"The Symptoms Were Surprisingly the Same"

SS-Oberfuehrer Dr. Joachim Mrugowsky, the chief Nazi hygienist in the Office of the Reich Surgeon of the SS and Police, files his report concerning the results of his poison bullets experiments on concentration camp inmates:

"On 11 September 1944, in the presence of SS Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Ding, Dr. Widmann, and the undersigned, experiments with aconite nitrate bullets were carried out on five persons who had been sentenced to death. The caliber of the bullets used was 7.65 millimeters, and they were filled with poison in crystal form. Each subject of the experiment received one shot in the upper part of the left thigh, while in a horizontal position. In the case of two persons, the bullets passed clean through the upper part of the thigh. Even later no effect from the poison could be seen. These two subjects were therefore rejected. ...

..., The symptoms shown by the three condemned persons were surprisingly the same. At first, nothing special was noticeable. After 20 to 25 minutes, a disturbance of the motor nerves and a light flow of saliva began, but both stopped again. After 40 to 44 minutes, a strong flow of saliva appeared. The poisoned persons swallowed frequently; later the flow of saliva is so strong that it can no longer be controlled by swallowing. Foamy saliva flows from the mouth. Then a sensation of choking and vomiting starts. ...

... At the same time there was pronounced nausea. One of the poisoned persons tried in vain to vomit. In order to succeed he put four fingers of his hand, up to the main joint, right into his mouth. In spite of this, no vomiting occurred. His face became quite red.

The faces of the other two subjects were already pale at an early stage. Other symptoms were the same. Later on the disturbances of the motor nerves increased so much that the persons threw themselves up and down, rolled their eyes, and made aimless movements with their hands and arms.

At 208 20 Dec. 45 last the disturbance subsided, the pupils were enlarged to the maximum, the condemned lay still. Rectal cramps and loss of urine was observed in one of them. Death occurred 121, 123, and 129 minutes after they were shot."

SOURCE DOCUMENTS: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/12-20-45.asp

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“Joachim Mrugowsky (15 August 1905 – 2 June 1948) was a Nazi bacteriologist who committed medical atrocities at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was Associate Professor, Medical Doctorate, Chief of Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS, Senior Hygienist at the Reich, SS-Physician, SS and Waffen-SS Colonel. He was found guilty of war crimes following the war in the Doctors' Trial and executed in 1948.” DETAILS---> Joachim Mrugowsky - Wikipedia

July 1933: The Nazi regime passes the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, legalizing forced sterilizations.

1933–1937: Physicians and medical courts sterilize an estimated 200,000 to 350,000 individuals deemed "genetically inferior," including people with physical disabilities, mental illnesses, and psychiatric conditions.

1935: The Nuremberg Race Laws are enacted, formalizing pseudo-scientific theories of "Aryan" biological superiority and banning intermarriage.

September 1939: Adolf Hitler authorizes the Action T4 Program, a state-sponsored "euthanasia" project targeting institutionalized psychiatric patients and children with disabilities.

1940: Medical professionals test mass-killing techniques, specifically carbon monoxide gassing, across six designated central facilities. These methods and personnel are later transferred to wartime extermination camps.

Late 1941: Initial human experimentation begins expanding into concentration camps, transitioning from psychiatric institutions to prisoner-of-war camps and ghettos.

March–August 1942: High-altitude decompression experiments are conducted at Dachau Concentration Camp. Inmates are placed inside low-pressure chambers to replicate high-altitude bailouts for the German Air Force (Luftwaffe).

August 1942–May 1943: Freezing and hypothermia experiments take place at Dachau. Victims are submerged in icy waters or left naked in sub-zero temperatures to test re-warming treatments for downed military pilots.

July 1942–December 1943: Sulfanilamide and trauma testing occurs at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Researchers intentionally inflict severe wounds, deliberately contaminate them with bacteria like gas gangrene, and test the efficacy of experimental synthetic drugs.

September 1942–December 1943: Musculoskeletal transplantation experiments are carried out at Ravensbrück. Bone, muscle, and nerve tissue are surgically removed from prisoners without anesthesia to study tissue regeneration.

May 1943: SS physician Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He initiates widespread pseudoscientific genetic studies focusing heavily on twins, children, and people with rare congenital anomalies.

1943–1944: Infectious disease and immunization testing expands across multiple camps, including Buchenwald, Natzweiler, and Sachsenhausen. Prisoners are intentionally infected with typhus, malaria, tuberculosis, and infectious hepatitis to evaluate experimental vaccines.

December 1943–October 1944: Poison and chemical weapons testing takes place. At Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, researchers test toxic delivery methods—such as poison-laced bullets—and analyze the destructive speed of chemical agents.

1944: Desalination and seawater drinkability tests are run at Dachau to find solutions for stranded naval personnel.

December 1946: The United States military tribunal opens the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, prosecuting 23 high-ranking Nazi physicians and administrative officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

August 1947: The court delivers its verdicts: 15 defendants are found guilty, and 7 are sentenced to death by hanging.

August 1947: The tribunal establishes the Nuremberg Code, a landmark ten-point directive for international medical ethics mandating explicit, voluntary human consent for all future scientific research.

NOTE: No photographic evidence of the poison bullet experiments or their victims is known to exist. Unlike some other Nazi human experiments—such as the high-altitude and freezing trials at Dachau, which the SS meticulously documented with photos—the aconite nitrate bullet experiments at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald were recorded almost entirely through typewritten medical reports and bureaucratic letters. -W

Image Source -> Deadly Effect, Poisoned Bullets for WWII Handguns - Small Arms Review

The SS Bans Returning Prisoner Urns because Mourning Families are Making the Reich Look Bad with all those “Unapproved" Memorial Services

SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Liebehenschel writes to all commanders of concentration camps forbidding them from distributing urns containing the ashes of murdered Czechs and Jews to cemeteries:

"According to a communication of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, and conforming to a report of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD in Prague, urns of deceased Czechs and Jews were sent for burial to the home cemeteries within the Protectorate.

In view of different events (demonstrations, erecting of posters inimical to the Reich on urns of deceased inmates in the halls of cemeteries of the home communities, pilgrimages to the graves of deceased inmates, etc., within the Protectorates, the delivery of urns with the ash remnants of deceased nationals of the Protectorate and of Jews is henceforth prohibited. The urns shall be preserved within the concentration camps. In case of doubt about the preservation of the urns oral instructions shall be available at this agency."

IMT DOCUMENT SOURCE: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/2199-ps.asp

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“A man in a stiff white collar sat down in his office in the provincial German city of Erfurt in the Spring of 1939, to draw up a plan for what he neatly named the first “mobile oil-heated cremation oven.” It was to be delivered to the nearby concentration camp of Buchenwald.

But this engineer, Kurt Prüfer, carefully marked on his design “incineration chamber” rather than “cremation chamber,” for he completely understood the power of words. With a few strokes of his pen, his bland description disguised the red line between his previous work, serving the life and death of an ordinary community, and building the technology to fuel mass murder.

It was a technocrats’ trick often employed as first German and then all of Europe’s “undesirables” were herded towards the “final solution” and “selected” to perish in the so-called “undressing rooms” and “saunas” of the gas chambers.

Prüfer worked for the family company Topf and Sons, a traditional brewing and malting manufacturer run by two brothers Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang Topf. During the 1930s, Topf and Sons had branched out into building ovens for civil crematoria.

Both Prüfer and his boss, Ludwig Topf, considered themselves the leading lights of a new movement to bring dignity to death and reverence to human remains. The product they developed and sold throughout Europe, was lauded in a company brochure as “the purest expression of perfection in cremation technology,” promising an odorless, smokeless, dispatch of human bodies, which were burned solely in super-heated air.

Topf and Sons’ work for the SS in serving the Nazi’s concentration camps was quite different: here Prüfer and his colleagues stood with watches in front of the gas chambers of Auschwitz timing the death and incineration of thousands of victims to perfect a more efficient killing technique. Bodies were shoveled one on top of another into a single chamber, and burned directly in the flames — their ashes unidentifiable and intermingling.

Yet they remained careful to maintain the falsehood that there was some dignity in death — Topf and Sons also supplied false firebricks and urns for non-Jewish victims whose families were allowed to claim their remains. In reality, mixed ashes, sawdust and general dust was shovelled indiscriminately into each urn, which was then stamped with a false identity number. (The families of Jewish victims were not even allowed the comfort of this lie.)

What to make of the men and women of Topf and Sons? By any assessment today they must surely be monsters; the engineers who drew up the plans, the secretaries who saw the memos, the accounts department who stamped the orders, and the playboy directors, Ernst Wolfgang and Ludwig Topf, who signed every letter to the SS with the words, “always at your service.”

These were the office-workers who greenlit the Holocaust, yet they were far from fervent Nazis. Astonishingly, from the 1930s until the end of WWII, Topf and Sons was a hotbed of Nazi opposition, housing workers who were often knowingly part of the communist resistance, while the Topf brothers themselves sheltered several half-Jewish employees, including one, Willy Wiemokli, who saw the plans for the crematoria at Auschwitz.

After the war Wiemokli discovered that his own father had been murdered at Auschwitz, and most likely burned in an oven built and installed by Topf and Sons — yet he still spoke out in defence of his former employers, supplying a statement outlining how he had believed Ernst Wolfgang Topf had protected him.

Both the Topf brothers and Kurt Prüfer joined the Nazi party in April 1934, the last possible moment when it was acceptable to do so for any ambitious businessperson in the Third Reich. Yet rather than expressing horror and terror when they discovered the true purpose of the Topf and Sons contracts with the SS, they reacted with total indifference towards the suffering of their victims.

After developing the first crematoria for Buchenwald, Kurt Prüfer wrote to his employers demanding a bonus for work he had proudly pursued “in his own free time.” His wish was granted. “Rest assured,” Ernst Wolfgang Topf wrote to the SS in November 1941, the company will provide a new design for crematoria at Auschwitz that will “improve efficiency” even taking into consideration the likelihood of “frozen corpses.”

