POW Camp and as concentration camp February 16, 1943. The first commandant was Karl Koch. Maximum number of inmates : 25,000. Majdanek consisted of POW camp; extermination camp ; children camp. Initially there were two gas chambers using Zyklon-B poison gas housed in a wooden building; later there were replaced by gas chambers in a brick building. The killing operations began in April 1942 and ended in July 1944. Majdanek provided slave labor for munitions works and Steyr-Daimler- Puch weapons factory (see The List of the Camps). The estimated number of deaths is 360,000, including Jews, Soviet POWs and Poles.

Built just one and a quarter miles from the outskirts of Lublin, Majdanek began life as a prisoner of war camp in October 1941. However, Majdanek was unusual in that it was run by the Waffen-SS and was intended to supply labor for SS industries, especially armament works.

The original camp was constructed by Jewish POWs. At its ultimate comprised 144 barracks sub divided into five sections, including special camps for children and extermination. The area of the camp was about 2.7 sq. kilometers, surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence and watch-towers. It was surrounded by workshops and storage facilities.

The first inmates were Polish political prisoners, Polish Jews and 5,000 Soviet POWs who arrived in October 1941. They had perished by the following year when Jews began to arrive from Slovakia, the Protectorate, Holland, Belgium, France and Greece. The camp, which acquired an infamous reputation for the sadism of the SS guards, was used to terrorize people in occupied White Russia and Ukraine, too. The first, and most notorious camp commandant, was Karl Koch.

An estimated 130,000 Jews were deported to Majdanek during 1942-43 as part of the 'Final Solution'. One of the sub-sections of the camp was turned into a killing center with two gas chambers in wooden barracks. Later a brick building was erected to house the gas chambers. The killing was effected by Zyklon-B gas as at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jews and Soviet POWs were also killed in mass shootings. In April 1942, 2,800 Jews were killed in this way. The largest massacre occurred on November 3, 1943, when 17,000 Jews were machine-gunned to death as part of the 'Erntefest Aktion'. It is estimated that up to 500,000 people passed through Majdanek, of whom 200,000 perished. Approximately 125,000 of these were Jews.

The camp was liquidated in July 1944, but was only partially destroyed by the time the Red Army arrived. Although 1,000 inmates were evacuated on a death march, the Red Army found thousands of inmates still in the camp and ample evidence of the mass murder that had occurred there.

Majdanek Death Statistics

When the Majdanek death camp was liberated on July 23, 1944, the Soviet Union at first announced to the world that 1.7 million people had been murdered there by the Nazis. By the time that the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal proceedings against the Nazi war criminals began in November 1945, the Soviets had revised this number down to 1.5 million.

In December 2005, the Majdanek Museum announced that Lublin scholar Tomasz Kranz has established that the Nazis murdered 78,000 people at the Majdanek concentration camp. This revision is the culmination of years of research in which the number of deaths at Majdanek has steadily dwindled down to only a fraction of the original estimate by the Soviet liberators.

Immediately after the liberation of Majdanek, the Illustrated London News published photographs of the camp, saying that this was "irrefutable proof of the organized murder of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 helpless persons at the Majdanek Camp near Lublin." The same newspaper also stated that "Prisoners too ill to walk into the camp were dragged alive to the furnaces and thrust in alongside the dead."

In 1948, the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland published a report which said that the number of deaths at Majdanek was 360,000. By the time that the movie, made by the Soviet Union shortly after the liberation, was released in 1960, the number of people murdered by the Nazis at Majdanek had dropped to 350,000. A Museum booklet, which I purchased at the camp in 1998, stated that most of the files from Majdanek were stored in the Soviet Union and have never been released.

The number of deaths had to be revised again when it was learned that no more than 300,000 people had ever been sent to the Majdanek camp. According to the 1998 Museum guidebook, the total number of deaths at Majdanek was around 234,000. This approximate number came from an article written in 1992 by Dr. Czesaw Rajca, a former member of the Majdanek Museum staff; it was based on the number of arrivals (300,000) minus the number of prisoners who escaped, were transferred or were released.

Approximately 45,000 prisoners were transferred to other camps after being registered at Majdanek; 20,000 were released and 500 escaped, according to Polish historians. There were six sub-camps surrounding the Majdanek camp, to which some of the prisoners had been transferred after being sent to the main camp, according to the guidebook.

According to the Majdanek Museum web site in March 2007, the total number of prisoners sent to the camp is now estimated to be around 150,000, of which approximately 80,000 died, including around 60,000 Jews.

When Majdanek was evacuated in April 1944, there were 15,000 prisoners marched out of the camp and taken to other camps, according to the 1998 Museum guidebook. There were approximately 1,500 survivors who remained behind because they were too crippled or sick to join the march. Some of these survivors were Soviet POWs who had defected after being captured and had been wounded while fighting on the side of the Germans. Majdanek had a section that was a "sick camp" or Krankenlager where crippled Soviet defectors were held.

Other estimates from books that I have read put the total number of deaths at Majdanek anywhere from 42,200 to 1,380,000. At the Düsseldorf trial of the Majdanek war criminals, the West German government charged the Nazis with the murder of no less than 200,000 people at the camp. Jewish historian Martin Gilbert wrote "Between 300,000 and 350,000 people were murdered here in Majdanek over a period of three years."

Raul Hilberg put the number of Jewish victims at Majdanek at 50,000, but didn't mention how many non-Jews were murdered there. According to the December 2005 article by Tomasz Kranz, there were 59,000 Jews and 19,000 non-Jews murdered at Majdanek. Kranz based his claims on all available sources, including the existing fragments of the camp death books, the death registry, the notifications of prisoner deaths that the Nazis sent to parishes in Lublin, the testimony at the war crimes trial in Dusseldorf in the late 1970s and early 1980s by SS men stationed at Majdanek, and on the accounts of survivors. Before Kranz's article was published, it was approved by the Majdanek Museum staff, which had no objections to this new claim.

Regarding the article by Kranz, the following quote is from the web site of the Auschwitz Museum in its Latest News section:

"78,000 deaths over the course of three years is a crime on an enormous scale, and not only in comparison with other camps like Buchenwald, where about 56,000 people died over eight years," said Kranz. "It must be remembered, however, that the number of victims only gives an idea about the scale of genocide; it does not convey the measureless pain and suffering experienced by the people imprisoned and murdered at Majdanek."

In 1998, the Majdanek Museum did not offer any information about how many Jews were gassed at the camp, nor whether there were Jews brought there for immediate gassing who were not registered in the camp. Although Majdanek has three gas chambers, which are still in their original condition, and one reconstructed gas chamber, it was primarily a camp for political prisoners, POWs, captured partisans, and hostages who were held as a way of controlling the inhabitants of occupied Poland.

According to a book, which I purchased at the Visitor's Center, entitled "Majdanek," by Jozef Marszalek, the prisoners at Majdanek were from 28 countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the USSR, the United States of America, and Yugoslavia.

Marszalek wrote that Polish citizens were 59.8% of the total, followed by citizens of the USSR at 19.8%, Czechoslovakia at 13.3%, the German Reich at 4% and France at 1.7%. All the other countries put together accounted for 1% of the total. There was a total of 54 ethnic groups represented, including 25 different ethnic groups from the Soviet Union and 4 ethnic groups from Yugoslavia. According to this book, the actual names of only 47,890 prisoners are known, including 7,441 women.

According to the 1998 Museum guidebook, 41% of the prisoners were Jewish, which would mean that around 61,500 Jews were brought to Majdanek and approximately 59,00 of them died, if the latest figure claimed by Tomasz Kranz is correct. Most of the Jews sent to Majdanek were from the Lublin area, according to the Museum booklet. The Majdanek camp was also a labor camp; the women worked in the clothing warehouses and a shoe repair shop. The men were engaged in constructing buildings for the SS headquarters of Operation Reinhard in Lublin. The Lublin Jews who were unable to work were sent to the Belzec death camp.

There were around 43,000 Jews in the Lublin district who were brought to Majdanek and shot on November 3rd, 4th, and 5th in 1943, according to information in the Museum guidebook. The victims were brought to Majdanek from other camps, such as Poniatowa and Trawniki and they were not registered in the camp. A memorial plaque near the Majdanek Mausoleum states that 18,000 Jews were shot at Majdanek on November 3, 1943 and buried in mass graves, which were later dug up, so the bodies could be burned.

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/MajdanekEng.html
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/poland/majdanek/DeathStatistics.html

Belzec (Poland)

2009-02-02T11:36:00.000-08:00

Established November 1st, 1941, Belzec extermination center consisted of two camps divided into three parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods, and extermination section. Initially, there were three gas chambers using carbon monoxide housed in a wooden building. They were later replaced by six gas chambers in a brick and concrete building. Belzec extermination center began operations March 17th, 1942 and ended operations December 1942. The estimated number of deaths is 500-600,000, mainly Jews.

Belzec extermination camp, the model for two others in the 'Aktion Reinhard' murder program, started as a labor camp in April 1940. Situated in the Lublin district, it was conveniently between the large Jewish populations of south east Poland and eastern Galicia. Construction began on November 1st 1941, using labor from the preexisting labor camp and local Jewish communities. SS Colonel General Christian Wirth, a former police officer who had played a leading role in implementing the T4 euthanasia program', was appointed the first camp commander. He commanded 20-30 SS men, plus a guard company of 90-120 Ukrainians who were trained at the Trawniki camp.

Belzec extermination camp was quite small, with a circumference of +- 1,220 yards. It was divided into two sections, each one surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There were watch towers all around the main perimeter. The first camp was split into two parts. The smaller area contained the administration buildings and the Ukrainians barracks. The larger part included the spur line which carried rail trucks into the camp, an expanse where the Jewish deportees were sorted into groups of men or women and children, the barracks where they were forced to undress and were shaven, storerooms for their clothes, personal objects, etc..., and huts for the Jewish workers who were employed by the SS to carry out the duties associated with the murder process.

The second camp housed the gas chambers and burial pits. It was reached by a long, narrow passageway with barbed wire fencing on either side, known as 'the tube'. The extermination site was screened off from the rest of the camp by leafy branches intertwined with the barbed wire.

Camouflage was essential to the murder process. A transport numbering 40-60 rail trucks, holding about 2-2,500 Jews, would arrive at Belzec station. It would be divided into two or three smaller convoys which would be pushed into the camp. The Jews would then be rapidly disembarked onto the platform where they were assured that they had arrived at a transit camp. They were told that before being assigned to labor duties elsewhere they would be disinfected and showered. Men were separated from women and children and marched off to large huts where they undressed. Women had their hair shaven off. They were then brutally pushed to 'the tube' and into the gas chambers which were disguised as 'showers'. The brutalized and disoriented Jews, often weak from hours or days spent in cattle trucks, had barely any time to evaluate their fate or react defensively.

In the first phase of its operations, from mid-March 1942 to mid-May 1942, Belzec had three gas chambers in a wooden barrack with a double wall filled with sand. The gas chambers were half-lined with tin and equipped with two airtight doors, one for entry and one through which corpses were removed. The carbon monoxide gas was piped in from a diesel engine mounted outside. Once the gas chambers were filled and the doors shut, the killing process took up to 30 minutes. Teams of Jewish laborers who had been selected from earlier transports then removed the corpses and dragged them to burial pits. Other Jewish workers removed gold teeth from the bodies. Back at the platform, teams of Jews cleaned up the trucks and tidied the platform. In the undressing rooms more Jewish work units were busy sorting clothing, luggage's and personal objects. It took up to three hours to 'process' one section of a transport.

In mid-May the transports stopped while the system was refined. In mid-June, construction began on a brick and concrete building housing six gas chambers, each one 13 by 16 feet. This enabled the SS to kill up to 1,200 Jews at a time, which meant that trains needed to be broken down into only two parts. Jews could also be moved through all the stages of undressing and shaving more quickly. During this period, about 1,000 Jews were kept alive for short periods of time to man the various work teams. A substantial number were employed by the SS as craftsmen. All were liquidated after a while. Those remaining when the camp ceased to function were transported to Sobibor death camp and murdered. There were only a handful of survivors of Belzec.

It is estimated that about 600,000 Jews were murdered at Belzec and probably dozen thousands of Gypsies. In the first phase of its operations, 80,000 Jews were killed, having been brought from the ghettos of Lublin, Lvov and elsewhere in the Lublin area and Eastern Galicia. The second phase, from mid-July 1942 to the end of December 1942, saw the arrival and gassing of 130,000 Jews from the Cracow area, 215,000 from the Lvov region and smaller numbers from Lublin and Radom.

During the early months of 1943, the corpses of the murdered Jews were disinterred and burned in open air pits. The camp was then closed. However, local people excavated the ground for valuables and had to be driven off by guards. To deter other scavengers, the area of the camp was ploughed over and turned into a farm. One of the Ukrainian guards was made the farmer.

Chelmno (Kulmhof - Poland)

2009-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Chelmno was established December 1941. The first commandant was Herbert Lange. The camp consisted of two parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods; burial and cremation site. It operated three gas vans using carbon monoxide. The camp began operations on December 7th, 1941 and ended operations on March 1943. It resumed operations June 23, 1944 and finally ceased operations January 17, 1945. The estimated number of deaths is 150-300,000, mainly Jews.

Chelmno, also known as Kulmhof, was a small town roughly 50 miles from the city of Lodz. It was here that the first mass killings of Jews by gas took place as part of the 'Final Solution'. The murder process was set up by a 'Sonderkommando ', under the command of Herbert Lange. He was transferred to Chelmno directly from duties in the T4 euthanasia program, murdering psychiatric patients in Posen. Lange and his unit had developed much experience in the use of gas vans. These early models were equipped to pipe carbon monoxide from cylinders in the driver's cab into the van in which the 'patients were locked.

Lange's unit comprised 15-20 men of the SIPO and about 80-100 men of the 'Schutzpolizei'. They took over a run-down castle in Chelmno and converted it into their base camp with barracks and a reception area for deportees. Each afternoon, Jews were brought under guard by train from Lodz via Kolo junction (where they transferred to open rail cars running on a narrow-gauge track), or from nearer locations by lorry, to the castle or schloss. They were gathered in the castle courtyard, subdivided into groups of 50 and told to undress. They were forced to hand over all valuables. They were then told they were about to be transferred to a work camp, but first they had be disinfected and showered. They were taken down into the castle cellar to a 'washroom' which actually led via a ramp into a waiting van. Vicious beatings ensured that none hesitated or declined to go inside. After 50-70 persons were jammed into the van's freight compartment, the exhaust pipe was connected to an opening in the compartment and the engine switched on. After about ten minutes those inside were dead. The driver, usually a member of the 'Schutzpolizei', then drove the van 2.5 miles into the nearby Rzuchow Forest, to the second camp the 'Waldlager'. Here the SS had prepared mass graves, dug by Jewish slave labor, and later cremation pyres. A team of 40-50 Jews, wearing leg-irons to prevent their escape, hauled the bodies out of the van and dumped them in the graves. Another team of Jews sorted the clothes and objects of those killed so that they could be made available to Germans in the Reich. No less than 370 wagon loads of clothing were supplied by these means.

