History of Sorts

On November 6, 1939, Obersturmbannführer SS Bruno Müller ordered the the faculty of the University of Krakow to assemble for a special lecture to present the Nazis’ vision for Poland.

Upon arrival the faculty found themselves among the first casualties of the systematic deconstruction of the country. Codenamed the Sonderaktion Krakau, the professors were all taken into custody and deported to the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau.

A little over two months after the German Invasion of Poland, the Gestapo chief in Kraków SS-Obersturmbannführer Bruno Müller,

commanded Jagiellonian University rector Professor Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński to require all professors to attend his lecture about German plans for Polish education.

The rector agreed and sent an invitation throughout the university for a meeting scheduled at the administrative centre building in the Collegium Novum . On November 6, 1939 at the lecture room no. 56 (or 66, sources vary) at noon, all academics and their…

In 1945 disillusioned Himmler believed victory had slipped from Germany’s grasp and secretly attempted to start peace negotiations with Eisenhower in a bid to escape a war crimes trial. But Eisenhower refused to have anything to do with Himmler. A furious Hitler declared Himmler a traitor, stripped him of his powers and expelled him from the Nazi Party.

Rejected by his former comrades and hunted by the Allies, Himmler attempted to go into hiding. He disguised himself by shaving off his mustache, wearing an eye patch over his left eye and carrying false identity papers under the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger. With a small band of companions, he headed south on 11 May to Friedrichskoog, without a final destination in mind. They continued on to Neuhaus, where the group split up. On 21 May, Himmler and two aides were stopped and detained at a checkpoint set up by former…

+++++Contains distressing images++++++++

Chased by youth armed with clubs, this woman is fleeing from a “death dealer” whose left leg can be seen at the left-hand edge of the photograph. The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941, during the Wehrmacht’s attack on Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in World War II.

One of the youths (on the right in the picture above) doesn’t appear to be older then 12 or 13. Was this child evil or was he brainwashed and following a mob rule?

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The story of  Leni Riefenstahl has always intrigued me. Although she was a willing and pivotal tool in the Nazi propaganda machine. She did witness crimes and evil but was yet somehow able to distance herself from it.

Leni Riefenstahl (Helene Riefenstahl) was a German dancer, actress, and film director best known for her imposing propaganda films in support of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

By her own account, the advent of World War II and the rapid escalation of violence under the Nazi regime had an unfavorable effect on both Riefenstahl and her career. Early in the Polish campaign, an incident seemed to have shaken Riefenstahl’s confidence in the movement she had glorified in cinematic images. While accompanying German troops near Konskie, the filmmaker witnessed the execution of Polish civilians shot in retaliation for a partisan attack on German troops. Riefenstahl apparently left her filming that day in order to make a personal…

I am not saying I am a great lover of art but the fact that I am from a nation that has produced some of the greatest artist in history, probably means there is a bit or “artist” DNA in me.

During WWII many Jewish artists were butchered by the Nazi regime. What the Nazi’s didn’t envisage is that you can kill the artist but his legacy will live on, for they put their heart and soul in their work.

The 2 paintings above were painted by Felix Nussbaum (11 December 1904 – 9 August 1944) was a German-Jewish surrealist painter. Nussbaum’s artwork gives a rare glimpse into the essence of one individual among the victims of the Holocaust.

1944 was the year in which the plans of Nazi Germany had the greatest impact on the Nussbaum family.  In July, Nussbaum and his wife were found hiding in an attic by German armed forces…

Felix Landau (May 21, 1910, Vienna, Austria – April 4, 1983), was a SS Hauptscharführer, a member of an Einsatzkommando , based first in Lwów, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine), and later in Drohobycz. He was a “central figure in the Nazi program of the extermination of Galician Jews”.He is known for his daily diary and for temporarily sparing the life of the Jewish artist Bruno Schulz in 1942.

Landau liked Schulz’s art and supplied him with protection and extra food. In return, he ordered the artist to paint a set of murals for his young son’s bedroom, depicting scenes from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

In June 1941, Felix Landau volunteered for Einsatzkommando service. He began his diary in July 1941, interspersing sentimental letters to his fiancée with detailed records of his participation in atrocities of what later came to be known as the Holocaust. He describes “shooting exercises” and “wild actions”, shooting sprees wherein he and his men would pick off random Jews who worked nearby or passed by on the street. In…

Johann Paul Kremer (26 December 1883 – 8 January 1965) was a professor of anatomy and human genetics at Münster University who joined the Wehrmacht on May 20, 1941. He served in the SS in the Auschwitz concentration camp as a physician from 30 August 1942 to 18 November 1942.

Dr. Johann Paul Kremer was sent to Auschwitz as a replacement physician in the late summer of 1942. Despite secrecy requirements, Kremer kept a diary in which he describes the “special actions” he observed at Auschwitz. After the war in Europe was over, Dr. Kremer was arrested. Following a trial, he was found guilty of war crimes and was sentenced to death (although the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment).Kremer received notoriety for his diary, which recounted mundane day to day activities interspersed with entries of his witnessing murder and depravity through gassings and special actions.

All SS doctors were…