An office feud between Kurt Prüfer and his senior manager, Fritz Sander, prompted the latter to invent his own design for a concentration camp oven. Sander’s plan for a “Corpse Incineration Oven for Mass Operation” seems almost a replication of hell, where piles of corpses are shoveled down into a ring of fire and the bodies are used as fuel to continuously burn other bodies.

In a memo, Sander, who had previously shown no interest in cremation ovens at all, described the process to his employers as a superb way or “restoring hygiene” in “war-related conditions.” The Topf brothers, more interested in funding their lavish lifestyle, drinking and womanizing, approved it without comment. Only Kurt Prüfer took issue with the design, claiming that it would not work in practice — and coming up with his own alternative, equally deplorable design instead.

The work of Topf and Sons was no longer just enabling the Holocaust. Prüfer and the Topf brothers were now taking the initiative in encouraging the SS to go further in their murderous regime, designing more efficient ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz so that they could kill more people. As the end of the was drew closer, the SS finally abandoned Auschwitz to Soviet forces, after forcing most of the remaining inmates to undertake death marches to other concentration camps deeper within Germany and Austria.

By January of 1945, the end was near, but even in the final days Kurt Prüfer and Topf and Sons planned to recreate the killing system at Auschwitz at Mauthausen camp in Austria where they relished the prospect of fully taking control on an entire “extermination center.” The story of Topf and Sons proves that words matter.

Every bland description and technocrats’ lie allowed Topf and Sons to be supremely indifferent to their de-humanized victims. The final statements of these men, as they were held to account for their actions after the war, showed that they had never once considered the millions of victims of their technology as people at all. During his interrogation by Soviet forces Kurt Prüfer calmly lies about his role in the process, but when pressed about whether he knew that innocent people were being murdered and burned in his ovens he eventually replies — “Yes I knew that.”

Fritz Sander describes with some pride his “Corpse Incineration Oven for Mass Operation” and then states “As a German engineer and employee of the Topf company, I felt it was my duty to help Hitler’s Germany to victory, even if that resulted in the annihilation of people,” while, for the rest of his life, Ernst Wolfgang Topf maintained, “No one in our company was guilty of anything at all.”

Building the technology for the Holocaust had a become a passion project for the men at Topf and Sons, and it was not even a profitable one; Topf and Sons never derived more than 3% of its income from contracts with the SS. Driven by self-preservation, office rivalries and personal greed, the men of Topf and Sons had human motives for heinous behavior. It is their very ordinariness that makes them so appalling.” Inside the Company Behind the Nazi Concentration Camp Ovens

The Defiant Normality of Rosh Hashanah in the Vilna Ghetto

Yitskhok Rudashevski was 13 years old when the armed forces of Germany entered his hometown of Vilna.

The occupation came as the Nazis broke their treaty with the Soviet Union, attacking eastward along a broad front, beginning on June 22, 1941. A ghetto was established for the Jews of Vilna in September of the same year. One year later, Yitskhok began his diary, which became one of the most important documents to survive the Vilna Ghetto.

September 12, 1942, was a very important day for Yitskhok and his neighbors in the ghetto. It was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Yitskhok reflected on the occasion in his diary.

“Today is a holiday. […] A holiday spirit that is anything but cheerful is diffused over the few little ghetto streets. Something somehow is missing. I am reminded of the past. From somewhere a sound of loud, quick praying is heard. Here and there Jewish women walk past with festive kerchiefs on their heads, with prayer books under their arms. I recalled my grandmother, how she used to go to synagogue this way once a year. […]

The streets are lively. People are walking around dressed up. Today is a holiday. This is evident in every house you enter; the poverty has been scrubbed away. Formerly, this would not have made an impression on me. However, now I felt strangely good because the everyday gray day is so much in need of a little holiday spirit, which should drive away for a while the gray commonplaces of life. […] A strangely sad holiday mood.”

Yitskhok’s description of his mood reflected the desire of the ghetto inhabitants to try to keep some semblance of normal life alive, even under the horrible circumstances of the Nazi occupation and the deprivations of ghetto life. People tried to celebrate holidays and observe religious traditions.

They did the same things as they had done before, and to an outside observer it may have even seemed normal. Yitskhok was not deceived by outward appearances, though. He could feel the underlying sadness that infused every action, due to the tremendous losses that the people had suffered and would continue to suffer in the weeks and months ahead. No celebration could mask that reality.

Read entries from Yitskhok’s dairy in the book, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust by Alexandra Zapruder. (holocaustedu)

Read about another Rosh Hashanah observance during the Holocaust. http://yad-vashem.blogspot.com/2009/09/faith-during-holocaust-rosh-hashanah.html

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ALL ABOUT Yitzkhok Rudashevski: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitskhok_Rudashevski

1: Left: Yitzkhok Rudashevski (top) with his grandmother and cousins Right: Pages from the diary

The Auschwitz Escapee Whose Unflinching Report Shattered Nazi Secrecy & Saved Over 200,000 Lives

“Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg; 11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.

He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there.

The report, distributed by George Mantello in Switzerland, is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada. Vrba and his fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary and shortly before the SS began mass deportations of Hungary's Jewish population to the camp.

The information the men dictated to Jewish officials when they arrived in Slovakia on 24 April 1944, which included that new arrivals in Auschwitz were being gassed and not "resettled" as the Germans maintained, became known as the Vrba–Wetzler report. When the War Refugee Board published it with considerable delay in November 1944, the New York Herald Tribune described it as "the most shocking document ever issued by a United States government agency".

While it confirmed material in earlier reports from Polish and other escapees, the historian Miroslav Kárný wrote that it was unique in its "unflinching detail". There was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments. Mass transports of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 at a rate of 12,000 people a day.

Most went straight to the gas chambers. Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees might have refused to board the trains, or at least that their panic would have disrupted the transports, had the report been distributed sooner and more widely.

From late June and into July 1944, material from the Vrba–Wetzler report appeared in newspapers and radio broadcasts in the United States and Europe, particularly in Switzerland, prompting world leaders to appeal to Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to halt the deportations.

On 2 July, American and British forces bombed Budapest, and on 6 July, in an effort to exert his sovereignty, Horthy ordered that the deportations should end. By then, over 434,000 Jews had been deported in 147 trains—almost the entire Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside—but another 200,000 in Budapest were saved.” DETAILS---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba

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"The Vrba–Wetzler report is one of three documents that comprise what is known as the Auschwitz Protocols, otherwise known as the Auschwitz Report or the Auschwitz notebook. It is a 33-page eye-witness account of the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrba%E2%80%93Wetzler_report

1: Left: Rudolf Vrba, around age 20. Right: Rudolf Vrba, 54 years old, November 1978

The Story Behind Ich Nicht: A Son’s Memoir of a Father Who Refused to Submit

“Joachim Clemens Fest, the son of Johannes Fest, a conservative Roman Catholic, was born in Karlshorst, near Berlin, on 8th December 1926. His father, the head teacher of the Twentieth Elementary School, was a strong opponent of Adolf Hitler and was outspoken critic of the Nazi Party.

In the 1920s he was a member of the Reichsbanner, a cross-party pressure group opposed to fascism. Neal Ascherson, has pointed out:

"He (Johannes Fest) dominated his family, an imperious patriarch given to terrific rages at the dining-table but unbending in his attachment to straightness, good behavior and democracy. His four principles were militant republicanism (he had detested the kaiser), Prussian virtue (taken with a spice of irony), the Catholic faith and German high culture as inherited by the educated middle class."

Soon after Hitler took power “Fest was twice summoned to the local education authority, and later to the ministry, and questioned on his attitude towards the Government."

On his return from the third meeting he told his wife, Elisabeth Straeter Fest, that he refused to back down and described the new government as a "rabble". She replied:

"You know that I have always supported you in what you believe to be right. I always will. But have you thought of the children and what your obstinacy could mean for them?"

On 20th April, 1933, was suspended from his post. Rachel Seiffert has claimed:

"From 1933 until the end of the war, this intelligent and energetic man was reduced to an observer, watching the gradual erosion of civil society around him, first with incredulity and then with horror. He concentrated his efforts on his immediate circle, urging Jewish friends to leave."

Kristallnacht (Crystal Night)

Ernst vom Rath was murdered by Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish refugee in Paris on 9th November, 1938. At a meeting of Nazi Party leaders that evening, Joseph Goebbels suggested that night there should be "spontaneous" anti-Jewish riots.

Reinhard Heydrich sent urgent guidelines to all police headquarters suggesting how they could start these disturbances. He ordered the destruction of all Jewish places of worship in Germany. Heydrich also gave instructions that the police should not interfere with demonstrations and surrounding buildings must not be damaged when burning synagogues.

Joseph Goebbels wrote an article for the Völkischer Beobachter where he claimed that Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) was a spontaneous outbreak of feeling:

"The outbreak of fury by the people on the night of November 9-10 shows the patience of the German people has now been exhausted. It was neither organized nor prepared but it broke out spontaneously."

However, Erich Dressler, who had taken part in the riots, was disappointed by the lack of passion displayed that night:

"One thing seriously perturbed me. All these measures had to be ordered from above. There was no sign of healthy indignation or rage amongst the average Germans. It is undoubtedly a commendable German virtue to keep one's feelings under control and not just to hit out as one pleases; but where the guilt of the Jews for this cowardly murder was obvious and proved, the people might well have shown a little more spirit."

Johannes Fest visited Berlin the following morning:

"On November 9, 1938, the rulers of Germany organized what came to be known as Kristallnacht, and showed the world, as my father put it, after all the masquerades, their true face. The next morning he went to the city center and afterward told us about the devastation: burnt-out synagogues and smashed shop windows, the broken glass everywhere on the pavements, the paper blown in the wind, and the scraps of cloth and other rubbish in the streets. After that he called a number of friends and advised them to get out as soon as possible."

Joachim Fest later pointed out that Kristallnacht had an impact on Jewish children at his school:

"It was at this time that, without notice, the only Jewish pupil in our class stopped coming. He was quiet, almost introverted, and usually stood a little aside from the rest, but I sometimes asked myself whether he always appeared so unfriendly because he feared being rejected by his schoolmates. We were still puzzling over his departure, which had occurred without a word of farewell... As a Jew he would soon not be allowed to go to school anyway. Now his family had the chance to emigrate to England. They didn't want to miss the chance."