The technology was quite simple. The 'Sonderkommando' had three vans at its disposal. The only technical innovation was the specially constructed sealed compartments mounted on a Renault chassis. These compartments were lined with tin and had airtight, double doors. The floor of the compartment had a wooden lattice to facilitate the cleaning out of detritus. Beneath it was an aperture with a nozzle to which the pipe from the exhaust was connected. By the time Lange's unit came to use these vans, they had been tried and tested in the 'euthanasia program'.

By these means, about 145,000 people were murdered at Chelmno in the first phase of its operations. Gassings started on December 7th , 1941. The first deportees were Jews from surrounding communities and about 5,000 Gypsies who had been incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. From January 16th to January 29th, 1942, 10,000 Jews were deported from Lodz to Chelmno and murdered. They were followed by 34,000 between March 22nd and April 2nd, 1942, 11,700 between May 4th and 15th, 1942, 16,000 between September 5th and 12th, 1942. In addition, 15,200 Jewish slave laborers from the Lodz region were gassed at Chelmno.

Amongst the deportees were Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia who had been transported to the Lodz ghetto. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich and the annihilation of the Czech town of Lidice, 88 children from there were sent to Chelmno and murdered.

By March 1943, most of the Jews of the Warthegau had been murdered. Only the 70,000 Jews in the Lodz ghetto remained. Chelmno camp was wound up and the schloss actually demolished. It was briefly reactivated on the same lines in April to July 1944 to assist with the liquidation of the Lodz 'ghetto'. In this period, a further 25.000 Lodz Jews were murdered at Chelmno. Afterwards, a unit of 'Sonderkommando 1005 labored to clean up the traces of mass murder. On January 17th, 1945 the work group, numbering 48 men, was to be shot, but the Jews revolted and in the ensuing melee a handful escaped.

There were few survivors of the most intense phase of murder at Chelmno. In mid-January 1942, Yaakov Grojanowski escaped and made his way to Warsaw where he informed the ghetto leadership of what he had witnessed. As a result, fairly accurate information about the mass killings at Chelmno was transmitted via the Polish underground and reached London in June.

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/ChelmnoEng.html

Auschwitz-Birkenau - "The Death Factory"

2009-02-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

* Location: Oswiecim, Poland
* Established: May 26th1940
* Liberation: January 27th, 1945, by the Soviet Army.
* Estimated number of victims: 2,1 to 2,5 million (This estimated number of death is considered by historians as a strict minimum. The real number of death is unknown but probably much higher, maybe 4 millions)
* Sub-camps : 51 (see The List of the Camps for a complete list of those sub-camps)

The Auschwitz complex was divided in three major camps: Auschwitz I main camp or Stammlager; Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, established on October 8th, 1941 as a 'Vernichtungslager' (extermination camp); Auschwitz III or Monowitz, established on May 31th, 1942 as an 'Arbeitslager' or work camp; also several sub-camps. There were up to seven gas chambers using Zyklon-B poison gas and three crematoria. Auschwitz II included a camp for new arrivals and those to be sent on to labor elsewhere; a Gypsy camp; a family camp; a camp for holding and sorting plundered goods and a women's camp. Auschwitz III provided slave labor for a major industrial plant run by I G Farben for producing synthetic rubber (see Blechhammer). Highest number of inmates, including sub-camps: 155,000. The estimated number of deaths: 2.1 to 2.5 million killed in gas chambers, of whom about 2 million were Jews, and Poles, Gypsies and Soviet POWs. About 330,000 deaths from other causes.

In April 1940, Rudolph Höss, who become the first commandant, identified the Silesian town of Oswiecim as a possible site for a concentration camp. The function of the camp was initially to intimidate Poles and prevent resistance to German rule. It was also perceived as a cornerstone of the policy to re-colonize Upper Silesia, which had once been a German region, with 'pure Aryans'. On April 27th, Himmler ordered construction of the camp.

In May 1940, Poles were evicted from the vicinity of the barracks (most of them were executed), and a work crew comprising concentration camp prisoners was sent from Sachsenhausen. 300 Jews from the large Jewish community of Oswiecim were also pressed into service.

The first transport of prisoners, almost all Polish civilians, arrived in June 1940 and the SS administration and staff was established. On March 1th, 1941, the camp population was 10,900. The camp quickly developed a reputation for torture and mass shootings.

Himmler visited Auschwitz in March 1941 and commanded its enlargement to hold 30,000 prisoners. Himmler also ordered the construction of a second camp for 100,000 inmates on the site of the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau), roughly 4 km from the main camp. This massive camp was intended to be filled with captured Russian POWs who would provide the slave labor to build the SS 'utopia' in Upper Silesia. The chemical giant I G Farben expressed an interest in utilizing this labor force, too. Extensive construction work began in October 1941, under terrible conditions and with massive loss of life. About 10,000 Russian POWs died in the process.

The main camp population grew from 18,000 in December 1942 to 30,000 in March 1943. In July or August 1941, Himmler briefed Höss about the 'Final Solution'. On September 3th, 1941, Soviet POWs at the Auschwitz main camp were used in trials of the poison gas Zyklon-B. This poison gas was produced by the German company "Degesch" (Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Schädlingsbekämpfung). The were gassed in underground cells in Block 11. After this trial, a gas chamber was rigged-up just outside the main camp and in February 1942, two temporary gas chambers opened at Birkenau. The crematories were built by the German company "Topf & son" located at Erfurt.

In March 1942, a women's camp is established at Auschwitz with 6,000 inmates. In August 1942, it was moved to Birkenau. By January 1944, 27,000 women were living in Birkenau, in section B1a, in separated quarters.

In February 1943, a section for Gypsies was established at Birkenau, camp BIIe, and in September 1943 an area was reserved for Czech Jews deported from Theresienstadt, the so-called 'Family Camp', BIIb. The gas chambers and crematoria opened in March 1943.

In Autumn 1943, the camp administration was reorganized following a corruption scandal. By the end of 1943, the prisoner population of Auschwitz main camp, Birkenau, Monowitz and other sub-camps was over 80,000: 18,437 in the main camp, 49,114 in Birkenau, and 13,288 at Monowitz where I G Farben had its synthetic rubber plant. Up to 50,000 prisoners were scattered around 51 sub-camps such as Rajsko, an experimental agricultural station, and Gleiwitz, a coal mine (see The List of the Camps for a complete list of those sub-camps).

The situation in the sub-camps was often even worse than in the main camps. In mid-1944, Auschwitz was designated a huge SS -run security area in Upper Silesia of over 40 sq. The camp population reached in August 1944 105,168. The last roll-call on January 18th, 1945 showed 64,000 inmates.

During its history, the prison population of Auschwitz changed composition significantly. At first, its inmates were almost entirely Polish. From April 1940 to March 1942, on about 27,000 inmates, 30 percent were Poles and 57 percent were Jews. From March 1942 to March 1943 of 162,000 inmates, 60 percent were Jews.

Auschwitz became a significant source of slave labor locally and functioned as an international clearing house. Of 2.5 million people who were deported to Auschwitz, 405,000 were given prisoner status and serial numbers. Of these, approximately 50 percent were Jews and 50 percent were Poles and other nationalities. Of those who received numbers, 65,000 survived. It is estimated that about 200,000 people passed through the Auschwitz camps and survived.

Those deported to Auschwitz arrived at the nearby train station and were marched or trucked to the main camp where they were registered, tattooed, undressed, deloused, had their body hair shaven off, showered while their clothes were disinfected with Zyklon-B gas, and entered the camp under the infamous gateway inscribed 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ("Labor make you free")

A parallel system operated later at Birkenau in 1942-43, except that for the majority the 'showers' proved to be gas chambers. Only about 10 percent of Jewish transports were registered, disinfected, shaven and showered in the 'central sauna' before being assigned barracks. In May 1944, a spur line was built right into the camp to accelerate and simplify the handling of the tens of thousands of Hungarian and other Jews deported in the spring and summer of 1944.

The history of Auschwitz-Birkenau as an extermination center is complex. From late 1941 to October 1942, the mortuary at Auschwitz main camp, which was already equipped with a crematorium, was adapted as a gas chamber. It measured approximately 835 square feet. In the spring of 1942, two provisional gas chambers at Birkenau were constructed out of peasant huts, known as the 'bunkers'.

The first 'bunker', with two sealed rooms, operated from January 1942 to the end of that year. The second, with four air tight rooms, became redundant in the spring of 1943, but remained standing and was used again in the autumn of 1944 when extra 'capacity' was needed for the murder of Hungarian Jews and the liquidation of the ghettos. The second measured about 1.134 square feet. The victims murdered in the 'bunkers' were first obliged to undress in temporary wooden barracks erected nearby. Their bodies were taken out of the gas chambers and pushed to pits where they were burned in the open. Between January 1942 and March 1943, 175,000 Jews were gassed to death here, of whom 105,000 were killed from January to March 1943.

Up to this point, Auschwitz accounted for only 11 percent of the victims of the 'Final Solution'. However, in August 1942, planning began for the construction of four large-scale gassing facilities. It appears from the plans that the first two gas chambers were adapted from mortuaries which, with the huge crematoria attached to them, were initially intended to cope with mortalities amongst the slave labor force in the camp, now approaching 100,000 and subject to a horrifying death rate. But from the autumn of 1942, it seems clear that the SS planners and civilian contractors were intending to build a mass-murder plant.

The twin pairs of gas chambers were numbered II and III, and IV and V. The first opened on March 31, 1943, the last on April 4, 1943. The total area of the gas chambers was 2,255 square meters; the capacity of these crematoria was 4,420 people. Those selected to die were undressed in the undressing room and then pushed into the gas chambers. It took about 20 minutes for all the people to death. In II and III, the killings took place in underground rooms, and the corpses were carried to the five ovens by an electrically operated lift. Before cremation gold teeth and any other valuables, such as rings, were removed from the corpses. In IV and V the gas chambers and ovens were on the same level, but the ovens were so poorly built and the usage was so great that they repeatedly malfunctioned and had to be abandoned. The corpses were finally burned outside, in the open, as in 1943. Jewish sonderkommandos worked the crematoria under SS supervision.

Initially the new facilities were "underutilized". From April 1943 to March 1944, "only" 160,000 Jews were killed at Birkenau, but from March 1944 to November 1944, when all the other death camps had been abandoned, Birkenau surpassed all previous records for mass killing. The Hungarian deportations and the liquidation of the remaining Polish ghettos, such as Lodz, resulted in the gassing of 585,000 Jews. This period made Auschwitz-Birkenau into the most notorious killing site of all time.

In October 1944, the 'Sonderkommando' crew crematoria IV revolted and destroyed the crematories. In November Himmler ordered gassings to stop, and a 'cleanup' operation was inaugurated to conceal traces of the mass murder. In January 1945, the Germans evacuated 58,000 prisoners who could walk. They left behind in the main camp, Birkenau and in Monowitz about 7,000 sick or incapacitated who they did not expect would live for long.

When Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found these pitiful survivors as well as 836,525 items of women clothing, 348,820 items of men clothing, 43,525 pairs of shoes and vast numbers of toothbrushes, glasses and other personal effects. They found also 460 artificial limbs and seven tons of human hair shaved from Jews before they were murdered. The human hairs were used by the company "Alex Zink" (located in Bavaria) for confection of cloth. This company was paying the human hairs 50 pfennig/kilo.

Remarkably, there were instances of individual resistance and collective efforts at fighting back inside Auschwitz. Poles, Communists and other national groups established networks in the main camp. A few Jews escaped from Birkenau, and there were recorded assaults on Nazi guards even at the entrance to the gas chambers. The 'Sonderkommando' revolt in October 1944 was the extraordinary example of physical resistance.

http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/AuschwitzEng.html

Types of camps

2009-02-02T09:53:00.001-08:00

Types of camps

According to Moshe Lifshitz[8], the Nazi camps divided as follows:

* Labour camps: concentration camps where interned inmates had to do hard physical labour under inhuman conditions and cruel treatment. Some of these camps were sub-camps of bigger camps, or "operational camps", established for a temporary need.
* Transit and collection camps: camps where inmates were collected and routed to main camps, or temporarily held.
* POW camps: concentration camps where prisoners of war were held after capture. These POW's endured torture and liquidation in a big scale.
* Camps for rehabilitation and re-education of Poles: Camps where the intelligentsia of the ethnic Poles were held, and re-educated in light of German-Nazi values as slaves.
* Hostage camps: camps where hostages were held and killed as reprisals.

* Extermination camps: These camps differed from the rest, since not all of them were also concentration-camps. Although none of the categories is independent, and each camp could be classified as a mixture of several of the above, and all camps had some of the elements of an extermination camp, still systematic extermination of new-arrivals occurred in very specific camps. Of these, three were extermination camps, where all new-arrivals were simply killed -- The "Reinhardt Aktion" camps. Three others were concentration and extermination camps altogether. Others were at times classified as "minor extermination camps."

Camps during the war

2009-02-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

After 1939 with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps increasingly became places where the enemies of the Nazis were enslaved, starved, tortured and killed. During the War concentration camps for “undesirables” spread throughout Europe. New camps were created near centers of dense “undesirable” populations, often focusing on areas with large communities of Jews, Polish intelligentsia, Communists or Roma. Since millions of Jews lived in pre-war Poland, most camps were located in the area of General Government in occupied Poland for logistical reasons. It also allowed the Nazis to transport the German Jews outside of the German main territory.

[edit] Internees

The two largest groups of prisoners in the camps, both numbering in the millions, were Jews and the Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). Large numbers of Roma (or Gypsies), Poles, left of center political prisoners, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, Eastern European intellectuals, and others—including common criminals . In addition, a small number of Western Allied POWs were sent to concentration camps for various reasons.[1] Western Allied POWs who were Jews, or whom the Nazis believed to be Jewish, were usually sent to ordinary POW camps; however, a small number were sent to concentration camps under antisemitic policies.[2]

Sometimes the concentration camps were used to hold important prisoners, such as the generals involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler; U-boat Captain-turned-Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller; and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was interned at Flossenbürg on February 7, 1945, until he was hung on April 9, shortly before the war’s end.

In most camps, prisoners were forced to wear identifying overalls with colored badges according to their categorization: red triangles for Communists and other political prisoners, green triangles for common criminals, pink for homosexual men, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses, black for Gypsies and asocials, and yellow for Jews.[3]

Treatment

Millions of prisoners died in the concentration camps through mistreatment, disease, starvation, overwork or were executed as unfit for labour. More than three million Jews died in them, usually in gas chambers, although many were killed in mass shootings and by other means.