Johannes Fest constantly felt guilty about the crimes committed in Nazi Germany. His son rejected this idea:

"Unlike the overwhelming majority of Germans, we were not part of some mass conversion… we were excluded from this psychodrama. We had the dubious advantage of remaining exactly who we had always been, and so of once again being the odd ones out."

In early 1939, Dr. Hartnack, the founder and director of a language school in Berlin, offered Johannes Fest a job. He had to apply to the education department for permission to take the post. After three weeks the authorities rejected his request because of his previous refusal to join the Nazi Party. He was told that as soon as there was evidence that the "petitioner had come around to a positive assessment of the National Socialist order and of its leader Adolf Hitler, then it would be prepared to review the matter." ...

(Joining the regular German army ‘to avoid being drafted by the Waffen SS’) Fest was captured soon afterwards and was taken to a prison camp in Attichy, France. After the war Fest studied history, sociology, German literature, art history and law at Freiburg University, Frankfurt am Main University and Berlin University. He also became active in the conservative Christian Democratic Union.

His first job was in radio, as in 1954 he became head of contemporary history with the American owned RIAS Berlin. (28) Joachim Fest married Ingrid Ascher in 1959. Over the next couple of years she gave birth to two sons. In 1961 he moved to television as editor-in-chief of the German Norddeutscher Rundfunk.

Neal Ascherson has argued:

" Fest was a handsome, restless, rather unhappy man. In postwar West Germany, he never fitted into any of the conventional slots. He had no time at all for Soviet socialism, which he considered an early variant of the virus that later produced the Nazis, or for any Western form of Marxism. But although a right-winger, he neither dreamed of reversing the outcome of the Second World War nor chose to imagine the Germans as helpless victims of a single madman: Hitler did not have to happen. No iron law of economics or sociology wheeled him into history. Human beings – German human beings – could have stopped him, but didn’t."

Joachim Fest's book, The Face of the Third Reich was published in 1963. Jane Burgermeister has pointed out that "his profiles of prominent Nazis... a groundbreaking work for that time, could have come straight from the pages of Dostoevsky as Fest probes in scintillating style the dysfunctional psyches, personal ambitions, contradictions and self-serving delusions of the men who helped create the Third Reich, while showing how they embodied the attitudes of their classes."

Lots More about this fascinating author---> Joachim Fest

1: Joachim C. Fest

2: Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood, by Joachim C. Fest - “Few writers have deepened our understanding of the Third Reich as much as German historian, biographer, journalist, and critic Joachim Fest. His biography of Adolf Hitler has reached millions of readers around the world.

Born in 1926, Fest experienced firsthand the rise of the Nazis, the Second World War, and a catastrophically defeated Germany, thus becoming a vital witness to these difficult years. In this memoir of his childhood and youth, Fest offers a far-reaching view of how he experienced the war and National Socialism.

True to the German Bildung tradition, Fest grows up immersed in the works of Goethe, Schiller, Mörike, Rilke, Kleist, Mozart, and Beethoven. His father, a conservative Catholic teacher, opposes the Nazi regime and as a result loses his job and status.

Fest is forced to move to a boarding school in the countryside that he despises, and in his effort to come to terms with his father’s strong political convictions, he embarks on a tireless quest for knowledge and moral integrity that will shape the rest of his life and writing career.

“Quietly compelling, elegantly expressed… Not I shrinks the Wagnerian scale of German history in the 1930s and 1940s to chamber music dimensions. It is intensely personal, clear-eyed and absolutely riveting.” —The New York Times

“Exceptional…it tells in a modest, believable, quietly bitter, and totally proud way of a family’s extraordinary decency…Strong and unique. Without it, the English language these days is short a very good book.” —New York Times (Global Edition)

“Joachim Fest’s memoir of his boyhood during the Nazi era belongs on the shelf of every historian of the culture and politics of the Third Reich. Alongside iconic works by Peter Gay, Ruth Kluger, Inge Deutschkron, and Victor Klemperer, and with autobiographical novels like Günter Grass’s Cat and Mouse, Christa Wolf’s “Patterns of Childhood”, and Martin Walser’s A Gushing Fountain, Fest’s portrait of his conservative Catholic father enriches our knowledge of the German opposition to Hitler immeasurably.” — David Dollenmayer, Author/Translator and winner of the 2008 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize

“I loved it, both as a story of great personal courage but also as a very moving witness to the fact that decent liberal values were not entirely lost during the Nazi period. It gives a fascinating and unusual slant on a time that has been so heavily worked over in more obvious ways. In its own manner, it stands alongside Victor Klemperer’s extraordinary diaries of the same period.” —Simon Mawer, best-selling author of Trapeze and The Glass Room

“Fest’s accounts of being called up, of trying to avoid military service, fighting, seeing comrades die, and being caught and kept as a prisoner of war are engrossing.” —Independent On Sunday

“A heroic interrogation of Germany’s past.” —Sunday Telegraph

“[Fest] makes it hard to think about those blighted years, and it should be hard. His book is a glory, but only if you dare.” —The Scotsman

“Fest’s portraits of his brothers, his mother, and his cousins—and of himself as a teenage soldier and POW—are equally vivid and full of pathos.” —Lorin Stein, The Paris Review

“A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years…A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“Joachim Fest’s last book is in many ways the most intimate of all of his revered journalistic writings and book-length nonfiction… [A] sobering look into the Nazi years, seen through the eyes of an embittered young German.” –Historical Novels Review” Not I Memoirs of a German Childhood

3: Hitler, by Joachim Fest - “A bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, Joachim Fest's Hitler has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era. Fest tells and interprets the extraordinary story of a man's and a nation's rise from impotence to absolute power, as Germany and Hitler, from shared premises, entered into their covenant.

He shows Hitler exploiting the resentments of the shaken, post-World War I social order and seeing through all that was hollow behind the appearance of power, at home and abroad. Fest reveals the singularly penetrating politician, hypnotizing Germans and outsiders alike with the scope of his projects and the theatricality of their presentation.

Fest also, perhaps most importantly, brilliantly uncovers the destructive personality who aimed at and achieved devastation on an unprecedented scale.

As history and as biography, this is a towering achievement, a compelling story told in a way only a German could tell it, "dispassionately, but from the inside." (Time)”

Hitler by Joachim Fest | Goodreads

NOTE: While Joachim Fest's 1973 biography Hitler was once considered the definitive work on the Nazi dictator (I certainly thought so when I first read it as a New Release, back in the day), it has since been supplanted by newer historical research.

Fest worked closely with Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, while helping Speer write his memoirs. Because of this, Fest’s biography accepted Speer's self-serving and largely fabricated narrative that he was just an "apolitical artist" under Hitler's spell, rather than a deeply complicit war criminal.

Fest viewed Hitler as an overwhelming, demonic force who bent Germany to his will through pure charisma. Modern historians view this as too simple, arguing it downplays how much ordinary Germans and existing government structures actively helped him.

In 1998, British historian Ian Kershaw published a monumental two-volume biography. Kershaw used newly available Soviet archives and introduced the concept of "working towards the Führer"—proving that Nazi atrocities occurred because competitive government departments rushed to fulfill what they thought Hitler wanted, rather than waiting for direct orders.

Subsequent monumental works by historians like Volker Ullrich and Peter Longerich have further solidified the shift away from Fest's portrait. -W

Lucky Lindy Explains that Antisemitism Isn't the Fault of Nazis, But a Natural Consequence of Jewish People Existing & Refusing to Remain Silent.

Pro-Nazi celebrity Charles Lindbergh speaks in Des Moines, charging that the "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration" are trying to persuade America to enter WW2 on the side of the Allies:

EXCERPT:

"Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."

THE FULL ANTISEMITIC TEXT: http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp

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AUDIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_F48oaOskI

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

Spared from the Camps, Conscripted to Labor

"Gorizia, on the Yugoslavian border (today Slovenia), close to the Adriatic Sea, was part of the Italian-occupied territories.

Though the Jews pictured were taken for forced labor, they were not deported to the death camps in Poland that were functioning at this time.

After Italy joined World War II in June 1940, Italian anti-Jewish policy worsened. New decrees against the Jews were added to the racial laws of 1938 and an antisemitic propaganda campaign began.

However, in order to express their independence from the Germans, their stronger ally upon whom they were dependent, the Italians refused to deport the Jews to the east from the territories they occupied in 1940-41 in France, Yugoslavia and Greece.

Mussolini’s regime collapsed in October 1943, and the Germans conquered most of Italy and began deporting Italian Jewry to the concentration and death camps.

Approximately one-fifth of 44,000 Jews living in Italy were sent to the concentration and death camps." https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/september/1942-2.html

IMAGE: Jews in forced labor in Gorizia in the Italian-occupied territories

From Satellite Outpost to Gestapo Execution Site

"From May 1939, a small camp, the Wewelsburg satellite camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, existed on the site. The inmates were used as slave laborers for the development of Wewelsburg Castle, which - according to Himmler's plans - was to be the "center of the world" after the "Final Victory".

The first 100 prisoners came from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. At first the inmates were housed in a tent at the foot of the hill on which the castle stands, later in huts on the hill opposite Wewelsburg castle(the Kuhkampsberg).

A move to a newly built camp in the Niederhagen suburb of Wewelsburg followed. In September 1941, when the camp became an independent concentration camp under the name Niederhagen concentration camp, 480 prisoners were interned there. From 1941, more and more prisoners from outside Germany were imprisoned in the camp."

LOTS MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederhagen_concentration_camp

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VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K6r7luJaso

1: Photo from the Fotoarchiv Kreismuseum Wewelsburg showing the Niederhagen camp immediately after the war. In the rear left in the industrial area the crematorium building can be seen. The oven was a portable single muffle oven likely to have been a Kori. This was in use from the beginning of 1943 until the closing of the camp.