Prisoners were often transported in inhumane conditions by rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their destination. The prisoners were confined to the rail cars, often for days or weeks, without food or water. Many died of dehydration in the intense heat of summer or froze to death in winter. Concentration camps also existed in Germany itself, and while they were not specifically designed for systematic extermination, many of their prisoners perished because of harsh conditions or execution.
General (later US President) Dwight D. Eisenhower inspecting prisoners’ corpses at the liberated Ohrdruf forced labor camp, 1945

In the early spring of 1941 the SS, along with doctors and officials of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, began killing selected concentration camp prisoners in “Operation 14f13.” The Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps categorized all files dealing with the death of prisoners as 14f, and those of prisoners sent to the T-4 gas chambers as 14f13. Under the language regulations of the SS, selected prisoners were designated for “special treatment (German: Sonderbehandlung) 14f13”. Prisoners were officially selected based on their medical condition; namely, those permanently unfit for labor due to illness. Unofficially, racial and eugenic criteria were used: Jews, the handicapped, and those with criminal or antisocial records were selected.[4] For Jewish prisoners there was not even the pretense of a medical examination: the arrest record was listed as a physician’s “diagnosis”.[5] In early 1943, as the need for labor increased and the gas chambers at Auschwitz became operational, Heinrich Himmler ordered the end of Operation 14f13.[6]

After 1942, many small subcamps were set up near factories to provide forced labour. IG Farben established a synthetic rubber plant in 1942, at Monowitz concentration camp (Auschwitz III); other camps were set up next to airplane factories, coal mines and rocket propellant plants. Conditions were brutal and prisoners were often sent to the gas chambers or killed, if they did not work fast enough.

After much consideration, the final fate of the Jewish prisoners (the “Final Solution”) was announced in 1942 at the Wannsee Conference to high ranking officials.[citation needed]

Near the end of the war, the camps became sites for horrific medical experiments. Eugenics experiments, freezing prisoners to determine how exposure affected pilots, and experimental and lethal medicines were all tried at various camps. Female prisoners were routinely raped and degraded in the camps.[7]

The camps were liberated by the Allies between 1943 and 1945, often too late to save the prisoners remaining. For example, when the UK entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, 60,000 prisoners were found alive, but 10,000 died within a week of liberation due to typhus and malnutrition.

The British intelligence service had information about the concentration camps, and in 1942 Jan Karski delivered a thorough eyewitness account to the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps

Ravensbrück concentration camp

2009-02-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

Ravensbrück (IPA: [ʁaːfənsˈbʁʏk]) was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel).

Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was a camp primarily for women. The camp opened in May 1939. In the spring of 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp.

Between 1939 and 1945, over 130,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system; only 40,000 survived. Although the inmates came from every country in German-occupied Europe, the largest single national group incarcerated in the camp consisted of Polish women.
Prisoners
Monument "Two Women" by Will Lammert and Fritz Cremer at the crematorium in front of the Wall of Nations

The first prisoners at Ravensbrück were approximately 900 women. The SS had transferred these prisoners from the Lichtenburg women's concentration camp in Saxony in May 1939. By the end of 1942, the female inmate population of Ravensbrück had grown to about 10,000. In January 1945, the camp had more than 45,000 prisoners, mostly women.

There were children in the camp as well. At first, they arrived with mothers who were Gypsies or Jews incarcerated in the camp or were born to imprisoned women. There were few of them at the time. There were a few Czech children from Lidice in July 1942. Later the children in the camp represented almost all nations of Europe occupied by Germany. Between April and October 1944 their number increased considerably, consisting of two groups. One group comprised Roma children with their mothers or sisters brought into the camp after the Roma camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau was closed. The other group included mostly children who were brought with Polish mothers sent to Ravensbrück after the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and Jewish children after the Budapest Ghetto was closed. With a few exceptions all these children died of starvation. Ravensbrück had 70 sub-camps used for slave labour that were spread across an area from the Baltic Sea to Bavaria.

Among the thousands executed by the Germans at Ravensbrück were four female members of the British WWII organization Special Operations Executive (Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, Lilian Rolfe, and Violette Szabo) as well as the Roman Catholic nun Élise Rivet, Elisabeth de Rothschild, Russian Orthodox nun St. Maria Skobtsova, the 25-year-old French Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay, and Olga Benário, wife of the Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. The largest group of executed women at the Ravensbrück camp, 200 in total, was the Polish group of young patriots, members of the Polish Home Army.

Among the survivors of Ravensbrück camp was Christian author and speaker Corrie ten Boom. Corrie ten Boom and her family were arrested by the Nazis for stealing ration cards, although they were also harbouring Jews in their home in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The ordeal of Corrie and her sister, Betsie ten Boom, in the camp is documented in her book The Hiding Place which was also made into a movie. Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, a Polish art historian and author of Michelangelo in Ravensbruck also was imprisoned in the camp from 1943-1945.

Some prominent female prisoners:

* Henryka Bartnicka-Tajchert
* Esther Béjarano
* Maja Berezowska
* Halina Birenbaum
* Corrie and Betsie ten Boom
* Margarete Buber-Neumann
* ??? Burger, Mother of Adolf Burger
* Juliette Gréco
* Milena Jesenská
* Countess Karolina Lanckorońska
* Vera Salvequart
* Jadwiga Sawik, Henryk Sławik's wife
* Ceija Stojka
* Germaine Tillion

Prominent male prisoners:

* Eugen Bolz
* Leopold Engleitner
* Julius Leber
* Hjalmar Schacht
* Otto Schniewind
* Karl Seitz
* Fritz Wolffheim
* Jurek Becker as child

[edit] Guards

Besides the male Nazi administrators, the camp staff included over 150 female SS guards assigned to oversee the prisoners at one time during the camps operational period.

Ravensbrück served as a training camp for over 4,000 female overseers. The technical term for a female guard in a Nazi camp was an Aufseherin. The women either stayed in the camp or eventually served in other camps. The female chief overseers (Lagerfuehrerinnen and Oberaufseherinnen) in Ravensbrück were:

* May 1939-1941: Oberaufseherin Emma Zimmer and assistant Johanna Langefeld
* 1941-March 1942: Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld
* March-October 1942: Oberaufseherin Maria Mandel
* October 1942-August 1943 Johanna Langefeld who returned from Auschwitz
* August 1943-September 1944 Chef Oberaufseherin Anna Klein-Plaubel, with deputy wardress Dorothea Binz
* September 1944-April 1945 Chef Oberaufseherin Luise Brunner, Lagerfuehrerin Lotte Toberentz (January 1945-April), with deputy wardress (Stellvertrende Oberaufseherin) Dorothea Binz

Quite a few of these women went on to serve as chief wardresses in other camps. Several dozen block overseers (Blockfuehrerin), accompanied by dogs, SS men and whips oversaw the prisoners in their living quarters in Ravensbrück, at roll call, and during food distribution. These women were usually described as inhumane and sadistic. At any single time, a report overseer (Rapportfuehrerin) handled the roll calls and general discipline of the internees. Rosel Laurenzen originally served as head of the labor pool at the camp (Arbeitdienstfuehrerin) along with her assistant Gertrud Schoeber. In 1944 Greta Boesel took over this command. Other high ranking SS women included Christel Jankowsky, Elisabeth Kammer, and head wardress at the Uckermark death complex of Ravensbrück was Ruth Closius (January 1945-March 1945). Regular Aufseherinnen were not usually granted access to within the internee's compound unless they supervised inside work details. Most of the 'SS' women met their prisoner work gangs at the gate each morning and returned them later in the day. The treatment by the SS women in Ravensbrück was normally brutal. Elfriede Muller, an SS Aufseherin in the camp was so harsh that the prisoners nicknamed her "The Beast of Ravensbrück."

In 1973 the United States government extradited Hermine Braunsteiner, for trial in Germany for war crimes. {See below}

In 2006 the United States government expelled Elfriede Rinkel, an 84 year-old woman who had resided in San Francisco since 1959. It was discovered that she had been a guard at Ravensbrück from 1944 to 1945 [1].

[edit] Life in the camp
Female prisoners in 1939
Road roller
Camp (interior) with a former telephone exchange and water plant
Camp (external view), with guard house
Site of the former women's camp
Barracks on the grounds of the former women's camp

When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrück they were required to wear a color-coded triangle (a Winkel) that identified them by category, with a letter sewn within the triangle indicating the prisoner's nationality. Polish women wore a red triangle, red denoting a political prisoner, with a letter "P". By 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp. Jewish women wore yellow triangles, but sometimes, unlike the other prisoners, they wore a second triangle for the other categories or for "race defilement". Some transports had their hair shaved, such as from Czechoslovakia and Poland, but "Aryan" transports did not. For instance, in 1943 a group of Norwegian women came to the camp. (Norwegians/Scandinavians were ranked by the Nazis as the purest of all Aryans.) None had their hair shaved. Between 1942 and 1943 almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports following Nazi policy to make Germany "Judenrein" (cleansed of Jews). Common criminals wore green triangles, Soviet prisoners of war, German and Austrian Communists had red triangles and members of the Jehovah's Witnesses were labeled with lavender triangles. Classified separately with black triangles were prostitutes, Gypsies, lesbians, or women who refused to marry.

Based on the Nazis incomplete transport list "Zugangsliste" consisting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that inmates of Ravensbrück ethnic structure was the following: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Russians 15.0%, French 7.3%, Gypsies 5.4%, other 12.4%. Gestapo categorized the inmates as follows: political 83.54%, anti-social 12.35%, criminal 2.02%, Jehovah Witnesses 1.11%, racial defilement 0.78%, other 0.20%. The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by courageous members of the Polish underground girl guides unit "Mury" (The Walls). The rest of the camp documents were burned by escaping SS overseers in pits or in the crematorium.

One of the forms of the resistance were underground education programs organized by prisoners for their fellow inmates. All national groups had some sort of program. The most extensive were among Polish women where various high school level classes were taught by experienced teachers.

Inmates at Ravensbrück suffered greatly. Living in subhuman conditions, thousands were shot, strangled, gassed, buried alive, or worked to death. Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them. At first, "selected" prisoners were shot. Beginning in 1942, they were transferred to "euthanasia" killing centers or to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The SS staff also murdered some prisoners in the camp infirmary by lethal injection.

Starting in the summer of 1942, medical experiments were conducted without consent on 86 women; 74 of them were Polish inmates. There were two types of the experiments done on the Polish political prisoners. The first type tested the efficacy of sulfonamide drugs. These experiments involved deliberate cutting into and infecting leg bones and muscles with virulent bacteria, cutting nerves, introducing substances like pieces of wood or glass into tissues, and fracturing bones. The second set of experiments studied bone, muscle and nerve regeneration, and the possibility of transplanting bones from one person to another. Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Króliki, Kaninchen, Lapins or Rabbits by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed and the rest survived, with permanent physical damage, due to the help of other inmates in the camp. Four of them -- Jadwiga Dzido, Maria Broel-Plater, Władysława Karolewska and Maria Kuśmierczuk -- testified against Nazi doctors at the Doctors' Trial in 1946.

Between 120 and 140 Gypsy women were sterilized in the camp in January 1945. All of them, unaware of the consequences, signed the consent form after being told by the camp overseers that the German authorities would release them if they agreed to sterilization.

All inmates were required to do heavy labor, ranging from heavy outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for the giant German company, Siemens AG. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components.

The bodies of those killed in the camp were cremated in the nearby Fürstenberg crematorium until 1943. In that year, SS authorities constructed a crematorium at a site near the camp prison. In the autumn of 1944, the SS constructed a gas chamber near the crematorium. The Germans gassed several thousand prisoners at Ravensbrück before the camp's liberation in April 1945.

[edit] Death march and liberation
Female prisoners in Ravensbrück, the white chalk sign shows they have been selected for transport with Swedish Red Cross

With the Soviet Army's rapid approach in the Spring of 1945, the SS decided to exterminate as many prisoners as they could in order to avoid leaving anyone to testify as to what had happened in the camp. With the Russians only hours away, at the end of March, the SS ordered the women still physically well enough to walk to leave the camp, forcing over 20,000 prisoners on a death march toward northern Mecklenburg. Shortly before the evacuation, the Germans had handed over 7000 female prisoners, mostly French, to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross. Less than 3,500 malnourished and sickly women and 300 men remained in the camp when it was liberated by the Red Army on April 30, 1945. The survivors of the Death March were liberated in the following hours by a Russian scout unit.

By the time liberation came, tens of thousands (estimates are about 30,000 to 40,000) of women and children had perished there.

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

2009-02-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Mauthausen Concentration Camp (known from the summer of 1940 as Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp) grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that were built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of the city of Linz.

Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time to become one of the largest labour camp complexes in German-controlled Europe.[1][2] Apart from the four main sub-camps at Mauthausen and nearby Gusen, more than 50 sub-camps, located throughout Austria and southern Germany, used the inmates as slave labour. Several subordinate camps of the KZ Mauthausen complex included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and Me 262 fighter-plane assembly plants.[3]

In January 1945, the camps, directed from the central office in Mauthausen, contained roughly 85,000 inmates.[4] The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex. The camps formed one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and were the last ones to be liberated by the Western Allies or the Soviet Union. The two main camps, Mauthausen and Gusen I, were also the only two camps in the whole of Europe to be labelled as "Grade III" camps, which meant that they were intended to be the toughest camps for the "Incorrigible Political Enemies of the Reich".[1] Unlike many other concentration camps, intended for all categories of prisoners, Mauthausen was mostly used for extermination through labour of the intelligentsia, who were educated people and members of the higher social classes in countries subjugated by Germany during World War II.[5]

History

[edit] KZ Mauthausen

On 7 August 1938 prisoners from Dachau concentration camp were sent to the town of Mauthausen near Linz, Austria, to begin the construction of a new camp. The location was chosen due to its proximity to the transport hub of Linz, but also because the area was sparsely populated.[4] Although the camp was, from the beginning of its existence, controlled by the German state, it was founded by a private company as an economic enterprise. The owner of the Wiener-Graben quarry (the Marbacher-Bruch, and Bettelberg quarries), which was located in and around Mauthausen, was a DEST Company: an acronym for Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH. The company, led by Oswald Pohl, who was also a high-ranking official of the SS, rented the quarries from the City of Vienna and started the construction of the Mauthausen camp. While DEST rented the quarries at Mauthausen from the city of Vienna in 1938, the company bought its first lots of land at nearby Gusen already on 25 May 1938.[3] A year later, the company ordered the construction of the first camp at Gusen. The granite mined in the quarries had previously been used to pave the streets of Vienna, but the Nazi authorities envisioned a complete reconstruction of major German towns in accordance with plans of Albert Speer and other architects of Nazi architecture,[6] for which large quantities of granite were needed.