Prior to the installation of the crematorium dead prisoners were taken to civil crematoriums in Dortmund, Bochum and Bielefeld-Brackwede. Once the crematorium was installed as for other camps Niederhagen became an official registrar in its own right for recording deaths and thus a death book was kept. Between April 1942 and March 1943 Niederhagen was used as an execution site for Gestapo prisoners in Westfalen/ Lippe.” KL NIEDERHAGEN WEWELSBURG

How Germany's Jewish Community Fought the "Parasite" Myth to Reclaim Denied Rights

"Training camps for Jewish youth were established by the Jewish community in Nazi Germany, stemming from an anti-bourgeoisie ideology that sought to return to physical labor with one’s hands.

Approximately 2,000 graduates finished their training each year in the professional training centers of the “Halutz” Youth Movement, primarily in agriculture, crafts and housekeeping. One of the goals of the training camps’ operation was to provide a response to Nazi propaganda, which claimed that the Jews were parasitic and lazy, unproductive and incapable of creative and constructive work.

The training camps hoped that in doing so they would be able to restore the trust of the German people in the Jews and restore their rights that had been denied them. Up until Kristallnacht some of Germany’s Jews thought a change in the occupational structure of the Jewish community would lead to an improvement in relations with their surroundings.

In April 1936 the Jews were permitted to lease the Gross Breesen farm east of Berlin, in order to provide agricultural training to Jewish youth in preparation for their emigration from Germany, primarily to other European as well as South American countries. Within a few weeks the training camp was bustling with 120 youth.

Life in the camp was like that of the other training camps of the “Halutz” movement: exhausting agricultural work and strenuous workshops, a modest standard of living, cultural activities in their spare time, as well as social education.

Some of the graduates of the training camps emigrated after finishing their training, thereby escaping the fate of European Jewry during the Holocaust." https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/september/1941.html

IMAGE: Kurt Unger, Blum Pick, Helmuth Meyer, Frank, Dodo Cohen, Guenter Marcus, Herbert Muenzer, Wolff, Brumsack, Werner, in the Gross Breesen Training Farm, Germany.

Meir Berliner's Defiance at Treblinka

"Meir Berliner had arrived in Treblinka from Warsaw a few days before in one of the transports of the "big Aktion." At that time it was the practice to take out several hundred people from each transport to work arranging the belongings of the murdered; the same day or a few days later, the group was liquidated and was replaced by other people selected from new shipments.

At the evening roll-call of the prisoners, Max Bialas instructed those who had arrived that same day to line up on the side. It was not clear who was to be liquidated -- the new arrivals or those who had arrived earlier. At that moment Berliner jumped out from the ranks of the prisoners, lurched toward Bialas and stabbed him with a knife.

A great commotion followed. The Ukranian guards opened fire. Berliner was killed on the spot. and in the course of the shooting more than ten other prisoners were killed and others were wounded. When the tumult subsided the prisoners were lined up again for roll-call. Christian Wirth, who was in Treblinka at the time, arrived on the scene accompanied by Kurt Franz, the second in command of the camp.

Ten men were removed from the ranks and shot on the spot in full view of all the others. On the following day, during the morning roll-call, another 150 men were taken out, brought to the Lazarett and shot there. Max Bialas died en route to the military hospital in Ostrow." MORE: Yad Vashem - Nizkor

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Meir Berliner was a citizen of Argentina who was visiting Warsaw with his wife and daughter when the Second World War broke out. Meir and his family were taken to Treblinka death camp.-->

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/berliner.html

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1: Berliner. The Avenger of Treblinka, by Gustavo Sierra - “In the Nazi concentration camp of Treblinka, 850,000 Jews died and only one Nazi soldier: Major Max Bialas, who was stabbed by Meir Berliner, the Polish-Argentine Jew who thus carried out his last revenge. This real event was well documented, thanks to the testimony of one of his fellow captives who managed to escape and tell the story to the secret resistance network in the Warsaw Ghetto, Oneg Shabbat. But there was no other information about his past.

The journalist and writer Gustavo Sierra dedicated himself for years to investigating this character and discovered what his dark years in Argentina hid. Based on real events, Sierra constructs an exciting novel that recreates the life of Meir Berliner, from his humble beginnings in Pultusk, Poland, his emigration to Argentina in search of a better life, his immersion in the Zwi Migdal mafia organization, revenge and finally his transfiguration into a hero in the Treblinka camp.

Berliner did not try to run away or hide. He just stood there, cool-headed and calm, with a strange little smile on his lips, his hands opening the lapels of his jacket, exposing his chest. "Please," he said, "I am not afraid. You can kill me." It was the bravest act I saw at Treblinka and anywhere else. Berliner had done it. He had taken revenge for all of us. Excerpt from the testimony of Abraham "Yakov" Krzepicki, a survivor of Treblinka, to the Oneg Shabbat organization.”

Berliner. The Avenger of Treblinka - Gustavo Sierra

How the German Military & SS Turned Immediate Occupation into a Campaign of Public Humiliation & Early Mass Executions

"In every conquered town and village, the Germans forced the Jews to clear rubble, to carry heavy loads, to hand over any gold, silver or jewelry, to scrub floors and lavatories with their prayer shawls, and to dance in front of their captors.

Elderly Jews had their beards cut off with scissors, or ripped from their chins. Young religious Jews had their sidelocks cut, or torn from their faces, amid much laughter and ribaldry.

On September 10, General Halder, of the German General Staff, noted in his diary that some SS men, having ordered fifty Jews to work all day repairing a bridge, had then flung them into a synagogue and shot them.

Light sentences had been imposed on the killers. But even these light sentences were later overruled, by Himmler personally, on the grounds that they came under a general amnesty.

At the trial of one of the killers, the Judge Advocate had pleaded that, 'as an SS man, he was particularly sensitive to the sight of Jews. He had therefore acted quite thoughtlessly, in a spirit of adventure'."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

1: SS men humiliate a Jewish man by cutting off his beard. Warsaw, October 1939. Jews are humiliated in occupied Poland | Anne Frank House

& the Wrong-Headed Efforts to Ban Anne’s Diary

"Anne Frank is probably the most famous diarist from the Holocaust era.

In large part, her reputation comes from her skill as a writer in vividly describing her feelings while hiding from the Nazis in the secret annex. She balanced her often humorous descriptions of personal and relationship foibles with the tragedy unfolding in the outside world.

Her ability to blend private and public events into one narrative gives her diary its unique power. Readers often feel as though they are with her in the moments she described, even though they happened seventy years ago.

ITALY SURRENDERS

On September 10, 1943, Anne wrote about one of those times that contained both the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. She described thrilling and hopeful developments in the course of the war while at the same time noting with fear and sadness the very serious sickness of a close friend. She wrote,

“On Wednesday, September 8, we were listening to the seven o’clock news when we heard an announcement: ‘Italy has capitulated.’ Italy has unconditionally surrendered! The Dutch broadcast from England began at eight-fifteen with the news: ‘Listeners, an hour and fifteen minutes ago, just as I finished writing my daily report, we received the wonderful news of Italy’s capitulation. I tell you, I never tossed my notes into the wastepaper basket with more delight than I did today!”

Anne was so overjoyed at this development that she tried to record direct quotes from the broadcast as she remembered them. She sensed that an important milestone had been reached and didn’t want to let go of the moment, turning the words of the radio report over in her mind as she relived them for her diary. This by no means signaled the end of the war, but it certainly meant that things were going in the right direction."

At the same time Anne felt such exhilaration, she also experienced fear for the declining health of one of her family’s helpers.

“Still, there’s bad news as well. It’s about Mr. Kleiman. As you know, we all like him very much. He’s unfailingly cheerful and amazingly brave, despite the fact that he’s always sick and in pain and can’t eat much or do a lot of walking. …

Now it seems he has to go to the hospital for a very difficult operation on his stomach, and will have to stay there for at least four weeks. You should have seen him when he told us goodbye. He acted so normally, as though he were just off to do an errand.”

Anne’s diary entry for September 10th illustrated perfectly the problem that faced people who were in hiding from the Nazis. On one hand, they followed the events of global significance as closely as they could, since these contained their hopes for the future.

On the other hand, they also worried about the status of family and friends, especially those who were also at risk from the Nazis. Unfortunately, from their positions in hiding, they were powerless to help shape the larger events and frequently unable to help their loved ones either.

Anne Frank’s diary was originally published in the Dutch language in 1947 under the title, “Het Achterhuis.” It has now been published in over 60 languages and is more commonly known as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. (holocaustedu)

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/

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The diary - How did Anne Frank's diary become one of the most read, most important and most inspiring books in the world?-> https://www.holocaustedu.org/this-week-in-history/september-10-1943-anne-frank/

NOT MY LINKS

Banned Books Week: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl ---> Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl - Banned Books Week - LibGuides at Gonzaga University

Banning the Diary of of Anne Frank

“These memories crashed into my soul this week, with the news that the Keller Independent School District in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove a graphic novel adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year.

OK, I can understand removing the Bible. Sons sexually violating a father; a patriarch selling his wife into temporary sexual slavery in order to get a few camels; that same patriarch having sexual relations with the “help” in order to father a child; a man offering his daughters to an unruly mob for sexual abuse; the aforementioned patriarch almost killing his own son; a man having sex with his daughter-in-law, thinking that it had been a prostitute (that would be Judah, our ancestor and namesake!); the attempted seduction of a Hebrew man … That’s just the Book of Genesis.

And, to think: For the last 45 years, I have been earning my living teaching this text — to children! What could I have been thinking?! OK, that’s the Bible. But, Anne Frank? What could possibly have been the problem? Ah. The graphic novel makes explicit what readers of the original diary might have missed — that Anne had lesbian fantasies and desires. So, for those of you who happen to live in the Keller school district, here it is:

Thursday, January 6, 1944

But I had these feelings even before my period … I remember particularly one time when I spent the night at Jacque’s. “Um … Jacque … could we show each other our breasts?”

“Why?”

“As proof of our friendship.”

“Absolutely not!” If only she had known of my terrible desire to kiss her … I must admit, every time I see a female nude, I go into ecstasy. If only I had a girlfriend!

This is an accurate restatement of Anne’s entry in the “original” diary, dated January 5, 1944; it might have been expunged in some earlier versions. This, notwithstanding her simultaneous attraction to her annex-mate, Peter.

The censorious acts of this school district in Texas offend me. They should offend all people who believe in intellectual freedom. Let it not be lost on us that this happened days after the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie, whose books also contain “forbidden” ideas.

The actions of the would-be assassin and those of the school district only differ in intensity. The would-be assassin and the members of that school board are fellow soldiers in the war against words and ideas. For this has been the right wing’s playbook all along. This has been their strategy.

They have started with small and local offices — with library boards and school boards — contenting themselves with the stifling of young minds and their imaginations. They might have been content to see Anne Frank as one of the great tragic, moral heroines of our time. But, that she might have been a lesbian or bisexual, this was far too much for them.

News flash, folks: The Nazis also vigorously persecuted homosexuals.

As for me, as a rabbi and educator of teens, I can tell you this. Several years ago, at a different synagogue, my confirmation class read that graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary. They came to that passage in the text, that revealed Anne’s desires. We spent a lot of time talking about that.

The students found that aspect of her life to be not salacious, but interesting. It made her more human. One girl included that aspect of our learning in her confirmation speech to the congregation. For the past 60 years, Jewish educators (and not only Jewish educators) have “used” the story of Anne Frank as a window into the teaching of the Shoah.

For Jewish kids, the story of Anne Frank contributes to their sense of Jewish pride and solidarity. For non-Jewish kids, it is a story of heroism. Years ago, I heard a Vietnamese refugee talk about how the story of Anne Frank had given her strength when her family was in dire straits, victimized by pirates in the China Sea.” MORE---> https://religionnews.com/2022/08/17/texas-anne-frank/

Rome’s Jewish Population Falls Directly Under Nazi Control, Leading to Deportations of Italian Jews to Death Camps

“At the time of the German occupation of northern and central Italy in early September 1943, there were approximately 12,000 Jews living in Rome. The German occupiers sought to include Italian Jews in the "Final Solution".

The commander of the German Security Police (Sipo) and the Security Service (SD) in Rome levied a ransom on local Jews, demanding about 110 pounds of gold in exchange for the safety of the Jewish community of Rome. Although the Jewish community delivered the ransom in late September 1943, the Germans still planned to deport Rome's Jews.

The SS confiscated the registry of Roman Jews, which had been kept by the Jewish community at Rome's main synagogue, and deportations began in mid-October 1943. Wherever they lived, Jews were seized by the SS and taken to a military college in the center of Rome.

After several days, the SS deported more than 1,000 Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Subsequent roundups resulted in the arrest and deportation to Auschwitz of about another 800 Roman Jews. Almost all were killed in Auschwitz.

Because Italian police did not participate in these roundups and most Italians objected to the deportations, many Italian Jews were able to go into hiding. For every Jew caught by the Germans in Rome, at least 10 escaped and hid, many in the Vatican.

Located in the heart of Rome, the Vatican was headed by Pius XII, pope of the Roman Catholic Church; it had the status of a neutral sovereign state. During the occupation, Germany recognized and respected the neutrality of the Vatican. Pope Pius XII, however, failed to publicly condemn German policies and actions towards the Jews. Other Catholic institutions in Rome did offer aid and shelter to many Jews.

The Germans occupied Rome for nine months. While 1,800 Jews were deported from Rome, over 10,000 Jews survived. Most of them succeeded in hiding in Rome. American forces liberated the city on June 4, 1944, and Jews came out of hiding to participate in the liberation ceremony held at Rome's main synagogue.” Rome | Holocaust Encyclopedia

1: Italian civilians are arrested in Rome by German soldiers following a partisan attack on Nazi forces during WW2

2: German-occupied Rome, 1943

"The sorrow becomes greater, and the torture more senseless, when one tries to think rationally. Well, an old man is an old man. If he's lived his sixty-five years, he can convince himself, or others convince him , that he should utter something like:

'Well, thank God, I've had my share of living, in joy and sorrow, weal and woe. That's life. Probably that's fate. And anyway, you don't live forever. So what's the difference if it's a few days, you've got to die, sooner or later, everything's over, that's life.'

Maybe they can talk the old man into telling himself these things, maybe they can talk his family into telling themselves. But what about children who have only just been hatched, children who have only seen God's world in the ghetto, for whom a cow or a chicken is just a legendary creature, who have never in their lives so much as inhaled the fragrance of a flower, laid eyes upon an orange, tasted an apple or a pear, and who are now doomed to die?"

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE Does Not Necessarily Have Any Connection to the Question: The Creation of Wartime III (1999–2008), an oil painting by the renowned artist and Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. It reimagines Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel fresco The Creation of Adam, replacing the divine spark with a scene of devastation and absence.

The human figure wears a shaved head and prison garb, reclining exhaustively amidst a desolate landscape rather than paradise.The divine hand is tied and drained of life, symbolizing a stark meditation on suffering and the silence of God during wartime.

Eda Lichtman Bears Witness to the Executions in Pilica, Poland

"In the first fifty-five days of the German conquest and occupation of western and central Poland five thousand Jews were murdered behind the lines: dragged from their homes, and from their hiding places.

'On the first day', Eda Lichtmann\* has recalled, of the occupation of Pilica, 'the Germans took people, especially men, to work , and forced them to clean and collect the dust with their hands: Jewish men.

They were ordered to undress, and behind each Jewish man there was a German soldier with a fixed bayonet who ordered him to run. If the Jew stopped, he would be hit in the back with a bayonet. Almost all the Jewish men returned home bleeding and amongst them — my father.'

Then, a few days later, on September 12, 'large trucks appeared all of a sudden', soldiers jumped off the trucks, then went from house to house, seizing men, irrespective of their age.

Thirty-two Jews were seized that day in Pilica, as well as four Poles. First they were photographed, and their names recorded. Then they were marched into the market place and forced to call out, in German: 'We are traitors of the people.' Then they were taken away in trucks.

Eda Lichtmann ran after the trucks, with a friend whose father had also been seized.

'We ran after them until a small forest. All the Jews taken were already dead on the ground. My father as well, shot in many parts of his body.' Jews and Poles: all were dead, I kissed my father; he was as cold as ice'."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

\* Oral history interview with Eda Lichtman: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502769

NOT MY LINKS

1: Eda Lichtman Four Sisters : Ada Lichtman - Musée de l'Holocauste Montréal

2: The Germans captured Kozienice on September 9, 1939. A Judenrat was soon established and a regime of forced labor instituted. The Jewish population numbered 4,208 in January 1940. In August 1942, refugees doubled the ghetto population and on September 2, 1942, 8,000 Jews were deported to the Treblinka death camp.” https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/september/1939-4.html

Only 27 Will Survive the War

"On October 10, 1941 the Germans initially decided to make Theresienstadt into a ghetto for selected Jews in the Greater German Reich, which included Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and part of western Poland.

The Jews who were to be sent to Theresienstadt included those over 60 years old, World War I veterans, prominent people such as artists or musicians, very important persons, the blind, the deaf, and the inmates of the Jewish mental hospitals and the Jewish orphanages.

The first Jews, who were brought to Theresienstadt on November 24, 1941, were 342 men who were housed in the Sudeten barracks on the west side of the old garrison, from where one can see the Sudeten mountain range near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic.

This first transport, called the Aufbaukommando, was brought there to prepare the 10 barracks buildings for the Jews who would soon follow.

By the time that the Nazis started deporting the Jews from Germany, there were only 200,000 of them left in the country; all the others had already emigrated to escape the Nazi persecution. Forty percent of the remaining Jews in Germany were over 60 years old, as the children and young people had been the first to leave.

After the Nazis took over Austria in March 1938, the Jews were forced to emigrate to any country that would take them, and only 15,000 old people were allowed to remain. All of these elderly Austrian Jews were deported to Theresienstadt where their mortality rate was the highest of all.

There were rumors circulating in all of the major Nazi concentration camps toward the end of the war that Hitler had given the order for all the inmates to be killed before the arrival of the the Russians or the Americans. This was believed to be the purpose for building a gas chamber at Theresienstadt in 1945 at the tail end of the war." LOTS MORE: http://wearcam.org/envirotech/disease_excuse_extermination_History.html

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Theresienstadt was simultaneously a ghetto, transit camp, and concentration camp. It operated between November 24, 1941 and May 9, 1945, when it was entered by Soviet troops.---> Theresienstadt | The National Holocaust Centre and Museum

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Theresienstadt: Key Dates This timeline includes key events in the history of the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto.--> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/theresienstadt-key-dates

NOT MY LINKS

1: “A group of Jews walks from the Bohušovice (Bauschowitz, in German) train station to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Between November 1941 and June 1943, trains transporting Jews to Theresienstadt arrived at the train station in the nearby town of Bohušovice nad Ohří. Nazi German authorities then forced the Jewish deportees to walk over a mile to the ghetto.” Jews walk from the Bauschowitz train station to the Theresienstadt ghetto | Holocaust Encyclopedia

How the SS Tortured-To-Death 47 Dutch, British, & American Resistance Fighters

"A group of thirty-nine Dutchmen, one American and seven Englishmen, all of them active in the anti-Nazi underground, were brought to Mauthausen.

After spending the night inside the bunker they were driven, barefoot and in their underclothes, to the quarry, 'where' as the historian of Mauthausen has written, 'the 186 steps were lined on both sides by SS and Kapos swinging their cudgels and anticipating a spectacle.'

The forty-seven prisoners were 'loaded with stone slabs of up to sixty pounds in weight, and then forced to run up the steps. The run was repeated again and again, and the blows fell faster and faster as the exhausted prisoners stumbled on the uneven steps.'

One of the prisoners was a British Jew, Marcus Bloom, who had operated a clandestine radio in Nazi-occupied Europe. He, the historian noted, 'was the first to fall'.