The money needed for the construction of the Mauthausen camp was gathered from a variety of sources, including commercial loans from Dresdner Bank and Prague-based Escompte Bank, the so-called Reinhardt's fund (meaning money stolen from the inmates of the concentration camps themselves); and from the German Red Cross. [4][7]

Mauthausen initially served as a strictly-run prison camp for common criminals, prostitutes[8] and other categories of "Incorrigible Law Offenders".[9] On 8 May 1939 it was converted to a labour camp which was mainly used for the incarceration of political prisoners.[10]

[edit] KL Gusen
Aerial view of the Gusen I & II camps

DEST started to purchase lots of land at Gusen in May 1938 in order to establish a twin concentration camp at Mauthausen and Gusen from the beginning, although construction of Concentration Camp Gusen was not started until autumn 1939. In the years 1938 and 1939, inmates of the nearby Mauthausen makeshift camp marched daily to the stone-quarries at Gusen which were more productive and more important for DEST than the Wienergraben Quarry.[3] In late 1939, the not yet finished Mauthausen camp, with its Wiener-Graben granite quarry, was already overcrowded with prisoners since Germany started the war against Poland in September 1939. Their numbers rose from 1,080 in late 1938 to over 3,000 a year later. About that time the construction of a new camp "for the Poles" began in Gusen, about 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) away. The new camp (later named Gusen I) became operational in May of 1940 while the Kastenhof- and Gusen-Quarries in the vicinity of that new concentration camp were operated with concentration camp inmates from Mauthausen before. The first inmates were put in the first two huts (No. 7 and 8) on 17 April 1940, while the first transport of prisoners - mostly from the camps in Dachau and Sachsenhausen - arrived on 25 May of the same year.[4] The new camp at Gusen saved the inmates of Mauthausen the daily march between both locations.

Like nearby Mauthausen, the Gusen camp also used its inmates as slave labour in the granite quarries, but they also rented them out to various local businesses. In October 1941, several huts were separated from the Gusen sub-camp by barbed wire and turned into a separate Prisoner of War Labour Camp (German: Kriegsgefangenenarbeitslager). This camp had a large number of prisoners of war incarcerated, mostly Soviet officers. By 1942, the production capacity of both Mauthausen and Gusen had reached its peak. Gusen was expanded to include the central depot of the SS, where various goods, which had been seized from occupied territories, were sorted and then dispatched to Germany.[11] Local quarries and businesses were in constant need of a new source of labour as more and more Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht.

In March 1944, the former SS depot was converted to a new sub-camp, and was named Gusen II. Until the end of the war the depot served as an improvised concentration camp. The camp contained about 12,000 to 17,000 inmates, who were deprived of even the most basic facilities.[1] In December 1944, another part of Gusen was opened in nearby Lungitz. Here, parts of a factory infrastructure were converted into the third sub-camp of Gusen — Gusen III.[1] The rise in the number of sub-camps could not catch up with the rising number of inmates, which led to overcrowding of the huts in all of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen. From late 1940 to 1944, the number of inmates per bed rose from 2 to 4.[1]

[edit] Mauthausen-Gusen camp system
Map showing location of some of the most notable sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen

See also: List of subcamps of Mauthausen

As the production in all of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen complex was constantly rising, so was the number of detainees and the number of the sub-camps themselves. Although initially the camps of Gusen and Mauthausen mostly served the local quarries, from 1942, and onwards, they began to be included in the German war machine. To accommodate the ever-increasing number of slave workers, additional sub-camps (German: Außenlager) of Mauthausen began construction in all parts of Austria. At the end of the war the list included 101 camps (including 49 major sub-camps[12]) which covered most of modern Austria, from Mittersill south of Salzburg to Schwechat east of Vienna and from Passau on the pre-war Austro-German border to the Loibl Pass on the border with Yugoslavia. The sub-camps were divided into several categories, depending on their main function: Produktionslager for factory workers, Baulager for construction, Aufräumlager for cleaning the rubble in Allied-bombed towns, and Kleinlager (small camps) where the inmates were working specifically for the SS.

[edit] Mauthausen-Gusen as a business enterprise

The production output of Mauthausen-Gusen exceeded that of each of the five other large slave labour centres, including: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Marburg and Natzweiler-Struthof, in terms of both production quota and profits.[13] The list of companies using slave labour from the Mauthausen-Gusen camp system was long, and included both national corporations and small, local firms and communities. Some parts of the quarries were converted into a Mauser machine pistol assembly plant. In 1943, an underground factory for the Steyr-Daimler-Puch company was built in Gusen. Altogether, 45 larger companies took part in making KZ Mauthausen-Gusen one of the most profitable concentration camps of Nazi Germany, with more than 11,000,000 Reichsmark[14][15][16][17] of the profits in 1944 alone. Among them were:[13]
Sub-camp inmate counts
Late 1944 – Early 1945[4][18]
Gusen (I, II and III combined) 26,311
Ebensee 18,437
Gunskirchen 15,000
Melk 10,314
Linz 6,690
Amstetten 2,966
Wiener-Neudorf 2,954
Schwechat 2,568
Steyr-Münichholz 1,971
Schlier-Redl-Zipf 1,488

* DEST cartel
* Accumulatoren-Fabrik AFA (the main producer of batteries for German U-Boats)
* Bayer (main German producer of medicines and medications)
* Deutsche Bergwerks- und Hüttenbau
* Linz-based Eisenwerke Oberdonau (a major World War II steel supplier for the German Panzer tanks[19])
* Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark (aeroplane engine manufacturer)
* Otto Eberhard Patronenfabrik (munitions works)
* Heinkel and Messerschmitt (aeroplane factories, also a V-2 rocket fuselage factory)
* Hofherr und Schrenz
* Österreichische Sauerwerks (arms producer)
* PUCH (vehicles)
* Rax-Werke (machinery and V-2 rockets)
* Steyr (small arms factory)
* Steyr-Daimler-Puch cartel (arms and vehicles)
* Universale Hoch und Tiefbau (construction of tunnels in the Loibl Pass)

Prisoners were also 'rented out' as slave labour, and were exploited in various ways, such as working for local farms, for road construction, reinforcing and repairing the banks of the Danube, and the construction of large residential areas in Sankt Georgen[3] as well as being forced to excavate archaeological sites in Spielberg.

When the Allied strategic bombing campaign started to target the German war industry, German planners decided to move production to underground facilities that were impenetrable to enemy aerial bombardment. In Gusen I, the prisoners were ordered to build several large tunnels beneath the hills surrounding the camp (code-named Kellerbau). By the end of World War II the prisoners had dug 29,400 square metres (316,000 sq ft) to house a small arms factory. In January 1944, similar tunnels were also built beneath the village of Sankt Georgen by the inmates of Gusen II sub-camp (code-named Bergkristall). They dug roughly 50,000 square metres (540,000 sq ft) so the Messerschmitt company could build an assembly plant to produce the Messerschmitt Me 262 and V-2 rockets. In addition to planes, some 7,000 square metres (75,000 sq ft) of Gusen II tunnels served as factories for various war materials.[20][3] In late 1944, roughly 11,000 of the Gusen I and II inmates were working in underground facilities.[21] An additional 6,500 worked on expanding the underground network of tunnels and halls. In 1945, the Me 262 works was already finished and the Germans were able to assemble 1,250 planes a month.[22][3] This was the second largest plane factory in Germany after the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, which was also underground.[21]

[edit] Extermination through labour
Showers in Mauthausen concentration camp. The Prisoners where shorn and showered here after their arrival.

The political function of the camp continued in parallel with its economic role. Until at least 1942, it was used for the imprisonment and murder of Germany's political and ideological enemies, both real and imagined.[2][23] The camp served the needs of the German war machine and also carried out exterminations through labour. When the inmates were totally exhausted after having worked in the quarries for 12 hours a day, or if they were too ill or too weak to work, they were then transferred to the Revier ("Krankenrevier", sick barrack) or other places for extermination. Initially, the camp did not have a gas chamber of its own and the so-called Muselmänner, or prisoners who were too sick to work, after being maltreated, under-nourished or totally exhausted, were then transferred to other concentration camps for extermination (mostly to the infamous Hartheim Castle,[24] which was 40.7 kilometres/25.3 miles away), or killed by lethal injection and cremated in the local crematorium. The growing number of prisoners made the system too expensive and from 1940, Mauthausen was one of the few camps in the West to use a gas chamber on a regular basis. In the beginning, an improvised mobile gas chamber – a van with the exhaust pipe connected to the inside – shuttled between Mauthausen and Gusen. By December of 1941, a permanent gas chamber that could kill about 120 prisoners at a time was completed.[25][26]

[edit] Inmates
New prisoners awaiting disinfection in the courtyard of Mauthausen

See also: List of notable Mauthausen-Gusen inmates

Until early 1940, the largest group of inmates consisted of German, Austrian and Czechoslovak socialists, communists, anarchists, homosexuals, and people of Roma origin. Other groups of people to be persecuted solely on religious grounds were the Sectarians, as they were dubbed by the Nazi regime, meaning Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses. The reason for their imprisonment was their total rejection of giving the loyalty oath to Hitler and their absolute refusal to participate in any kind of military service.[10]

In early 1940, a large number of Poles were transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen complex. The first groups were mostly composed of artists, scientists, Boy Scouts, teachers, and university professors,[4][27] who were arrested during the course of the AB Action.
Heinrich Himmler of SS visiting Mauthausen in 1941. Himmler is talking to Franz Ziereis, camp commandant. The tall man on the left is Ernst Kaltenbrunner and the man in the black uniform on the right is August Eigruber. These four men were some of the people most culpable for setting up the concentration camp system and The Holocaust

Later in the war, all new arrivals were from every category of the "unwanted", but educated people, and so-called political prisoners constituted the largest part of all inmates until the end of the war. During World War II, large groups of Spanish Republicans were also transferred to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. Most of them were former Republican soldiers or activists who had fled to France after Franco's victory and then were captured by German forces after the French defeat in 1940 or handed over to the Germans by the Vichy authorities. The largest of these groups arrived at Gusen in January of 1941.[28] In early 1941, almost all the Poles and Spaniards, except for a small group of specialists working in the quarry's stone mill, were transferred from Mauthausen to Gusen.[29] Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in 1941 the camps started to receive a large number of Soviet POWs. Most of them were kept in huts separated from the rest of the camp. The Soviet prisoners of war were a major part of the first groups to be gassed in the newly-built gas chamber in early 1942. In 1944, a large group of Hungarian and Dutch Jews was also transferred to the camp.[30] Much like all the other large groups of prisoners that were transferred to Mauthausen-Gusen, most of them either died as a result of the hard labour and poor conditions, or were thrown down the sides of the Mauthausen quarry (nick-named the Parachutists' Wall by the SS guards and Kapos). This name was a sick joke because it made fun of the prisoners by calling them "Parachutists without a parachute".

Throughout the years of World War II, the camps of Mauthausen-Gusen received new prisoners in smaller transports on a daily basis; mostly from other concentration camps in German-occupied Europe. Most of the prisoners in the sub-camps of Mauthausen were kept in various detention sites prior to transportation to their final destination. The most notable of such centres for Mauthausen-Gusen were the infamous camps at Dachau and Auschwitz. The first transports from Auschwitz arrived in February 1942. The second transport in June of that year was much larger and numbered some 1,200 prisoners. Similar groups were sent from Auschwitz to Gusen and Mauthausen in April and November 1943, and then in January and February 1944. Finally, after Adolf Eichmann visited Mauthausen in May of that year, KZ Mauthausen-Gusen received the first group of roughly 8,000 Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz; the first group to be evacuated from that camp before the Soviet advance. Initially, the groups evacuated from Auschwitz consisted of qualified workers for the ever-growing industry of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, but as the evacuation proceeded other categories of people were also transported to Mauthausen, Gusen, Vienna or Melk.
Camp file of a Polish political prisoner No. 382, Jerzy Kaźmirkiewicz

Over time, Auschwitz had to almost stop accepting new prisoners and most were directed to Mauthausen instead. The last group— roughly 10,000 prisoners—was evacuated in the last wave in January 1945, only a few weeks before the Soviet liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.[31] Among them was a large group of civilians arrested by the Germans after the failure of the Warsaw Uprising,[32] but by the liberation not more than 500 of them were still alive.[33] Altogether, during the final months of the war, 23,364 prisoners from other concentration camps arrived at the camp complex.[33] Many more perished during death marches, where they dropped dead because of pure exhaustion, or in railway wagons, where the prisoners were confined at sub-zero temperatures—without adequate food or water—for several days prior to their arrival. Prisoner transports were considered to be less important than other important services.

Many of those who survived the journey died before they could be registered, whilst others were given the camp numbers of prisoners who had already been killed.[33] Most were then accommodated in the camps or in the newly-established tent camp (German: Zeltlager) just outside the Mauthausen sub-camp, where roughly 2,000 people were forced into tents intended for not more than 800 inmates, and then starved to death.[34]

As in all other German concentration camps, not all the prisoners were equal. Their treatment depended largely on the category assigned to each inmate, as well as their nationality and rank within the system. The so-called kapos, or prisoners who had been recruited by their captors to police their fellow prisoners, were given more food and higher pay in the form of concentration camp coupons which could be exchanged for cigarettes in the canteen, as well as a separate room inside most barracks. In addition, following Himmler's order in June, 1941, a brothel was opened for them in 1942, in the Mauthausen and Gusen I camps.[35] The Kapos formed the main part of the so-called Prominents (German: Prominenz), or prisoners who were given a much better treatment than the average inmate.
One of the barracks in Mauthausen with stones left by Jewish visitors in memory of the past

[edit] Women and children in Mauthausen-Gusen

Although the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex was mostly a labour camp for men, a women's camp was opened in Mauthausen, in September 1944, with the first transport of female prisoners from Auschwitz. Eventually, more women and children came to Mauthausen from Ravensbruck, Bergen Belsen, Gross Rosen, and Buchenwald. With them came some female guards. Twenty are known to have served in the Mauthausen camp, and sixty in the whole camp complex. Female guards also staffed the Mauthausen sub-camps at Hirtenberg, Lenzing (the main women's sub-camp in Austria), and St. Lambrecht. The Chief Overseers at Mauthausen were firstly Margarete Freinberger, and then Jane Bernigau. Of all the female Overseers who served in Mauthausen, almost all of them were recruited between September 1944, and November 1944, from Austrian cities and towns. In early April 1945, at least 2,500 more female prisoners came from the female sub-camps at Amstetten, St. Lambrecht, Hirtenberg, and the Flossenbürg sub-camp at Freiberg. It is rumoured that Hildegard Lächert also served at Mauthausen.[36]
Prisoners of Ebensee, one of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen, after liberation by the US 80th Infantry Division

The available Mauthausen inmate statistics[37] from the spring of 1943, shows that there were 2,400 prisoners below the age of 20, which was 12.8% of the 18,655 population. By late March 1945, the number of juvenile prisoners in Mauthausen increased to 15,048, which was 19.1% of the 78,547 Mauthausen inmates. The number of imprisoned children increased 6.2 times, whereas the total number of adult prisoners during the same period multiplied by a factor of only four. These numbers reflected the increasing use of Polish, Czech, Russian, and Balkan teenagers as slave labour as the war continued.[38] Statistics showing the composition of juvenile inmates shortly before their liberation[37] reveal the following major child/prisoner sub-groups: 5,809 foreign civilian labourers, 5,055 political prisoners, 3,654 Jews, and 330 Russian POWs. There were also 23 Roma children, 20 so-called "anti-social elements", 6 Spaniards, and 3 Jehovah's Witnesses.