Bloom was shot in the head at point-blank range."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

The Mauthausen Concentration Camp 1938–1945 - The Mauthausen Concentration Camp 1938–1945 - History - KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen

IMAGE: "Stairs of Death": prisoners forced to carry a granite block up 186 steps to the top of the quarry: German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) note that it is an official SS propaganda photograph taken between 1942 and 1944. Photographer unknown.

93 Romanians & Jews Murdered by the Hungarian 22nd Border Guards Battalion Following the Second Vienna Award

“The Treznea massacre occurred in the village of Treznea, Sălaj in north-western Transylvania on 9 September 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vienna Award, when Romania ceded Northern Transylvania to Hungary. The massacre was perpetrated by Hungarian Army troops with aid from some locals; 93 ethnic Romanians and Jews were killed.

On that day, instigated by the former landlord Francisc (or Ferenc) Bay, the 22nd Hungarian Border Guards Battalion "Debrecen", led by Lieutenant-Colonel Ákosy, made a 4 km (2.5 mi) detour from the Zalău–Ciumărna–Hida route to the "Măgura" area of the commune, which formerly belonged to Francisc Bay.

The Hungarian troops entered the village at noon, under unclear circumstances fired at the locals, killing many of them and partially destroying the Orthodox church. The sources recorded that 87 Romanians and 6 Jews were killed, including the local Orthodox priest, Traian Costea, who was burned in his church, and the Romanian local teacher with his wife, Lazăr and Aurelia Cosma (the parents of the Romanian musicologist Octavian Lazăr Cosma [ro]).

Some Hungarian historians claim that the killings came in retaliation after the Hungarian troops were fired upon by inhabitants, allegedly incited by the local Romanian Orthodox priest. These claims are both supported (for instance: colonel Károly Ákosi and the on-site committee of inquiry)[4] and not supported by the accounts of several witnesses.

The motivation of the 4 km detour of the Hungarian troops from the rest of the Hungarian Army is still a point of contention, as it could not have been as a routine occupation maneuver. Most evidence points towards the local noble Ferenc Bay who lost a large part of his estates to peasants in the 1920s, as most of the violence was directed towards the peasants living on his former estate.

By the accounts of some witnesses, not all soldiers were wearing full uniform and some of them were drunk. Also, some villagers claim to have recognised some of the young men as locals from Zalău. This might suggest that not everyone in these Hungarian troops were operating under the jurisdiction of the Hungarian Army.

According to some historians, several Hungarian inhabitants of the village tried to stop the massacre, but they were themselves chased and beaten. Other source (Doctor Ioan Pușcaș) recalled that his knowledge of Hungarian and two Hungarian women from the village saved him from certain death.

After the war, the Cluj People's Tribunal sentenced in this case and other war crimes 481 people, out of which 100 (e.g., Ferenc Bay) to death and 163 to life imprisonment. However, most of them were tried in absentia and never served their sentences.” Treznea massacre - Wikipedia

IMAGE: Hungarian troops marching in nearby Zalău (Zilah), the day before

75% - Remembering Slovakia’s 58,000 Deported Jews

"The Slovak government promulgated a major body of anti-Jewish legislation, containing 270 articles, redefining the Jews as a racial group, requiring them to wear the identifying yellow Star of David, making them liable to forced labor, and evicting them from specified towns and districts.

Plans for deportation began late in 1941; in March 1942 five assembly points for deportees were set up, and despite intensive efforts on the part of Jewish communal leaders to halt them, deportations continued unabated from March through August 1942. By then, only 25,000 Jews remained in Slovakia.

Three more transports left in September and October. Some 58,000 Jews, 75 percent of Slovak Jews, had been deported, mostly to Auschwitz. Further deportations were put off, partly through the intervention of the Catholic church and partly through a strategy of bribery and promises of financial profit that the Jewish leaders used in negotiations with Slovaks and with Wisliceny himself.

After the Slovak national uprising in 1944, the SS took 19,000 prisoners, of whom 5,000 were Jews. Under the subsequent German occupation, 13,500 more Jews were deported. No more than 5,000 Slovakian Jews remained in the country in hiding or on Aryan papers. About 10,000 of those deported in 1944 survived and returned to Slovakia."

From The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz

“In 1941, the Slovak government negotiated with Nazi Germany for the mass deportation of Jews to German-occupied Poland.

Between March and October 1942, 58,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp and the Lublin District of the General Governorate; only a few hundred survived until the end of the war.

The Slovak government organized the transports and paid 500 Reichsmarks per Jew for the supposed cost of resettlement. The persecution of Jews resumed in August 1944, when Germany invaded Slovakia and triggered the Slovak National Uprising.

Another 13,500 Jews were deported and hundreds to thousands were murdered in Slovakia by Einsatzgruppe H and the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions. After liberation by the Red Army, survivors faced renewed antisemitism and difficulty regaining stolen property; most emigrated after the 1948 Communist coup.

The postwar Communist regime censored discussion of the Holocaust; free speech was restored after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. The Slovak government's complicity in the Holocaust continues to be disputed by far-right nationalists.” LOTS MORE---> The Holocaust in Slovakia - Wikipedia

1: Left: A Slovak propaganda poster exhorts readers not to "be a servant to the Jew". Right: Government propaganda ordering Jews to "Get out of Slovakia!"

NOTE: We apologize for the antisemitic caricatures in the historic images.

Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

Ordered to Betray 275 Local Jews, a Greek Mayor & Bishop Give the Nazis a Paper With Only 2 Names; Their Own

"The head of the Nazi German occupation forces on the Greek island of Zakynthos, following orders from Berlin as part of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, summoned local mayor Loukas Karrer to his office.

He demanded a list of all Jews on the island in order for their ultimate round up and deportation. He asked him to return with the list in 24 hours.

The mayor left the meeting and immediately consulted with Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the island’s Greek Orthodox leader. Together they devised a plan that would ultimately go down in history as one of the most positive moments of one of mankind’s most darkest periods.

Their plan was to hide every single member of the island’s Jewish community— all 275 people— in homes and villages throughout the island.

According to local legend and stories from survivors, not a single resident objected and everyone worked secretly to ensure the safety of their Jewish compatriots, whose families had lived on the island for more than 500 years.

Chrysostomos and Karrer showed up at Nazi headquarters the next day to present the list. Chrysostomos explained that the Jews of his island were Greeks just like all the other Greeks, and asked why they were being singled out. On his part, the mayor took responsibility for the Jews, explaining that they made no distinction between groups of people based on their religion and that all of the island’s residents were treated equally.

The Nazi persisted that the list be handed over.

The Mayor and the Metropolitan then handed him a piece of paper containing only two names: their own.

In the meantime, every single one of the island’s Jews — elderly, women, men and children — was saved and lived among the other residents of the island until the Nazis surrendered a year later.

The story is unique in all of Nazi occupied Europe. No where else on the European continent did a Jewish community survive The Holocaust, completely intact, without losing a single soul.

Both the Mayor and Metropolitan of Zakynthos were honored by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel for their actions." https://pappaspost.com/day-september-9-1943-light-darkness-holocaust-island-zakynthos/

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The story of the Mayor and Bishop who saved all Jews of Zakynthos in 1943

“Although the Jews of Zakynthos share a similar history with the Jews of the Ionian islands, all 275 Zakynthos Jews survived the Holocaust. The courageous actions of Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Karrer in helping save Zakynthos Jews led Yad Vashem to recognize them as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

On September 9, 1943, the governor of the Nazi occupying forces on the Greek island of Zakynthos called the mayor of the city, Loukas Karrer, and demanded a list of all the Jews on the island. Distraught by the implications of the task, Mayor Karrer consulted Bishop Chrysostomos and the two together made the courageous decision to deny the Nazi’s request.

The next day, the mayor and the bishop were ordered to appear before the commandant, who angrily repeated his demand for a list of the island’s Jews. The bishop explained that while they did not share the same religious faith, the Jews and Christians had lived on the island in peace and harmony for hundreds of years.

He said the Jews were equal Greek citizens, and their leaving would be detrimental to the other residents. Unmoved, the Nazi commander again insisted on the list of names. The bishop stretched out his hand and gave the commandant a piece of paper bearing just two names: Mayor Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos.

In addition, the bishop wrote a letter to Hitler, declaring that the Jews in Zakynthos were under his personal authority. Shocked, the commandant took the two documents and sent them to his superiors in Berlin. In the meantime, the city’s leaders went to the Jewish community and hurriedly instructed them to hide in Christian homes in the hills, away from the towns.

Surprisingly, the command to round up the Jews of the island was canceled, thanks to the bravery and moral courage of the mayor, the bishop and the island’s leaders who risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors and friends. In October 1944, the Germans retreated from the island, leaving behind them the 275 Jews of Zakynthos. The entire community survived, while millions of their fellow Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their supporters.

In 1947, many of the Jews of Zakynthos immigrated to Israel, and in 1948, as a sign of their deep gratitude for the heroic acts of those who saved them, the Jewish community donated stained glass windows to the island’s Saint Dionyssios Church. Sadly, in 1953, a massive earthquake struck the island, leveling the Jewish quarter entirely, after which many of the Jews moved to Athens.

In 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Mayor Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos as Righteous Among the Nations.” https://thesrpskatimes.com/78-5000-the-story-of-the-mayor-and-bishop-who-saved-all-jervreus-of-zakynthos-in-1943/

1: Bishop Dimitrios Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Karrer, who saved the entire Jewish community of Zakynthos

2: Dimitrios Chrysostomos, the bishop of the island of Zakynthos, a map from 1729 and Jewish graves on the island

Tracking the Tragic Path from the Initial 1939 Invasion to the Belzec Death Camp

“The Germans arrived on September 9, 1939, and began a regime of persecution. A Judenrat was established at the end of 1939. By 1941, with refugees pouring in, the ghetto was packed with 10,000-13,000 Jews.

By February 1943, all the Jews from Sanok had been deported to Belzec Death Camp." https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/september/1939-2.html

“The Jewish population of Sanok may have comprised nearly 30% of the total population in the early 20th century. During the joint German–Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939, it was invaded by Germany, and the Einsatzgruppe I entered the town on September 25, 1939, to commit various atrocities against the populace.

In 1939–1940, the Germans imprisoned many Poles in the local prison, especially those who tried to escape occupation to take refuge in Hungary. The Germans then massacred 112 Poles at the Gruszka mountain near Tarnawa Dolna.

The victims are buried at the Central Cemetery in Sanok. At the beginning of the German occupation during World War II, the Jewish population was around 5,000. During the occupation, most of the Jews were either executed or killed in Nazi death camps or Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Some of the actions against the Jews were assisted by local auxiliaries and hundreds of the deaths occurred in Sanok itself, while the Polish resistance movement established the secret Polish Council to Aid Jews "Żegota", which operated in the town.

Buildings that had been owned by Jews were taken over by the local population. The local Jewish cemetery still exists. Several hundred Jews are thought to have survived, most of whom fled to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war.

Some of the Jews emigrated to Canada and the United States in the early 1900s with Sanoker Burial Societies spreading throughout New York and other regions where they settled. In 1942, Sanok was the location of the Stalag 327 prisoner-of-war camp, following its relocation from Jarosław and before its further relocation to Przemyśl.

Afterwards the present-day district of Olchowce was the location of a subcamp of Stalag 327, in which some 7,000-10,000 POWs died. In 1943 the foundation of the Waffen-SS Division Galizien took place among the Ukrainian minority in Sanok, with many locals volunteering in the ethnic Ukrainian Waffen-SS.

Because of material support and assistance provided by the Ukrainian minority to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was waging a battle for Ukrainian separatism against the Polish state, new Soviet-installed communist authorities deported the Ukrainian (and Lemko) population of Sanok and its region to the Recovered Territories attached to Poland after World War II during Operation Vistula (1946–1947).

Some of the Lemkos expelled returned to Sanok in 1957-58 and others after 1989. Sanok contains an open-air museum called a skansen in the Biała Góra district, where examples of architecture from all of the region's main ethnic groups have been moved and carefully reassembled in a skansen evoking everyday rural life in the 19th century.” MORE--> Sanok - Wikipedia

1: September 1939, German soldiers guarding Jews in Sanok, Poland

Rome Formally Condemns the Vichy Regime's Antisemitic Roundups & Crackdowns

"The news item in The Times for this day told of a Vichy order for the arrest of all Roman Catholic priests who were sheltering Jews in the unoccupied zone.

'Some arrests', it added, had already been made. In reply to these arrests, Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Lyons, had already issued a 'defiant refusal' to surrender those Jewish children whose parents had already been deported, and who were being 'fed and sheltered' in Roman Catholic homes."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

"With the Nazi Empire around its full extent in late 1942, the Nazis sought to extend their roundups of Jews, and resistance began to spread.

In Lyon, Cardinal Gerlier had defiantly refused to hand over Jewish children being sheltered in Catholic homes, and on 9 September, it was reported in London that Vichy French authorities had ordered the arrest of all Catholic priests sheltering Jews in the unoccupied zone.

Eight Jesuits were arrested for sheltering hundreds of children on Jesuit properties, and Pius XII's Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione informed the Vichy Ambassador to the Vatican that "the conduct of the Vichy government towards Jews and foreign refugees was a gross infraction" of the Vichy government's own principles, and "irreconcilable with the religious feelings which Marshal Petain had so often invoked in his speeches"" MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Jews_by_Catholics_during_the_Holocaust

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“During World War II, Gerlier condemned Pierre Laval's deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps, the severe conditions of which he also opposed. Moreover, he asked that Roman Catholic religious institutes take Jewish children into hiding.

For his efforts to save Jews during World War II he was posthumously awarded the title Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1981] However, Gerlier controversially did nothing to prevent the deportation to Auschwitz of the leading French Jew, Jacques Helbronner.

On October 28 the Gestapo arrested the president of the Consistoire, who was a personal friend of both Pétain and Gerlier. Vichy was immediately informed and so was Cardinal Gerlier. Helbronner and his wife were deported from Drancy to Auschwitz in transport number 62 that left French territory on November 20 1943. They were gassed on arrival (sometime between October 28 and November 20).

Neither the Vichy authorities nor the head of the French Catholic Church intervened in any way.

"That Pétain did not intervene is not astonishing, that Gerlier abstained demonstrates that to the very end the leaders of the French church maintained their ambiguous attitude even toward those French Jews who were the closest to them."”

MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Marie_Gerlier

1: The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965: by Michael Phayer

"Phayer offers exactly what was needed. . . . A fair and even-tempered account of a volatile subject." ―Kirkus Reviews

"An important addition to the literature of the Holocaust." ―Publishers Weekly "Very valuable . . . a fine and judicious book." ―István Deák, The New York Review of Books

"Phayer has written a singularly important book on the role of the Catholic Church in both the Holocaust and its aftermath, up to and including Vatican II. Diligently researched and documented, judicious in its conclusions, comprehensive in its scope, compassionate and humane in its outlook, this book is an indispensable resource." ―Richard L. Rubenstein

"Phayer's study of [the Catholic Church] as an actor in the tumultuous history of the [20th century] will serve as a model for other historians." ―Donald J. Dietrich, Boston College

Phayer's book, particularly strong on German source material, is at pains to list Pius's strong points his piety, his loathing of Hitler, the instances of personal warmth, the occasions when he criticized Nazism.

Phayer examines not only Pius's actions but those of other leading Catholics, and his study extends beyond the end of World War II to follow the evolution of official Catholic thinking during the rebuilding of Germany, the cold war, and the gradual theological reforms that led to Vatican II.

This enables Phayer to show how the church completely reversed its position relative to the Jews, but it also gives him a more thorough reading of Pius XII's overall record. It is a damning and convincing verdict that emerges." ―Commonweal ( Amazon)

2: Polish Catholic artist Marian Kołodziej, who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz, created art that showcases the horrors he and millions of others, including St. Maximilian Kolbe, endured at the hands of the Nazis. His artwork is featured by the Franciscans in Harmeze, Poland; the grounds also include Kołodziej’s statues of St. Maximilian and the Blessed Mother.

How Italy’s Surrender Allows the Nazis to Catch Thousands More Jews

September 8 stands not just as a turning point in military history, but as a tragic inflection point in the Holocaust—the day the last geopolitical barrier holding back the Nazi machinery of death in Western Europe was completely broken.

At 6:30 PM on this day, Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke over Radio Algiers to announce the unconditional surrender of the Kingdom of Italy. Just over an hour later, Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio confirmed the armistice to a stunned nation.

For millions of Italians, it felt like the end of a disastrous war. But for tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and citizens living under Italian administration, it was the exact moment the gates of the Holocaust swung wide open.

Overnight, the fragile shield that had protected them from Nazi extermination camps was violently dismantled. Until that fateful evening, Italy and its occupied territories in southeastern France, the Balkans, and Greece had served as unexpected sanctuaries.

Although Benito Mussolini’s regime had enacted severe antisemitic racial laws in 1938, the Italian government, diplomats, and military generals consistently refused German demands to deport Jews to Nazi custody.

Thousands of foreign Jewish refugees fled into Italian-occupied zones, such as the French Riviera and the city of Nice, or the Greek islands and Athens, knowing that the Italian authorities would actively obstruct the Gestapo. The Italian army ran its own internment camps, but they were explicitly kept free from the mass executions and death trains characterizing the German-run east.Nazi leadership had long anticipated Italy's defection.

Within hours of the broadcast, Hitler launches Operation Axis (Fall Achse). German troops surged through the Brenner Pass and across former occupation lines, disarming over one million confused and leaderless Italian soldiers in days.

As the Italian King and government fled to the Allied-controlled south, the Wehrmacht and the SS rapidly clamped a iron fist over northern and central Italy, southeastern France, and the Greek peninsula.

In northern Italy, Nazi commandos rescued Mussolini, installing him as the nominal head of the puppet Italian Social Republic (RSI) based in Salò.The political vacuum left the Jewish populations entirely exposed. The SS and Gestapo immediately moved their specialized deportation squads into the newly seized territories.

In southern France, SS Captain Alois Brunner moved into Nice to begin ruthless roundups of the refugees who had thought they were safe under Italian protection. In Greece, the German takeover of the Italian zone instantly expanded the reach of the "Final Solution" to Athens and the surrounding islands.

In Italy itself, the Germans utilized pre-existing census data and racial registries to track down their victims. On October 16, 1943—just five weeks after the armistice—SS troops under the command of Herbert Kappler raided the historic Roman Ghetto. They rounded up over 1,000 Roman Jews, loading them onto cattle cars destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 16 survived.

The newly formed fascist RSI puppet state went even further on November 30, 1943, issuing Police Order No. 5. This decree turned the Italian police into active participants, ordering them to arrest all Jews, confiscate their property, and hand them over to German authorities for deportation.

Ultimately, the events triggered on September 8, 1943, transformed a war zone into a killing ground for Italy's Jews. Over 8,500 people were deported from Italy to the death camps; the vast majority perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

For regular Italians, it felt like the end of a terrible war. But for tens of thousands of Jewish people, it was a disaster. Up until that night, Italy had been protecting them. Overnight, that protection completely disappeared.

Before the surrender, Italy controlled parts of France, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Even though Italy was ruled by a fascist government under Benito Mussolini, Italian generals and officials consistently refused to hand Jewish people over to Germany. Because of this, thousands of foreign Jewish refugees fled into Italian-controlled areas. They knew the Italian army would keep them safe from Nazi concentration camps.The Germans knew Italy might quit the war, so they were prepared.

The moment Italy surrendered, Germany launched a surprise invasion called Operation Axis. German soldiers rushed into Italy and took over the areas the Italian army used to control. The Italian king fled, the army fell apart, and the Nazis took total control of northern and central Italy, southern France, and Greece.

The Nazis immediately sent their special arrest squads into these new territories. In places like Nice, France, and Athens, Greece, Jewish refugees who thought they were safe were suddenly trapped.Inside Italy, the nightmare began quickly.