[edit] The treatment of inmates and methodology of crime
The Todessteige, (English: "Stairs of Death"), with inmates on the steps carrying heavy stones. This is a photograph of a war crime in progress.

Although not the only concentration camp where the German authorities implemented their extermination through labour (Vernichtung durch Arbeit), Mauthausen-Gusen was one of the most brutal and severe. The conditions within the camp were considered exceptionally hard to bear, even by concentration camp standards.[39][40][41] The inmates suffered not only from malnutrition, overcrowded huts and constant abuse and beatings by the guards and kapos,[29] but also from exceptionally hard labour.[25] As there were too many prisoners in Mauthausen to have all of them work in its quarry at the same time, many were put to work in workshops, or had to do other manual work, whilst the unfortunate ones who were selected to work in the quarry were only there because of their so-called "crimes" in the camp. The reasons for sending them to work in the "Punishment-Detail" were trivial, and included such "crimes" as not saluting a German passing by.

The work in the quarries — often in unbearable heat or in temperatures as low as −30 °C (−22.0 °F)[29] — led to exceptionally high mortality rates.[42][41] The food rations were limited, and during the 1940–1942 period, an average inmate weighed 40 kilograms,[43] roughly 88 pounds. It is estimated that the average energy content of food rations dropped from about 1,750 calories a day during the 1940–1942 period, to between 1,150 and 1,460 during the next period. In 1945, the energy content was even lower and did not exceed 600 to 1,000 calories a day; that is less than a third of the energy needed by an average worker in heavy industry.[1] This led to the starvation of thousands of inmates.

The inmates of Mauthausen, Gusen I, and Gusen II had access to a separate sub-camp for the sick — the so-called Krankenlager. Despite the fact that (roughly) 100 medics from among the inmates were working there,[44] they were not given any medication and could offer only basic first aid.[44][4] Thus the hospital camp – as it was called by the German authorities – was, in fact, the last stop before death for thousands of inmates, and very few had a chance to recover.
A list of the dead (click the image for a translation)
Survivors of Gusen shortly after their liberation

The rock-quarry in Mauthausen was at the base of the infamous "Stairs of Death". Prisoners were forced to carry roughly-hewn blocks of stone — often weighing as much as 50 kilograms (110 lb) — up the 186 stairs - one behind the other. As a result, many exhausted prisoners collapsed in front of the other prisoners in the line, and then fell on top of the other prisoners, creating a horrific domino effect; the first prisoner falling onto the next, and so on, all the way down the stairs.[45]

Such brutality was not accidental. The SS guards would often force prisoners — exhausted from hours of hard labour without sufficient food and water — to race up the stairs carrying blocks of stone. Those who survived the ordeal would often be placed in a line-up at the edge of a cliff known as "The Parachute Wall" (German: Fallschirmspringerwand).[46] At gun-point each prisoner would have the option of being shot, or to push the prisoner in front of them off of the cliff.[12] Other common methods of extermination of prisoners, who were either sick, unfit for further labour or as a means of collective responsibility or after escape attempts included:

* Being beaten to death (by the SS and Kapos)
* Icy showers - some 3,000 inmates died of hypothermia - after having being forced to take an icy cold shower - and who were then left outside in cold weather.[47]
* Mass-shootings
* Medical experiments
o Aribert Heim, dubbed Doctor Death by the inmates, was there for seven weeks, which was enough to carry out his experiments[48]
o Another of the Nazi scientists to perform experiments on the inmates was Karl Gross, who purposely infected hundreds of prisoners with cholera and typhus in order to test his experimental vaccines on them. Between February 5, 1942, and mid-April 1944, more than 1,500 prisoners were killed as a result of his experiments[49]
* Hanging
* Starvation
* Injections of phenol. (A group of 2,000 prisoners who applied to be transferred to the sanatorium were declared mentally sick and were killed by Dr. Ramsauer in the course of the H-13 action)[47]
* Drowning in large barrels of water (Gusen II)[50][51]
* Beating to death or starving to death in bunkers[52]
* Throwing the prisoners on the 380 volt electric barbed wire fence[52]
* Forcing prisoners outside the boundaries of the camp and then shooting them on the pretense (pretence) that they were attempting to escape[53]

After the war one of the survivors, Dr. Antoni Gościński reported 62 ways of murdering people in the camps of Gusen I and Mauthausen.[47] Hans Maršálek estimated that an average life expectancy of newly-arrived prisoners in Gusen varied from 6 months between 1940 and 1942, to less than 3 months in early 1945.[54]

Paradoxically, with the growth of forced labour industry in various sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen, the situation of some of the prisoners improved significantly. While the food rations were increasingly limited every month, the heavy industry necessitated skilled specialists rather than unqualified workers and the brutality of the camp's SS and Kapos was limited. While the prisoners were still beaten on the daily basis and the Muselmänner were still exterminated, from early 1943 on some of the factory workers were allowed to receive food parcels from their families (mostly Poles and Frenchmen). This allowed many of them not only to evade the risk of starvation, but also to help other prisoners who had no relatives outside the camps — or were not allowed to receive parcels.[55]

[edit] Death toll
Death Toll of
Gusen I, II and III[56] Józef
Żmij Stanisław
Nogaj KZ Gusen Hans
Maršálek
[10] Stanisław
Dobosiewicz
[56]
1940 1,784 7,214 1,430 1,389 1,762
1941 5,793 5,564 5,272 6,300
1942 6,088 7,203 5,005 7,410 9,534
1943 5,225 5,303 5,173 5,248 6,103
1944 5,921 4,790 4,691 4,091 5,488
1945 12,600 197 4,673 15,415
Undated 2,843
Total 37,411 24,707 30,536 33,451 44,602

Because the Germans destroyed much of the camp's files and evidence and often gave newly-arrived prisoners the camp numbers of those who had already been killed,[25] the exact death toll of the Mauthausen-Gusen complex is impossible to calculate. The matter is further complicated due to some of the inmates of Gusen being murdered in Mauthausen, and at least 3,423 sent to Hartheim Castle, 40.7 km (25.3 miles) away. Also, several thousands were killed in mobile gas chambers, without any mention of the exact number of victims in the surviving files.[57] The SS, before their escape from the camps on 4 May 1945, tried to destroy the evidence, allowing approximately only 40,000 victims to be identified. During the first days after the liberation, the camp's main chancellery was seized by the members of a Polish inmate resistance organization; secured against the wishes of other inmates, who wanted to burn it.[58] After the war, the main chancellery was brought by one of the survivors to Poland, then passed to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Oświęcim.[59][60] Parts of the death register of Gusen I camp were secured by the Polish inmates, who took it to Australia after the war. In 1969 the files were given to the International Red Cross Tracing Bureau.[57]

The surviving camp archives include personal files of 37,411 murdered prisoners, including 22,092 Poles, 5,024 Spaniards, 2,843 Soviet prisoners of war and 7,452 inmates of 24 other nationalities.[61] The surviving parts of the death register of KZ Gusen list an additional 30,536 names.

Apart from the surviving camp files of the sub-camps of Mauthausen, the main documents used for an estimation of the death toll of the camp complexes are:

1. A report by Józef Żmij, a survivor who had been working in the Gusen I camp's chancellery. His report is based on personally-made copies of yearly reports from the period between 1940 and 1944, and the camps commander's daily reports for the period between 1 January 1945 and the day of the liberation.
2. Original death register for the sub-camp of Gusen held by the International Red Cross
3. Personal notes of Stanisław Nogaj, another inmate who had been working in the chancellery of Gusen
4. Death register prepared by the SS chief medic of the Mauthausen main chancellery for the sub-camps of Gusen (similar records for the Mauthausen sub-camp itself were destroyed)

Because of that the exact death toll of the entire Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp system varies considerably from source to source. Various scholars place it at between 122,766[62] and 320,000,[47] with other numbers also frequently quoted being 200,000[63] and "over 150,000".[64]

Various historians place the total death toll in the four main camps of Mauthausen, Gusen I, Gusen II and Gusen III at between 55,000[25] and 60,000.[65] In addition, during the first month after the liberation additional 1042 prisoners died in American field hospitals.[66]

Out of approximately 320,000 prisoners who were incarcerated in various sub-camps of KZ Mauthausen-Gusen throughout the war, only approximately 80,000 survived,[67] including between 20,487[66] and 21,386[68] in Gusen I, II and III.

[edit] Liberation and post-war heritage
A chart representing the nationality
of the surviving inmates of Gusen I, II and III[68]
click the image for more details
Some of the bodies being removed by German civilians for decent burial at Gusen concentration camp after its liberation
Tanks of U.S. 11th Armored Division entering the Mauthausen concentration camp; banner in Spanish reads "Antifascist Spaniards greet the forces of liberation". The photo was taken on 6 May 1945

During the final months before liberation, the camp's commander Franz Ziereis prepared for its defence against a possible Soviet offensive. Most of the inmates of German and Austrian nationality "volunteered" for the SS-Freiwillige Häftlingsdivision, an SS unit composed mostly of former concentration camp inmates and headed by Oskar Dirlewanger. The remaining prisoners were rushed to build a line of granite anti-tank obstacles to the east of Mauthausen. The inmates unable to cope with the hard labour and malnutrition were exterminated in large numbers to free space for newly-arrived evacuation transports from other camps, including most of the sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen located in eastern Austria. In the final months of the war, the main source of calories, that is the parcels of food sent through the International Red Cross, stopped and food rations became catastrophically low. The prisoners transferred to the "Hospital Sub-camp" received one piece of bread per 20 inmates and roughly half a litre of weed soup a day.[69] This made some of the prisoners, previously engaged in various types of resistance activity, begin to prepare plans to defend the camp in case of an SS attempt to exterminate all the remaining inmates. It is not known why the prisoners of Gusen I and II were not exterminated en-masse, despite direct orders from Heinrich Himmler; Ziereis' plan assumed rushing all the prisoners into the tunnels of the underground factories of Kellerbau and blowing up the entrances. The plan was known to one of the Polish resistance organizations which started an ambitious plan of gathering tools necessary to dig air vents in the entrances.

On 28 April, under cover of a fictional air-raid alarm, some 22,000 prisoners of Gusen were rushed into the tunnels. However, after several hours in the tunnels all of the prisoners were allowed to return to the camp. Stanisław Dobosiewicz, the author of a monumental monograph of the Mauthausen-Gusen complex explains that one of the possible causes of the failure of the German plan was that the Polish prisoners managed to cut the fuse wires. Ziereis himself stated in his testimony written on May 25 that it was his wife who convinced him not to follow the order from above.[70] Although the plan was abandoned, the prisoners feared that the SS might want to massacre the prisoners by other means. Because of that the Polish, Soviet and French prisoners prepared a plan for an assault on the barracks of the SS guards in order to seize the arms necessary to put up a fight. A similar plan was also devised by the Spanish inmates.[70]

On 3 May the SS and other guards started to prepare for evacuation of the camp. The following day, the guards of Mauthausen were replaced with unarmed Volkssturm soldiers and an improvised unit formed of elderly police officers and fire fighters evacuated from Vienna. The police officer in charge of the unit accepted the "inmate self-government" as the camp's highest authority and Martin Gerken, until then the highest-ranking kapo prisoner in the Gusen's administration (in the rank of Lagerälteste, or the Camp's Elder), became the new de facto commander. He attempted to create an International Prisoner Committee that would become a provisional governing body of the camp until it was liberated by one of the approaching armies, but he was openly accused of co-operation with the SS and the plan failed. All work in the sub-camps of Mauthausen stopped and the inmates focused on preparations for their liberation - or defence of the camps against a possible assault by the SS divisions concentrated in the area.[70] The remnants of several German divisions indeed assaulted the Mauthausen sub-camp, but were repelled by the prisoners who took over the camp.[8] Out of all the main sub-camps of Mauthausen-Gusen only Gusen III was to be evacuated. On 1 May the inmates were rushed on a death march towards Sankt Georgen, but were ordered to return to the camp after several hours. The operation was repeated the following day, but called off soon afterwards. The following day, the SS guards deserted the camp, leaving the prisoners to their fate.[70]
The survivors of Ebensee sub-camp shortly after their liberation

The camps of Mauthausen-Gusen were the last to be liberated during the World War II. On 5 May 1945 the camp at Mauthausen was approached by soldiers of the 41st Recon Squad of the US 11th Armored Division, 3rd US Army. The reconnaissance squad was led by S/SGT Albert J. Kosiek. His troop disarmed the policemen and left the camp. By the time of its liberation, most of the SS-men of Mauthausen had already fled; however, some 30 who were left were killed by the prisoners;[71] a similar number were killed in Gusen II.[71] By 6 May all the remaining sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex, with the exception of the two camps in the Loibl Pass, were also liberated by American forces.

Among the inmates liberated from the camp was Lieutenant Jack Taylor, an officer of the Office of Strategic Services.[72] He had managed to survive with the help of several prisoners and was later a key witness at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials carried out by the Dachau International Military Tribunal.[73] Another of the camp's survivors was Simon Wiesenthal, an engineer who spent the rest of his life hunting Nazi war criminals.
Memorial

Following the capitulation of Germany, the Mauthausen-Gusen complex fell within the Soviet sector of occupation of Austria. Initially, the Soviet authorities used parts of the Mauthausen and Gusen I camps as barracks for the Red Army. At the same time, the underground factories were being dismantled and sent to the USSR as a war booty. After that, between 1946 and 1947, the camps were unguarded and many furnishings and facilities of the camp were dismantled, both by the Red Army and by the local population. In the early summer of 1947, the Soviet forces had blown the tunnels up and were then withdrawn from the area, while the camp was turned over to Austrian civilian authorities. However, it was not until 1949 that it was declared a national memorial site. Finally, 30 years after camp's liberation, on 3 May 1975, Chancellor Bruno Kreisky officially opened the Mauthausen Museum.[2] Unlike Mauthausen, much of what constituted the sub-camps of Gusen I, II and III is now covered by residential areas built there after the war.[74]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp

Flossenbürg concentration camp

2009-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the pre-war border with Czechoslovakia. Between 1938, when the camp was established, and liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners passed through Flossenbürg. About 30,000 died there.

History

[edit] Pre-World War II

Before World War II, Flossenbürg was a men's camp primarily for so-called "asocial" or "criminal" prisoners. The camp's site was chosen so that the inmates could be used as unpaid labor to quarry the granite found in the nearby hills. The quarries belonged to the SS-owned and -operated German Earth and Stone Works (DEST) company.

[edit] During World War II

During World War II, most of the inmates sent to Flossenbürg, or to one of about 100 sub-camps, came from the German-occupied eastern territories. The inmates in Flossenbürg were housed in 16 huge wooden barracks, its crematorium was built in a valley straight outside the camp. In September 1939, the SS transferred 1,000 political prisoners to Flossenbürg from Dachau.

In 1941 - 1942, about 1,500 Polish prisoners, mostly members of the Polish resistance, were deported to Flossenbürg. In July 1941, SS guards shot 40 Polish prisoners at the SS firing range outside the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Between February and September 1941 the SS executed about one-third of the Polish political prisoners deported to Flossenbürg.

During World War II, the German army turned tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners over to the SS for execution. More than 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war were executed in Flossenbürg by the end of 1941. The SS also established a special camp for a load of Soviet prisoners of war within Flossenbürg. Executions of Soviet prisoners of war continued sporadically through 1944. Soviet prisoners of war in Muelsen St. Micheln, a subcamp of Flossenbürg, staged an uprising and mass escape attempt on 1 May 1944. They set their bunks on fire and killed some of the camp's Kapos, prisoner trustees who carried out SS orders. SS guards crushed the revolt and none of the prisoners escaped. Almost 200 prisoners died from burns and wounds sustained in the uprising. The SS transferred about 40 leaders of the revolt to Flossenbürg itself, where they were later murdered in the camp jail.

There were over 4,000 prisoners in the main camp of Flossenbürg in February 1943. More than half of these prisoners were political prisoners (mainly Soviet, Czech, Dutch, and German). Almost 800 were German criminals, more than 100 were homosexuals, and 7 were Jehovah's Witnesses.

During the war, prisoner forced labor became increasingly important in German arms production. As a result, the Flossenbürg camp system expanded to include approximately 100 subcamps concentrated mainly around armaments industries in southern Germany and western Czechoslovakia.

On 1 September 1944, Flossenbürg became a training camp for extremely large numbers of female guards (Aufseherinnen) who were recruited by force from factories all over Germany and Poland. All together, over 500 women were trained in the camp and in time went on to its subcamps. Women matrons staffed the Flossenbürg subcamps, such as Dresden Ilke Werke, Freiberg, Helmbrechts, Holleischen, Leitmeritz, Mehltheur, Neustadt (near Coburg), Nürnberg-Siemens, Oederan, and Zwodau, and it is known that six SS women staffed the Gundelsdorf subcamp in Czechoslovakia.

By 1945, there were almost 40,000 inmates held in the whole Flossenbürg camp system, including almost 11,000 women. Inmates were made to work in the Flossenbürg camp quarry and in armaments making. Underfeeding, sickness, and overwork was rife among the inmates, and with the harshness of the guards, this treatment killed thousands of inmates.

It is estimated that between April 1944 and April 1945, more than 1500 death sentences were carried out there. To this end, six new gallows hooks were installed. In the last months the rate of daily executions overtook the capacity of the crematorium. As a solution, the SS began stacking the bodies in piles, drenching them with gasoline, and setting them alight. Incarcerated in what was called the "Bunker," those who had been condemned to death were kept alone in dark rooms with no food for days until they were executed.

Amongst the Allied military officers executed at Flossenbürg were Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Gustave Daniel Alfred Biéler (executed 6 September 1944). As Germany's defeat loomed, a number of the SOE agents whom the SS had tortured repeatedly in order to extract information, were executed on the same day. On 29 March 1945 13 SOE agents were hanged, including Jack Charles Stanmore Agazarian and Brian Rafferty. Hitler assassination-conspirator and Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed on 9 April 1945. On 1 August 2007 a memorial was unveiled at Flossenbürg to their memory.

[edit] Death march and liberation

In early April 1945, as American forces were approaching the camp, the SS executed General Hans Oster, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. Karl Sack, Dr. Theodor Strünck and General Friedrich von Rabenau, who were involved in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, along with the French Resistance worker Simone Michel-Lévy, who had managed to organize an uprising in the camp. On 20 April 1945, they began the forced evacuation of 22,000 inmates, including 1,700 Jews, leaving behind only those too sick to walk. On the death march to the Dachau concentration camp, SS guards shot any inmate too sick to keep up. Before they reached Dachau, more than 7,000 inmates had been shot or had collapsed and died.

By the time the U.S. Army's 90th Infantry Division freed the camp on April 23, 1945, more than 30,000 inmates had died at Flossenbürg. The American soldiers found about 1,600 ill and weak prisoners, mostly in the camp's hospital barracks.

[edit] Aftermath

[edit] Flossenbürg Trial

The Flossenbürg War Crimes Trial began in Dachau, Germany, on 12 June 1946, and came to an end on 22 January 1947.

Forty-six former staff from Flossenbürg concentration camp were tried by an American Military for crimes of murder, torturing, and starving the inmates in their custody. All but five of the defendants were found guilty, fifteen of whom were condemned to death, eleven were given life sentences, and fourteen were jailed for terms of one to thirty years.

[edit] Holocaust museum

On 22 July 2007, the sixty-second anniversary of the camp's liberation, a Holocaust museum was opened at Flossenbürg. The ceremony was attended by 84 former inmates, in addition to the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, whose father was among the camp's inmates during WWII for five months.[1]

[edit] Camp commandants

* Jakob Weiseborn (May 1938)
* Karl Kunstler (January 20, 1939)
* Karl Fritzsch (August 10, 1942)
* Egon Zill (September 1942)
* Max Koegel (April 29 1943 - April 24 1945)

[edit] References

1. ^ a b "Flossenbürg Memorial", Dateline World Jewry, World Jewish Congress, September, 2007

paul satten
[edit] Literature

Pascal Cziborra. KZ Flossenbürg. Gedenkbuch der Frauen. Memorial Book of the Women. Lorbeer Verlag. Bielefeld. 2007 ISBN 978-3-938969-03-8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flossenb%C3%BCrg_concentration_camp

Buchenwald concentration camp

2009-02-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

Buchenwald concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager or 'KZ' Buchenwald) was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany (at the time, Nazi Germany), in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil.

Camp prisoners worked primarily as forced labour in local armament factories. Inmates were Jews, Poles, political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses, religious prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war (POWs).[1] Up to 1942 the majority of the political prisoners consisted of communists; later the proportion of other political prisoners increased considerably. Among the prisoners were also writers, doctors, artists, former nobility, and princesses. They came from countries as varied as Russia, Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Italy, Romania and Spain (some Second Spanish Republic exiles). Most of the political prisoners from the occupied countries were members of the resistance.

From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities.

History

Buchenwald (German for beech forest) was chosen as the name for the camp because of the close ties of the location to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was being idealized as “the embodiment of the German Spirit” (Verkörperung des deutschen Geistes). The Goethe Eiche (Goethe's Oak) stood inside the camp's perimeter,[2][3] and the stump of the tree is preserved as part of the memorial at KZ Buchenwald. Similarly, the camp could not be named for another town nearby (Hottelstedt) because of administrative considerations (it would have resulted in a lower pay grade for the camp’s Schutzstaffel (SS) guards).[citation needed]

Between July 1938 and April 1945, some 250,000 people were incarcerated in Buchenwald by the Nazi regime, including 168 Western Allied POWs. One estimate places the number of deaths in Buchenwald at 56,000 (discussed further below).

During an American bombing raid on August 24, 1944 that was directed at a nearby armament factory, several bombs, including incendiaries, also fell on the camp, resulting in heavy casualties amongst the inmates.

Death toll at Buchenwald

Causes of death

Although Buchenwald technically was not an extermination camp, it was a site of an extraordinary number of deaths.

A primary cause of the deaths was illness due to harsh camp conditions, and hunger was also prevalent. Malnourished and suffering from disease, many were literally "worked to death", as inmates had only the choice between slave labour or inevitable execution. Many inmates died as a result of human experimentations or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards, and yet other prisoners were simply murdered—the two primary methods of execution were shooting and hanging. At one point, the ashes of dead prisoners would be returned to their families in a sheet metal box—postage due, to be paid by the family. This practice was eventually stopped as more and more prisoners died.[citation needed]

Summary executions of Soviet POWs were also carried out at Buchenwald. At least 1,000 Soviet POWs were selected in 1941–2 by a task force of three Dresden Gestapo officers and sent to the camp for immediate liquidation by a gunshot to the back of the neck, the infamous Genickschuss, using a purpose-built facility.

The camp was also a site of large-scale trials for vaccines against epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943. In all 729 inmates were used as test subjects, with 280 of them dying as a result. Because of their long association in cramped quarters in Block 46, the typhus killed more people and infections lasted longer than would have been the case had healthy adults been infected with the disease.

Number of deaths

Main article: Number of deaths in Buchenwald

US Senator Alben W. Barkley looks on after Buchenwald's liberation. Barkley later became Vice President of the United States under Harry S. Truman.

The SS left behind accounts of the number of prisoners and people coming to and leaving the camp, categorizing those leaving them by release, transfer, or death. These accounts are one of the sources of estimates for the number of deaths in Buchenwald. According to SS documents, 33,462 died in Buchenwald. These documents were not, however, necessarily accurate: Among those executed before 1944 many were listed as "transferred to the Gestapo". Furthermore, from 1941 forward Soviet POWs were executed in mass killings. Arriving prisoners selected for execution were not entered into the camp register and therefore were not among the 33,462 dead listed in SS documents.[4]

One former Buchenwald prisoner, Armin Walter, calculated the number of executions by shooting in the back of the head. His job at Buchenwald was to set up and care for a radio installation at the facility where people were executed and counted the numbers, which arrived by telex, and hid the information. He says that 8,483 Soviet prisoners of war were shot in this manner.[5]

According to the same source, the total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545.[6] This number is the sum of:

* Deaths according to material left behind by SS: 33,462[7]
* Executions by shooting: 8,483
* Executions by hanging (estimate): 1,100
* Deaths during evacuation transports: 13,500[8]

This total (56,545) corresponds to a death rate of 24 percent assuming that the number of persons passing through the camp according to documents left by the SS, 238,380 prisoners, is accurate.[9]

[edit] Liberation
An emaciated Buchenwald survivor drinking from a bowl following liberation.

On April 4, 1945, the U.S. 89th Infantry Division overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald. It was the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops.[10]

Buchenwald was partially evacuated by the Germans on April 8, 1945. In the days before the arrival of the American army, thousands of the prisoners were forced to join the evacuation marches.[citation needed]

Thanks to efforts of Polish engineer Gwidon Damazyn (inmate from March 1941) a secret radio transmitter and small generator had been built. On April 9 at 1pm Damazyn sent the radio message prepared by leaders of prisoner's underground (Walter Bartel and Harry Kuhn):
“ To Allies. To General Patton's Army. This is concentration camp Buchenwald. SOS. We need help. They're trying to evacuate us. The SS try to exterminate us.[citation needed] ”

The text was repeated four times, each time in English, German and Russian.[citation needed] After 15 minutes the headquarters of the US Third Army answered and promised help as quickly as they could send it.

After this news had been received, Communist inmates stormed the watchtowers and killed the remaining guards using arms they had been collecting since 1942 (one machine gun and 91 rifles).[11]

A detachment of troops belonging to the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, U.S. 6th Armored Division, US Third Army arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 under the leadership of Captain Frederic Keffer. All of the soldiers were given a hero's welcome, with the emaciated survivors finding the strength to toss some liberators into the air in celebration.[12]

Later on in day elements of the U.S. 83rd Infantry Division overran Langenstein, one of a number of smaller camps comprising the Buchenwald complex. There the division liberated over 21,000 prisoners,[12] ordered the mayor of Langenstein to send food and water to the camp, and sped medical supplies forward from the 20th Field Hospital.[13]

Third Army Headquarters sent elements of the U.S. 80th Infantry Division to take control of the camp on the morning of Thursday, April 12, 1945. Several journalists arrived on the same day, perhaps with the 80th, including Edward R Murrow, whose radio report of his arrival and reception was broadcast on CBS and became one of his most famous:
“ I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.

They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more. Nothing about who these men were, what they had done, or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totalled 242. 242 out of 1,200, in one month.

As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.
”

—Extract from Edward R Murrow's Buchenwald report. April 15, 1945.

James Hoyt, one of the liberators, died at age 83 on August 10, 2008. He had been suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder related to his experience at the camp.[12]

[edit] Soviet Special Camp 2
Picture taken in winter of area where prisoner barracks once were; most of the camp was demolished in 1950.

After liberation, between 1945 and 10 February 1950, the camp was administered by the Soviet Union and served as a Special Camp No. 2 of the NKVD.[14] Initially used for housing German war criminals, with time it was converted into a standard detention site for political prisoners and opponents of Soviet rule.[citation needed]

Between 1945 and 1950, 28,455 prisoners, including 1,000 women, were held by the Soviet Union at Buchenwald.[citation needed] A total of 7,113 people died in Special Camp Number 2, according to the Soviet records.[citation needed] They were buried in mass graves in the woods surrounding the camp. Their relatives did not receive any notification of their deaths. Prisoners comprised political prisoners, Nazi perpetrators, and former members of the Hitler Youth, as well as large numbers of people imprisoned due to identity confusion and arbitrary arrests[citation needed]. The Soviets would not allow mail or visits to prisoners and did not attempt to determine the guilt of any individual prisoner[citation needed].

On 16 January 1950, the camp was passed to the civilian authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with its 2,415 prisoners.[citation needed] In October 1950, it was decreed that the camp would be demolished. The main gate, the crematorium, the hospital block, and two guard towers escaped demolition. All prisoner barracks and other buildings were razed. Foundations of some still exist and many others have been rebuilt. According to the Buchenwald Memorial website, "the combination of obliteration and preservation was dictated by a specific concept for interpreting the history of Buchenwald Concentration Camp."

The first monument to victims was erected days after the initial liberation. Intended to be completely temporary, it was built by prisoners and was made of wood. A second monument to commemorate the dead was erected in 1958 by the GDR near the mass graves. Inside the camp, there is a living monument in the place of the first monument that is kept at skin temperature year round.[15]

[edit] People

[edit] First commandant

Buchenwald’s first commandant was Karl Otto Koch, who ran the camp from 1937 to 1941. His second wife, Ilse Koch, became notorious as Die Hexe von Buchenwald ("the witch of Buchenwald") for her cruelty and brutality. Koch had a zoo built by the prisoners in the camp for the amusement of his children, with a bear pit (Bärenzwinger) facing the Appellplatz, the dreaded assembly square where prisoners were forced to stand motionless and silent for many hours (three times each day) while the meticulous "roll-calls" were conducted.

Koch was eventually himself imprisoned at Buchenwald by the Nazi authorities for corruption, embezzlement, black market dealings, and his exploitation of camp workers for personal gain. He was tried and executed by the Nazis at Buchenwald in April 1945, while Ilse was sentenced to four years after the war. Her sentence was reduced to two years and she was set free. Later, she was arrested again and sentenced to life imprisonment by the post-war German authorities; she committed suicide in a Bavarian prison cell in September 1967.

[edit] Female prisoners and overseers
Dead German female guard from the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp. She was either killed by the US troops or by the prisoners.

The number of women held in Buchenwald was somewhere between 500 and 1,000. The first female inmates were twenty political prisoners who were accompanied by a female SS guard (Aufseherin); these women were brought to Buchenwald from Ravensbrück to serve in the camp’s brothel in 1941. Later the SS fired the SS woman on duty in the brothel for corruption, and her position was taken over by “brothel mothers” as ordered by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

The majority of women prisoners, however, arrived in 1944 and 1945 from other camps, mainly Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen Belsen. Most of these women were Jewish[citation needed], and only one barrack was set aside for them; this was overseen by the female Blockführerin, Franziska Hoengesberg, who came from Essen when it was evacuated. All the women prisoners were later shipped out to one of Buchenwald's many female satellite camps in Sömmerda, Buttelstedt, Mühlhausen, Gotha, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Lippstadt, Weimar, Magdeburg, and Penig, to name a few. No female guards were permanently stationed at Buchenwald[citation needed].

When the Buchenwald camp was evacuated, the SS sent the male prisoners to other camps, and the five-hundred remaining women (including one of the secret annexe members who lived with Anne Frank, "Mrs. van Daan", real name Auguste van Pels) were taken by train and on foot to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Many, including van Pels, died sometime between April 1945 and May 1945. Because the female prisoner population at Buchenwald was comparatively small, the SS only trained female overseers at the camp and "assigned" them to one of the female subcamps. Twenty-two known female guards have personnel files at the camp, but it is unlikely that any of them stayed at Buchenwald for longer than a few days.

Ilse Koch served as head supervisor (Oberaufseherin) of 22 other female guards and hundreds of women prisoners in the main camp. Eventually, more than 530 women served as guards in the vast Buchenwald system of subcamps and external commands across Germany. Only 22 women served/trained in Buchenwald, compared to over 15,500 men.

[edit] Allied airmen

Although it was highly unusual for German authorities to send Western Allied prisoners of war (POWs) to concentration camps, Buchenwald held a group of 168 aviators for about six months.[16] These POWs were from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They all arrived at Buchenwald on April 20, 1944[17] (according to one source, on August 20, 1944[18]).

All these airmen were in planes which had crashed in occupied France. Two explanations are given for them being sent to a concentration camp: first, that they had managed to make contact with the French Resistance, some were disguised as civilians, and they were carrying false papers when caught; they were therefore categorized by the Germans as spies, which meant their rights under the Geneva Convention were not respected. The second explanation is that they had been categorised as Terrorflieger ("terror aviators"). The aviators were initially held in Gestapo prisons and headquarters in France. In April or August 1944, they and other Gestapo prisoners were packed into boxcars and sent to Buchenwald. The journey took five days, during which they received very little food or water. One aviator recalled their arrival at Buchenwald:
“ As we got close to the camp and saw what was inside... a terrible, terrible fear and horror entered our hearts. We thought, what is this? Where are we going? Why are we here? And as you got closer to the camp and started to enter the camp and saw these human skeletons walking around—old men, young men, boys, just skin and bone, we thought, what are we getting into? ”

—A Canadian airman's recollection of his arrival at Buchenwald.[19]

They were subjected to the same treatment and abuse as other Buchenwald prisoners until October 1944, when a change in policy saw the aviators dispatched to Stalag Luft III, a regular prisoner-of-war camp (POW) camp; nevertheless, two airmen died at Buchenwald.[20] Those classed as terrorflieger had been scheduled for execution after October 24; their rescue was effected by Luftwaffe officers who visited Buchenwald and, on their return to Berlin, demanded the airmen's release.[21]

[edit] Norwegian students

The camp was also the main imprisonment for a number of Norwegian university students from 1943 until the end of the war. The students, being Norwegian, got better treatment than most, but had to resist Nazi schooling for months. They became remembered for resisting forced labor in a minefield, as the Nazis wished to use them as cannon fodder. An incident connected to this is remembered as the Strike at Burkheim. The Norwegian students in Buchenwald lived in a warmer, stone-construction house and had their own clothes.[22]

[edit] Specific people associated with Buchenwald
Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (December 2008)

[edit] Well-known Nazi personnel

Commandants
Karl Otto Koch from 1937 to 1941
Hans Aumeier
Medical doctors
Gerhard Rose
Waldemar Hoven
Hans Conrad Julius Reiter
Nazi head of personnel
Hermann Hackmann

[edit] Well-known inmates
Buchenwald inmates.
Buchenwald memorial.
Watchtower at the Memorial estate Buchenwald, 1983

* Roy Allen, American B-17 Flying Fortress pilot
* Phillip (Phil) J. Lamason - Squadron Leader (Sqn Ldr): Royal New Zealand Air Force
* Jean Améry, writer
* Robert Antelme, French writer
* Jacob Avigdor, before WWII Chief Rabbi of Drohobych, after WWII Chief Rabbi of Mexico
* Conrad Baars, psychiatrist
* Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist
* Józef Biniszkiewicz, Polish socialist politician
* Léon Blum, Jewish French politician, pre-war long term French Prime Minister, and again after the war
* Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant theologian and prominent member of the Confessing Church
* Rudolf Breitscheid, former member of the SPD and leader of its faction in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic before the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, died in the camp in 1944
* Christopher Burney, British officer and Special Operations Executive operative, wrote about the savage infighting and struggle for power and privileges between the inmates at Buchenwald in The Dungeon Democracy.
* Robert Clary, French actor, Corporal Louis LeBeau on the Hogan's Heroes television series
* René Cogny, French general
* Fritz Czuczka, Austrian artist/architect.
* Seweryn Franciszek Czetwertyński-Światopełk, Polish politician
* Édouard Daladier, French politician, former Head of the French government
* Armand de Dampierre, French aristocrat, died in the camp on January 8, 1944
* Marcel Dassault, French aviation entrepreneur who founded the Dassault Group.
* Laure Diebold, French resistant, Compagnon de la Libération
* Willem Drees, Prime Minister of The Netherlands from 1948 to 1958
* Ernst Federn, Austrian social-psychologist.
* Bolesław Fichna, Polish right-wing politician and lawyer
* Henry P. Glass, Austrian Architect and Industrial Designer, released in 1939, moved to US
* Albin Grau, film producer (Nosferatu, 1922), died in the camp in 1942
* Maurice Halbwachs French sociologist, died in the camp in 1945
* Curt Herzstark inventor of the Curta calculator - a hand-held, hand-cranked mechanical calculator
* Heinrich Eduard Jacob, German writer
* Paul-Emile Janson, Belgian politician, former Prime Minister of Belgium, died in the camp in 1944
* Léon Jouhaux, French trade unionist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
* Józef Kachel, Scout leader, head of the pre-war Polish Scouting Association in Germany
* Imre Kertész writer, 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient
* Eugen Kogon, anti-Nazi activist, later Christian Socialist, professor, broadcaster and author of Der SS-Staat ("The SS state"), a significant piece of literature concerning the German concentration camps
* Jan Łangowski, Polish social worker and politician active among the Polish diaspora in Germany
* Yisrael Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel
* Artur London, senior Czech communist and writer, future government minister
* Jacques Lusseyran, blind French memoirist and professor
* Georges Mandel French politician, former Minister of the Interior, died in the camp in 1944
* Henri Maspero, French Sinologist, pioneering scholar of Taoism
* Erik L. Mollo-Christensen, Emeritus Professor of Oceanography, MIT; former Associate Director of Earth Science, NASA.
* Henri Christiaan Pieck, Dutch painter and twin brother of Anton Pieck
* Hélie de Saint Marc, member of the French resistance, later involved in the attempted Algiers putsch
* Princess Mafalda of Savoy, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Princess Elena of Montenegro, died in the camp in 1944
* Franciszek Myśliwiec, Polish politician and social worker
* John H. Noble, American-born gulag survivor and author
* Almeric Lombard de Buffiers de Rambuteau, French aristocrat, died in the camp on December 14, 1944
* Paul Rassinier, considered the father of Holocaust denial
* Jakob Rosenfeld, minister of health under Mao
* Baron Otto of Schmidburg, minor German noble, died in the camp on July 23, 1941
* Etta Sapon, Italian, Dramatic actress
* Paul Schneider, German pastor, died in the camp in 1939
* Jorge Semprún, Spanish intellectual and politician and culture minister of Spain (1988–91)
* Jura Soyfer, Austrian poet and dramatist, died in the camp in 1939
* Ernst Thälmann, leader of the Communist Party of Germany, died in the camp in April 1944
* Ernst Wiechert, German writer
* Elie Wiesel, Jewish French-American writer, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize recipient
* F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, Royal Air Force Wing Commander and British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, codenamed "The White Rabbit". Returned to England in 1945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_concentration_camp

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

2009-02-01T22:04:00.000-08:00

Sachsenhausen (IPA: [zaksənˈhaʊzən]) was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and 1945. It was named after the Sachsenhausen quarter, part of the town of Oranienburg. The camp is sometimes referred to as Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg.

From 1936 to 1945 it was run by the National Socialist regime in Germany as a camp for mainly political prisoners; from 1945 to spring of 1950 it was run by the Stalinist Soviet occupying forces as "Special Camp No. 7" for mainly political prisoners.
Contents

Sachsenhausen under the NSDAP

The camp was established in 1936. It was located north of Berlin, which gave it a primary position among the German concentration camps: the administrative centre of all concentration camps was located in Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen became a training centre for Schutzstaffel (SS) officers (who would often be sent to oversee other camps afterwards). Executions took place at Sachsenhausen, especially of Soviet Prisoners of War. Some Jews were executed at Sachsenhausen and many died there, but most Jewish inmates of the camp were relocated to Auschwitz in 1942. Sachsenhausen was not intended as an extermination camp — instead, the systematic murder was conducted in camps to the east. However, many died as a result of executions, casual brutality and the poor living conditions and treatment.

Sachsenhausen was intended to set a standard for other concentration camps, both in its design and the treatment of prisoners. The camp perimeter is, approximately, an equilateral triangle with a semi circular roll call area centred on the main entrance gate in the side running northeast to southwest. Barrack huts lay beyond the roll call area, radiating from the gate. The layout was intended to allow the machine gun post in the entrance gate to dominate the camp but in practice it was necessary to add additional watchtowers to the perimeter.

The standard barrack layout was two accommodation areas linked by common storage, washing and storage areas. Heating was minimal. Each day, time to get up, wash, use the toilet and eat was very limited in the crowded facilities.

There was an infirmary inside the southern angle of the perimeter and a camp prison within the eastern angle. There was also a camp kitchen and a camp laundry. The camp's capacity became inadequate and the camp was extended in 1938 by a new rectangular area (the "small camp") north east of the entrance gate and the perimeter wall was altered to enclose it. There was an additional area (sonder lager) outside the main camp perimeter to the north; this was built in 1941 for special prisoners that the regime wished to isolate.

An industrial area, outside the western camp perimeter, contained SS workshops in which prisoners were forced to work; those unable to work had to stand to attention for the duration of the working day. Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, was a major user of Sachsenhausen labour, using between 6000 and 8000 prisoners on their He 177 bomber. Although official German reports claimed "The prisoners are working without fault", some of these aircraft crashed unexpectedly around Stalingrad and it is suspected that prisoners had sabotaged them. [1] Other firms included AEG.
Plaque to honour over 100 Dutch resistance fighters executed at Sachsenhausen.

Later, part of the industrial area was used for "Station Z", where executions took place and a new crematorium was built, when the first camp crematorium could no longer cope with the number of corpses. The executions were done in a trench, either by shooting or by hanging. Over 100 Dutch resistance fighters were executed at Sachsenhausen.

The camp was secure and there were few successful escapes. The perimeter consisted of a three metre high wall on the outside. Within that there was a path used by guards and dogs; it was bordered on the inside by a lethal electric fence; inside that was a "death strip" forbidden to the prisoners. Any prisoner venturing onto the "death strip" would be shot by the guards without warning.
Arbeit Macht Frei gate

On the front entrance gates to Sachsenhausen is the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (German: "Work will set you free"). About 200,000 people passed through Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Some 100,000 inmates died there from exhaustion, disease, malnutrition or pneumonia from the freezing winter cold. Many were executed or died as the result of brutal medical experimentation. According to an article published on December 13, 2001 in The New York Times, "In the early years of the war the SS practiced methods of mass killing there that were later used in the Nazi death camps. Of the roughly 30,000 wartime victims at Sachsenhausen, most were Russian prisoners of war".[2]

[3]

Sachsenhausen was the site of the largest counterfeiting operation ever. The Nazis forced inmate artisans to produce forged American and British currency, as part of a plan to undermine the British and United States' economies, courtesy of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief Reinhard Heydrich. Over one billion pounds in counterfeited banknotes was recovered. The Germans introduced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes into circulation in 1943: the Bank of England never found them. Today, these notes are considered very valuable by collectors.

Many women were among the inmates of Sachsenhausen and its subcamps. According to SS files, more than 2,000 women lived in Sachsenhausen, guarded by female SS staff (Aufseherin). Camp records show that there was one male SS soldier for every ten inmates and for every ten male SS there was a woman SS. Several subcamps for women were established in Berlin, including in Neukolln.

Camp punishments could be harsh. Some would be required to assume the "Sachsenhausen salute" where a prisoner would squat with his arms outstretched in front. There was a marching strip around the perimeter of the roll call ground, where prisoners had to march over a variety of surfaces, to test military footwear; between 25 and 40 kilometres were covered each day. Prisoners assigned to the camp prison would be kept in isolation on poor rations and some would be suspended from posts by their wrists tied behind their backs (strappado). In cases such as attempted escape, there would be a public hanging in front of the assembled prisoners.

With the advance of the Red Army in the spring of 1945, Sachsenhausen was prepared for evacuation. On April 20–21, the camp's SS staff ordered 33,000 inmates on a forced march northeast. Most of the prisoners were physically exhausted and thousands did not survive this death march; those who collapsed en route were shot by the SS. On April 22, 1945, the camp's remaining 3,000 inmates, including 1,400 women were liberated by the Red Army and Polish 2nd Infantry Division of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie.

[edit] Prominent prisoners during German period

The wife and children of Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, members of the Wittelsbach family, were held in the camp from October 1944 to April 1945, before being transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. Reverend Martin Niemöller, a critic of the Nazis and author of the poem First they came..., was also a prisoner at the camp. Herschel Grynszpan, whose act of assassination was used by Joseph Goebbels to initiate the Kristallnacht pogrom, was moved in and out of Sachshausen since his capture on the 18th July 1940 and until September 1940 when he was moved to Magdeburg.[4] Kurt Schuschnigg, the last Chancellor of Austria before Anschluss, was also a prisoner at Sachsenhausen. Ukrainian nationalist leaders Andriy Melnyk (briefly), Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were imprisoned there until October 1944 (two of Bandera's brothers died in the camp). Georg Elser, an opponent of Nazism who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler on his own in 1938, was also imprisoned in Sachsenhausen before being moved to Dachau concentration camp. Stefan Rowecki, chief commander of Polish Armia Krajowa was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen in 1943 and probably executed there in 1944. Yakov Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin's eldest son, was briefly imprisoned in the camp and murdered there in 1943 under unclear circumstances. Dmitry Karbyshev, Red Army general and Hero of the Soviet Union (posthumously) was briefly imprisoned in the camp before being moved to Mauthausen concentration camp. The Danish Communist leader Aksel Larsen was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen from 1943 to 1945.

Amongst those executed in "Station Z" were the commandos from Operation Musketoon and the Grand Prix motor racing champion, William Grover-Williams, also John Godwin RNVR, a British Naval Sub-Lieutenant who managed to shoot dead the commander of his execution party, for which he was mentioned in despatches posthumously.

On September 15 1939, August Dickman, a German Jehovah's Witness, was publicly shot as a result of his conscientious objection to joining the armed forces.The SS had expected his death to persuade fellow Witnesses to abandon their own refusals and to show respect for camp rules and authorities. It failed; the others enthusiastically refused to back down and begged to be martyred also.

[edit] The camp under the Soviets

In August 1945 the Soviet Special Camp No. 7 was moved to the area of the former concentration camp. Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, as were political prisoners and inmates sentenced by the Soviet Military Tribunal. By 1948, Sachsenhausen, now renamed "Special Camp No. 1", was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The 60,000 people interned over five years included 6,000 German officers transferred from Western Allied camps. Others were Nazi functionaries, anti-Communists and Russians, including Nazi collaborators and soldiers who contracted sexually transmitted diseases in Germany.[2]

By the closing of the camp in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.[5]

[edit] The Sachsenhausen camp today

In 1956, the East German government established the site as a national memorial, which was inaugurated on 23rd April 1961. The plans involved the removal of most of the original buildings and the construction of an obelisk, statue and meeting area reflecting the outlook of the then government. The role of political resistance was emphasised over that of other groups.

At present, the site of the Sachsenhausen camp is open to the public as a museum and a memorial. Several buildings and structures survive or have been reconstructed, including guard towers, the camp entrance, crematory ovens and the camp barracks.

After German reunification, the camp was entrusted to a foundation which opened a museum on the site. The museum features artwork created by inmates and a 30 centimetre high pile of gold teeth (extracted by the Germans from the prisoners), scale models of the camp, pictures, documents and other artifacts illustrating life in the camp. Further exhibits are expected to open in late 2007, including the restored camp kitchen. The administrative buildings from which the entire German concentration camp network was run have been preserved and can also be seen. There has been an attempt to burn down the huts occupied by Jewish prisoners.

Following the discovery in 1990 of mass graves from the Soviet period, a separate museum has been opened documenting the camp's Soviet-era history, in the former sonder lager.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenhausen_concentration_camp

Dachau concentration camp

2009-02-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp, and the first one opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria which is located in southern Germany.

Opened in March 1933[1], it was the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of National Socialist (Nazi) NSDAP party and the German Nationalist People's party (dissolved on 6 July 1933). Heinrich Himmler, Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners."[2]

Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps, and as early as 1935 there were jingles warning:

"Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not to Dachau come."[3]

Its basic organization, camp layout as well as the plan for the buildings were developed by Kommandant Theodor Eicke and were applied to all later camps. He had a separate secure camp near the command center, which consisted of living quarters, administration, and army camps. Eicke himself became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for molding the others according to his model.[4]

In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau of whom two-thirds were political prisoners and nearly one-third were Jews.[5] 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps,[6] primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide. In early 1945, there was a typhus epidemic in the camp followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the weaker prisoners died.

Together with the much larger Auschwitz, Dachau has come to symbolize the Nazi concentration camps to many people. Konzentrationslager (KZ) Dachau holds a significant place in public memory because it was the second camp to be liberated by British or American forces. Therefore, it was one of the first places where the West was exposed to the reality of Nazi brutality through firsthand journalist accounts and through newsreels.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp

History of the Holocaust — An Introduction

2009-02-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (VE Day), when the war in Europe ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Germany's deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung).
After its defeat in World War I, Germany was humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, which reduced its prewar territory, drastically reduced its armed forces, demanded the recognition of its guilt for the war, and stipulated it pay reparations to the allied powers. The German Empire destroyed, a new parliamentary government called the Weimar Republic was formed. The republic suffered from economic instability, which grew worse during the worldwide depression after the New York stock market crash in 1929. Massive inflation followed by very high unemployment heightened existing class and political differences and began to undermine the government.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, was named chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the elections of 1932. The Nazi Party had taken advantage of the political unrest in Germany to gain an electoral foothold. The Nazis incited clashes with the communists, who many feared, disrupted the government with demonstrations, and conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against its political opponents-the weak Weimar government, and the Jews, whom the Nazis blamed for Germany's ills.

Propaganda: “The Jews Are Our Misfortune”

A major tool of the Nazis' propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, "The Jews are our misfortune!" Der Stürmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and apelike. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly.

Soon after he became chancellor, Hitler called for new elections in an effort to get full control of the Reichstag, the German parliament, for the Nazis. The Nazis used the government apparatus to terrorize the other parties. They arrested their leaders and banned their political meetings. Then, in the midst of the election campaign, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building burned. A Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime, and he swore he had acted alone. Although many suspected the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the act, the Nazis managed to blame the Communists, thus turning more votes their way.

The fire signaled the demise of German democracy. On the next day, the government, under the pretense of controlling the Communists, abolished individual rights and protections: freedom of the press, assembly, and expression were nullified, as well as the right to privacy. When the elections were held on March 5, the Nazis received nearly 44 percent of the vote, and with 8 percent offered by the Conservatives, won a majority in the government.

The Nazis moved swiftly to consolidate their power into a dictatorship. On March 23, the Enabling Act was passed. It sanctioned Hitler’s dictatorial efforts and legally enabled him to pursue them further. The Nazis marshaled their formidable propaganda machine to silence their critics. They also developed a sophisticated police and military force.

The Sturmabteilung (S.A., Storm Troopers), a grassroots organization, helped Hitler undermine the German democracy. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police), a force recruited from professional police officers, was given complete freedom to arrest anyone after February 28. The Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squad) served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and eventually controlled the concentration camps and the Gestapo. The Sicherheitsdienst des ReichsführersSS (S.D., Security Service of the SS) functioned as the Nazis' intelligence service, uncovering enemies and keeping them under surveillance.

With this police infrastructure in place, opponents of the Nazis were terrorized, beaten, or sent to one of the concentration camps the Germans built to incarcerate them. Dachau, just outside of Munich, was the first such camp built for political prisoners. Dachau's purpose changed over time and eventually became another brutal concentration camp for Jews.

By the end of 1934 Hitler was in absolute control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews in full swing. The Nazis claimed the Jews corrupted pure German culture with their "foreign" and "mongrel" influence. They portrayed the Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking, courageous, and honest. The Jews, the Nazis claimed, who were heavily represented in finance, commerce, the press, literature, theater, and the arts, had weakened Germany's economy and culture. The massive government-supported propaganda machine created a racial anti-Semitism, which was different from the longstanding anti-Semitic tradition of the Christian churches.

The superior race was the "Aryans," the Germans. The word Aryan, "derived from the study of linguistics, which started in the eighteenth century and at some point determined that the Indo-Germanic (also known as Aryan) languages were superior in their structures, variety, and vocabulary to the Semitic languages that had evolved in the Near East. This judgment led to a certain conjecture about the character of the peoples who spoke these languages; the conclusion was that the 'Aryan' peoples were likewise superior to the 'Semitic' ones" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 36).
The Jews Are Isolated from Society

The Nazis then combined their racial theories with the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to justify their treatment of the Jews. The Germans, as the strongest and fittest, were destined to rule, while the weak and racially adulterated Jews were doomed to extinction. Hitler began to restrict the Jews with legislation and terror, which entailed burning books written by Jews, removing Jews from their professions and public schools, confiscating their businesses and property and excluding them from public events. The most infamous of the anti-Jewish legislation were the Nuremberg Laws, enacted on September 15, 1935. They formed the legal basis for the Jews' exclusion from German society and the progressively restrictive Jewish policies of the Germans.

Many Jews attempted to flee Germany, and thousands succeeded by immigrating to such countries as Belgium, Czechoslovakia, England, France and Holland. It was much more difficult to get out of Europe. Jews encountered stiff immigration quotas in most of the world's countries. Even if they obtained the necessary documents, they often had to wait months or years before leaving. Many families out of desperation sent their children first.

In July 1938, representatives of 32 countries met in the French town of Evian to discuss the refugee and immigration problems created by the Nazis in Germany. Nothing substantial was done or decided at the Evian Conference, and it became apparent to Hitler that no one wanted the Jews and that he would not meet resistance in instituting his Jewish policies. By the autumn of 1941, Europe was in effect sealed to most legal emigration. The Jews were trapped.

On November 910, 1938, the attacks on the Jews became violent. Hershel Grynszpan, a 17yearold Jewish boy distraught at the deportation of his family, shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, who died on November 9. Nazi hooligans used this assassination as the pretext for instigating a night of destruction that is now known as Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). They looted and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses and burned synagogues. Many Jews were beaten and killed; 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The Jews Are Confined to Ghettos

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II. Soon after, in 1940, the Nazis began establishing ghettos for the Jews of Poland. More than 10 percent of the Polish population was Jewish, numbering about three million. Jews were forcibly deported from their homes to live in crowded ghettos, isolated from the rest of society. This concentration of the Jewish population later aided the Nazis in their deportation of the Jews to the death camps. The ghettos lacked the necessary food, water, space, and sanitary facilities required by so many people living within their constricted boundaries. Many died of deprivation and starvation.
The “Final Solution”

In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the "Final Solution." Four mobile killing groups were formed called Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. Each group contained several commando units. The Einsatzgruppen gathered Jews town by town, marched them to huge pits dug earlier, stripped them, lined them up, and shot them with automatic weapons. The dead and dying would fall into the pits to be buried in mass graves. In the infamous Babi Yar massacre, near Kiev, 30,000-35,000 Jews were killed in two days. In addition to their operations in the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen conducted mass murder in eastern Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. It is estimated that by the end of 1942, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 1.3 million Jews.

On January 20, 1942, several top officials of the German government met to officially coordinate the military and civilian administrative branches of the Nazi system to organize a system of mass murder of the Jews. This meeting, called the Wannsee Conference, "marked the beginning of the full-scale, comprehensive extermination operation [of the Jews] and laid the foundations for its organization, which started immediately after the conference ended" (Yahil, The Holocaust, p. 318).

While the Nazis murdered other national and ethnic groups, such as a number of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, and gypsies, only the Jews were marked for systematic and total annihilation. Jews were singled out for "Special Treatment" (Sonderbehandlung), which meant that Jewish men, women and children were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas. In the exacting records kept at the Auschwitz death camp, the cause of death of Jews who had been gassed was indicated by "SB," the first letters of the two words that form the German term for "Special Treatment."

By the spring of 1942, the Nazis had established six killing centers (death camps) in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek and Auschwitz. All were located near railway lines so that Jews could be easily transported daily. A vast system of camps (called Lagersystem) supported the death camps. The purpose of these camps varied: some were slave labor camps, some transit camps, others concentration camps and their subcamps, and still others the notorious death camps. Some camps combined all of these functions or a few of them. All the camps were intolerably brutal.

The major concentration camps were Ravensbruck, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Flossenburg, Natzweiler-Struthof, Dachau, Mauthausen, Stutthof, and Dora/Nordhausen.

In nearly every country overrun by the Nazis, the Jews were forced to wear badges marking them as Jews, they were rounded up into ghettos or concentration camps and then gradually transported to the killing centers. The death camps were essentially factories for murdering Jews. The Germans shipped thousands of Jews to them each day. Within a few hours of their arrival, the Jews had been stripped of their possessions and valuables, gassed to death, and their bodies burned in specially designed crematoriums. Approximately 3.5 million Jews were murdered in these death camps.

Many healthy, young strong Jews were not killed immediately. The Germans' war effort and the “Final Solution” required a great deal of manpower, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labor. These people, imprisoned in concentration and labor camps, were forced to work in German munitions and other factories, such as I.G. Farben and Krupps, and wherever the Nazis needed laborers. They were worked from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter. Thousands perished, literally worked to death by the Germans and their collaborators.

In the last months of Hitler’s Reich, as the German armies retreated, the Nazis began marching the prisoners still alive in the concentration camps to the territory they still controlled. The Germans forced the starving and sick Jews to walk hundreds of miles. Most died or were shot along the way. About a quarter of a million Jews died on the death marches.
Jewish Resistance

The Germans' overwhelming repression and the presence of many collaborators in the various local populations severely limited the ability of the Jews to resist. Jewish resistance did occur, however, in several forms. Staying alive, clean, and observing Jewish religious traditions constituted resistance under the dehumanizing conditions imposed by the Nazis. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many who succeeded in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local residents and partisan groups who were often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bialystok, Bedzin-Sosnowiec, Cracow, and Warsaw.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest ghetto revolt. Massive deportations (or Aktions) had been held in the ghetto from July to September 1942, emptying the ghetto of the majority of Jews imprisoned there. When the Germans entered the ghetto again in January 1943 to remove several thousand more, small unorganized groups of Jews attacked them. After four days, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto, having deported far fewer people than they had intended. The Nazis reentered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, to evacuate the remaining Jews and close the ghetto. The Jews, using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted and withstood the Germans for 27 days. They fought from bunkers and sewers and evaded capture until the Germans burned the ghetto building by building. By May 16 the ghetto was in ruins and the uprising crushed.

Jews also revolted in the death camps of Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. All of these acts of resistance were largely unsuccessful in the face of the superior German forces, but they were very important spiritually, giving the Jews hope that one day the Nazis would be defeated.
Liberation and the End of War

The camps were liberated gradually, as the Allies advanced on the German army. For example, Maidanek (near Lublin, Poland) was liberated by Soviet forces in July 1944, Auschwitz in January 1945 by the Soviets, Bergen-Belsen (near Hanover, Germany) by the British in April 1945, and Dachau by the Americans in April 1945.

At the end of the war, between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors were living in three zones of occupation: American, British and Soviet. Within a year, that figure grew to about 200,000. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs). The Jewish DPs would not and could not return to their homes, which brought back such horrible memories and still held the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbors. Thus, they languished in DP camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, and later Israel, the United States, South America and other countries. The last DP camp closed in 1957 (David S. Wyman, "The United States," in David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 70710).

Below are figures for the number of Jews murdered in each country that came under German domination. They are estimates, as are all figures relating to Holocaust victims. The numbers given here for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania are based on their territorial borders before the 1938 Munich agreement. The total number of six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, which emerged from the Nuremberg trials, is also an estimate. Numbers have ranged between five and seven million killed.

Africa
526

Albania
200

Austria
65,000

Belgium
24,387

Czechoslovakia
277,000

Denmark
77

Estonia
4,000

France
83,000

Germany
160,000

Greece
71,301

Hungary
305,000

Italy
8,000

Latvia
85,000

Lithuania
135,000

Luxembourg
700

Netherlands
106,000

Norway
728

Poland
3,001,000

Romania
364,632

Soviet Union
1,500,000

Yugoslavia
67,122

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/history.html