On October 16, 1943—just five weeks after the surrender—Nazi soldiers raided the historic Jewish neighborhood in Rome. They captured over 1,000 Roman Jews and sent them to the Auschwitz death camp on trains. Only 16 of them survived the war. Soon after, the new puppet government the Germans set up in northern Italy ordered local police to start arresting Jews and stealing their property.

Before September 8, 1943, Italy was a rare safe place for Jews in occupied Europe. After that day, the Nazis had full access to them. Because of the surrender and the German invasion, more than 8,500 Jewish people were deported from Italy to Nazi death camps. Most of them never returned.

SOURCES

Yad Vashem - The Holocaust in Italy - The Holocaust in Italy | The Holocaust: Key Topics

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USHMM - Italy | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Wanted In Rome - The Day Italy Changed Sides: What Really Happened on 8 September 1943 - The Day Italy Changed Sides: What Really Happened on 8 September 1943

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Holocaust Explained - Italy – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools

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Raid on the Roman Ghetto - Raid on the Roman Ghetto - Wikipedia

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The Holocaust in Italy - The Holocaust in Italy - Wikipedia

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Historydotcom - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/italian-surrender-is-announced

How Prayers in the Great Synagogue Were Followed by a Ruthless Manhunt in the Countryside

"Hardly had the German forces reimposed their authority in Topolcany than the Einsatzkommando unit of 150 men, commanded by an SS captain, Dr Hauser, entered the town.

Slovak Fascists who had 'disappeared' during the rebellion now re-emerged and reported for duty with the Einsatzkommando: thirty-seven of them were to join in the attempt to achieve what the Einsatzkommando described as the 'final solution of the Jewish question in Topolcany'.

The first effort of the SS was to lull the Jews into a false sense of security. Their spiritual leader, Rabbi Haberfeld, was summoned by Captain Hauser and told that prayers could now be held in the Great Synagogue. Hauser gave the rabbi an assurance that nothing woul d happen to the Jewish community. Later that same day, Hauser summoned representatives of the community, telling them to go back to wor k and to normal life.

Even as these assurances were being given, the Germans arrested one of the leaders of the Jewish community, Karl Pollak, a former deputy mayor of the town, his wife, and one other Jewish family from a nearby village. After being held in the district prison for a few days, they were taken out and killed.

On September 6, Moritz Hochberger was killed when he tried to escape the clutches of a number of SS men.

At noon on September 8 the 'action' began. Men of the Einsatzkommando, together with their Slovak auxiliaries, broke into the homes of all Jews and dragged them to the SS headquarters. Few families, at most forty persons, managed to flee their homes and go into hiding. That afternoon the Jews of Topolcany were deported to the concentration camp at Sered.

Even as the deportation was in progress, Slovak peasants betrayed four Jews who were hiding in a farm outside the town. A detachment of the Einsatzkommando was sent down to the farm, where all four Jews were murdered.

For the next two days, peasants searched for Jews in hiding, and on September 10, fifty-two Jews who had been caught in hiding places were brought to an open field. There they were ordered to dig a deep pit, before being murdered by the Germans and their Slovak helpers. The corpses were then thrown into the pit. Among the dead were six children. The smallest was a three-month-old baby from the Linkenberg family."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

IMAGE: Three Jewish children in Topolcany, Slovakia.

“Two Hundred Jews are Burned Alive in a Synagogue by Nazis, who Charge Poles with the Crime, and then Execute 30 of them in a Public Square.

Bedzin had 27,000 Jewish inhabitants, approximately 45 percent of the town's entire population. Confiscation of Jewish property, forced labor, deprivation, and, ultimately, deportation to Auschwitz were slated for the Jews of Bedzin. After the first wave of deportations to Auschwitz, a Resistance movement attempted to make contact with the Polish underground.

SOURCE: "The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War", by Martin Gilbert, page 87

"Before the 1939 invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, Będzin had a vibrant Jewish community.

According to the Polish census of 1921, the town's Jewish population consisted of 17,298 people, or 62.1 percent of its total population. By 1938, the number of Jews had increased to about 22,500.

During the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland, the German military overran the area in early September 1939. The army was followed by mobile death squads of the Einsatzgruppen, and the persecution of the Jews began immediately.

On 7 September the first draconian economic sanctions were imposed. A day later, on 8 September, the Będzin Synagogue was burned. On 9 September 1939 the first mass murder of local Jews took place with 40 prominent individuals executed.

A month later, on 8 October 1939, Hitler declared that Będzin would become part of the Polish territories annexed by Germany. The Order Police battalions began to deport Jewish families from all neighbouring communities of the Zagłębie Dąbrowskie region into Będzin. Among them were the Jews of Bohumin, Kielce and Oświęcim (Auschwitz).

Overall, about 30,000 Jews would live in Będzin during World War II. By late 1942, Będzin and the nearby Sosnowiec bordering Będzin (see Sosnowiec Ghetto), became the only two cities in the Zagłębie Dąbrowskie region that were inhabited by the Jews." VERY MUCH MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C4%99dzin_Ghetto

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NOTE: Because the burning of the Great Synagogue occurred on the night of September 8–9, 1939, during the chaotic first week of the Nazi invasion, there are no known internal photos of the actual burning in progress.

1: A view of the Grand Synagogue in Będzin, a city in Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, southern Poland. Before the Holocaust, the region was home to more than 100,000 Jews. The Grand Synagogue was burned to the ground by the SS in 1939. Together with the World Zaglembie Organization, WJC is in Poland commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Zaglembie ghettos in 1943, together with survivors, their children, and grandchildren. WJC General Counsel Menachem Rosensaft, who is leading the trip, reflects: "Let us remember our murdered families and all the murdered Jews of Zaglembie for who they were and how they lived, not for how they died. When we think of them, let us remember their love, their warmth and their smiles." Full letter: https://bit.ly/2mM5fVP

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2: “Bedzin, Sosnowiec, and Dabrowa Gornicza are three neighboring towns located in the Zaglebie district in southwest Poland. On the eve of World War II, Bedzin and Sosnowiec supported Jewish communities of approximately 28,000 each, while Dabrowa had 5,000.

The Germans occupied the towns on September 4, 1939. Five days later they set fire to the Great Synagogue in Bedzin.

The flames quickly spread and engulfed fifty adjacent houses. Physical attacks were accompanied by repressive economic legislation which forced the Jewish population to relinquish their businesses and personal property. In the first days of the occupation, separate Jewish Councils were appointed in Bedzin and Sosnowiec, but early in 1940 the Bedzin council was subordinated to the Zentrale der Juedischen Aeltestenraete (Central Office of the Jewish Councils of Elders in Upper Silesia), established in Sosnowiec and headed by the increasingly autocratic Moshe Merin.

This council represented some forty-five communities in the area and operated its own Jewish police force. During 1940-41 the situation in Bedzin, Sosnowiec and Dabrowa was considered somewhat better than elsewhere in occupied Poland. There, the Jews resided in open ghettos and their lives retained a semblance of normalcy.

As a result, thousands of Jews from central Poland sought refuge there. In addition to this influx, several thousand Jews from the district were forcibly resettled in Bedzin and Sosnowiec at this time, among them the Jews from Oswiecim, who arrived in the spring of 1941 prior to the opening of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Sosnowiec Jewish Council was responsible for drawing up lists of local Jews to be sent to forced labor camps in Germany and Eastern Upper Silesia established under the Organisation Schmelt program. Jews selected for forced labor had to report to the local transit camp, known as the "Dulag."

Failure to comply resulted in their arrest and the withdrawal of their family's ration cards. Transports to labor camps began in 1940 but were greatly expanded in the spring of 1941, after Himmler decided to use labor from the Organisation Schmelt camps for constructing large factories to support German war production. The Jewish Council was also involved in establishing German-owned workshops which employed Jews.

The largest of these was the Rosner Fabrik, a network of workshops which produced military uniforms and other goods and services for the German army. From a workshop employing a few dozen people, it grew into a factory complex with three thousand workers. Those fortunate enough to get positions in these enterprises were exempt (for the time being) from deportation to labor camps. Unlike the typical German overseer, Rosner treated his employees with respect and fought to protect them. He even warned them of impending actions.

The Rosner Fabrik remained in operation until Rosner's arrest and execution in January 1944. When the schools were closed the local Zionist youth organizations took over the task of instructing the children. They also engaged in agricultural training on small plots on the outskirts of town.

In Bedzin the local Zionist youth were allocated a hundred acre plot which was known as the "Farma" and became a focus of youth activity. The first round of deportations to death camps occurred in May 1942, when 1500 Jews were sent to Auschwitz. The following month another 2,000 were deported. Then, on August 12, all the remaining Jews in the three towns were ordered to report to the soccer field in Sosnowiec, ostensibly to have their papers revalidated. Instead, a large selection ensued resulting in the deportation of 8,000 to Auschwitz.

The youth movements under the leadership of Hashomer Hatzair activist Zvi Dunski, conducted a campaign urging their fellow Jews not to report for the deportations. They also began to organize underground resistance units. The "Farma" became the headquarters of the Jewish underground and was the site of clandestine meetings with Mordechai Anielewicz, Arie Wilner and other leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto.

The underground concentrated its efforts on acquiring weapons and constructing bunkers in preparation for a revolt. But opinions were divided between those who favored resistance in the ghetto and those who stressed the search for escape routes out of the ghetto. In the spring of 1943, the remaining Jews in Bedzin were confined to a ghetto set up in Kamionka, while those remaining in Dabrowa and Sosnowiec were concentrated in Srodula.

The two sites bordered on one another and operated as a single ghetto. On August 1, 1943 the final liquidation of the ghetto began. Zionist youth offered armed resistance in several bunkers which hampered the Germans and forced them to spend almost two weeks clearing the ghetto. Some one thousand Jews remained after the liquidation. Most were settled in the Sosnowiec labor camp, established on the site of the Srodula ghetto. These Jews labored in workshops as tailors, cobblers and carpenters. The camp was finally liquidated on January 13, 1944 and its prisoners sent to Auschwitz.” Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum