Category Archives: Germany

Nazi Students

This blog is not meant to accuse current students but is aimed at them as a history lesson. The history they could easily repeat if they are not careful. Much of the text below is repetitive because I researched several sources. However, in this case, repeating the text is important,

During the Nazi era in Germany, universities played a significant role in the dissemination of Nazi ideology and the shaping of society according to Nazi principles. Several student groups emerged during this time, each with its own objectives and roles within the broader Nazi agenda. Here are some of the key student groups:

National Socialist German Students’ League (NSDStB): This was the official student organization of the Nazi Party. It aimed to integrate university students into the Nazi movement and ensure their adherence to Nazi ideology. The NSDStB organized various activities such as lectures, rallies, and cultural events to promote Nazi ideals among students.

German Student Union (DSt): Formed after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the German Student Union was a nationwide organization that aimed to coordinate and control all aspects of student life following Nazi principles. It played a central role in the implementation of Nazi policies within universities, including the purging of “undesirable” faculty members and students.

National Socialist German Lecturers League (NSDDB): Similar to the NSDStB but focused on university professors and lecturers, this organization sought to ensure that academia conformed to Nazi ideology. It promoted Nazi doctrines within academic circles and enforced ideological conformity among university faculty.

German Faith Movement (Deutsche Glaubensbewegung): Although not exclusively a student group, The German Faith Movement attracted many young people, including university students, who were drawn to its emphasis on pagan Germanic spirituality and rejection of Christianity. While not directly controlled by the Nazi Party, it aligned with Nazi ideals and sought to reshape religious and spiritual life in Nazi Germany.

The National Socialist German Students’ League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, NSDStB) was one of the most prominent student organizations in Nazi Germany. Founded in 1926, the NSDStB aimed to indoctrinate university students with Nazi ideology and ensure their loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Key objectives and activities of the NSDStB included:

Indoctrination: The NSDStB sought to mold students’ minds according to Nazi principles, emphasizing racial superiority, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and obedience to Hitler. It organized lectures, seminars, and study groups to propagate Nazi ideology among students.

Political Activism: NSDStB members actively participated in Nazi Party activities and campaigns, including rallies, parades, and propaganda efforts. They played a crucial role in mobilizing student support for the Nazi regime and its policies.

Control of Student Life: The NSDStB aimed to control all aspects of university student life, including academic activities, extracurricular pursuits, and social interactions. It promoted conformity to Nazi ideals and monitored students’ behavior to ensure compliance.

Censorship and Suppression of Dissent: The NSDStB was involved in censoring and suppressing dissenting voices within the student body, including those critical of the Nazi regime. It targeted professors and students who opposed Nazi ideology and worked to eliminate opposition within universities.

Expansion and Influence: Under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach, who also led the Hitler Youth, the NSDStB expanded its reach and influence across universities in Germany. It aimed to create a generation of devoted Nazi followers who would play a role in shaping the future of the Third Reich.

The German Student Union (Deutscher Studentenbund, DSt) was a pivotal organization in Nazi Germany’s control over higher education institutions. Established shortly after the Nazi Party’s rise to power in 1933, the DSt aimed to centralize and coordinate all student activities per Nazi ideology.

Key aspects and functions of the German Student Union included:

Nazification of Universities: The DSt played a crucial role in implementing Nazi policies within universities, ensuring that academic institutions adhered to Nazi principles and promoted the regime’s ideology. It oversaw the purging of Jewish professors and other “undesirable” faculty members, replacing them with individuals sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

Control of Student Life: The DSt sought to control all aspects of student life, including academic affairs, extracurricular activities, and social interactions. It enforced conformity to Nazi ideology among students and suppressed dissenting voices.

Propaganda and Indoctrination: The DSt organized lectures, rallies, and propaganda campaigns to indoctrinate students with Nazi ideology. It promoted racial purity, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Coordination of Student Activities: The DSt centralized student organizations and activities under its authority, ensuring that all student groups aligned with Nazi principles and objectives. It coordinated sports events, cultural activities, and social gatherings to foster a sense of camaraderie among students and reinforce Nazi ideals.

Recruitment and Mobilization: The DSt served as a recruitment tool for the Nazi Party, attracting young people to its ranks and mobilizing them for political activism. It encouraged students to join Nazi-affiliated organizations such as the Hitler Youth and the National Socialist German Students’ League (NSDStB).

Suppression of Opposition: The DSt actively suppressed opposition and dissent within the student body, targeting individuals and groups critical of the Nazi regime. It enforced strict censorship and punished those who expressed dissenting views, contributing to a fearful atmosphere and conformity on university campuses.

The National Socialist German Lecturers League (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund, NSDDB) was a prominent organization within Nazi Germany tasked with ensuring ideological conformity among university professors and lecturers. Established in 1933, the NSDDB played a significant role in implementing Nazi policies within academia and promoting the dissemination of Nazi ideology among educators.

Key aspects and functions of the National Socialist German Lecturers League included:

Enforcement of Nazi Ideology: The NSDDB aimed to ensure that university professors and lecturers adhered to Nazi principles and promoted Nazi ideology in their teaching and research. It sought to purge academia of individuals deemed “politically unreliable” or opposed to Nazi ideals, replacing them with educators sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

Control and Censorship: The NSDDB exercised control over academic institutions, overseeing appointments, promotions, and curriculum development to ensure alignment with Nazi ideology. It enforced censorship, monitoring lectures, publications, and research activities to suppress dissent and promote Nazi propaganda.

Indoctrination of Students: Working in coordination with the National Socialist German Students’ League (NSDStB), the NSDDB played a role in indoctrinating students with Nazi ideology. It influenced course content and teaching methods to promote racial superiority, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Coordination with Other Nazi Organizations: The NSDDB collaborated closely with other Nazi-affiliated organizations, such as the German Student Union (DSt) and the Hitler Youth, to ensure a unified approach to ideological indoctrination and political mobilization within academic institutions.

Promotion of Racial Ideology: The NSDDB advocated for the integration of racial ideology into academic disciplines, promoting pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority and inferiority. It sought to reshape academic fields such as biology, anthropology, and history to align with Nazi racial theories.

Punishment of Dissent: The NSDDB targeted professors and lecturers who expressed dissenting views or criticized the Nazi regime, subjecting them to harassment, dismissal, or imprisonment. It contributed to the atmosphere of fear and conformity within academia, stifling intellectual freedom and independent thought.




Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/university-student-groups-in-nazi-germany

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/visual-essay-impact-propaganda

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/indoctrinating-youth

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44158487

https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Nazi-Party/330014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/sep/10/book-burning-quran-history-nazis

https://www.dhm.de/fileadmin/lemo/suche/search/index.php?q=Nationalsozialistischer+Deutscher+Studentenbund

Buchenwald Liberated

Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established by the Nazis, located near Weimar, Germany. It was operational from 1937 until its liberation on April 11, 1945, by American forces.

When the American soldiers arrived at Buchenwald, they were shocked by the appalling conditions they encountered. The camp was overcrowded, with thousands of emaciated prisoners subjected to forced labor, starvation, disease, and brutal treatment by the SS guards. Many inmates were on the brink of death, and mass graves dotted the landscape.

The liberation of Buchenwald was a moment of both relief and horror. For the survivors, it meant freedom from the daily torment and the hope of rebuilding their lives. However, it also revealed the extent of Nazi atrocities to the world. The images and testimonies from Buchenwald played a crucial role in documenting the Holocaust and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes.

As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp–including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true.

Among the camp’s most gruesome characters was Ilse Koch, wife of the camp commandant, who was infamous for her sadism.

Witnesses claimed “she wore clothes which were deliberately chosen to be inciting for the prisoners”,. They accused her of whipping prisoners for daring to look at her and of having “a desire to own certain objects made of human skin”, such as lampshades, a cover for a family photo album, and gloves.

Various objects made from human skin were found in Buchenwald when it was liberated. Despite the testimony of former prisoners who were forced to make such grisly objects, prosecutors could not conclusively prove her involvement in committing such crimes.

On April 11,1945, around 2:30 pm the tanks of the Fourth Armoured Division rolled through the SS complex without stopping. The SS fled. Armed inmates took control of the camp and overpowered the last remaining SS soldiers. By 4:00 pm they had taken control of the camp. Buchenwald was freed from within and without. About one hour later, scouts from the Fourth and Sixth Armoured Divisions were the first American soldiers to reach the camp. 21,000 inmates were liberated on that day, among them some 900 children and youth.

In the aftermath of liberation, efforts were made to provide medical care, food, and support to the survivors.

Many displaced persons would face a long road to physical and psychological recovery. The liberation of Buchenwald stands as a reminder of the horrors of genocide and the importance of never forgetting the lessons of history.

Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, seen in the photo at the top of the blog-seen in the second row, seventh from left-who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His mother and the youngest of his three sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, while he and his father were moved to Buchenwald where his father died of starvation and dysentery just months before it was liberated by Allied troops. Seventeen-year-old Elie was barely alive when American soldiers opened the camp.

I’ll finish with some of Elie Wiesel’s quotes:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”


Sources

https://www.buchenwald.de/en

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175448

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-u-s-army-liberates-buchenwald-concentration-camp

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/us-forces-liberate-buchenwald

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ilse-Koch

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The New Apostolic Church and the Holocaust

Some people think I am Jewish, others think I am an atheist. In fact, I am neither, I am a New Apostolic Christian. But before I go into the main story, firstly a brief history and explanation of the church because it is not a well-known Christian faith.

The church has existed since 1863 in Germany and since 1897 in the Netherlands. It came about from the schism in Hamburg in 1863, when it separated from the Catholic Apostolic Church, which itself started in the 1830s as a renewal movement in, among others, the Anglican Church and Church of Scotland. The church ministers have no formal theological training. In addition to their family, professional, and social obligations, they perform their pastoral duties in an honorary capacity

However, this blog is not about the church but its situation during the Nazi era and also about one of its members who was murdered in Auschwitz.

It faced a complex relationship with the Nazi regime of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Like many religious groups in Germany at the time, the New Apostolic Church had to navigate a precarious balance between adherence to its religious principles and the demands of the Nazi government.

The New Apostolic Church originated in the early 19th century as part of the larger Pentecostal movement, emphasizing the restoration of apostolic practices and spiritual gifts. By the time the Third Reich rose to power in the 1930s, the New Apostolic Church had established a presence in Germany and elsewhere.

Initially, the New Apostolic Church did not pose a significant challenge to the Nazi regime, and it did not draw the same level of attention or persecution as some other Christian denominations, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Confessing Church, which actively opposed Nazi policies. However, the New Apostolic Church did not fully align itself with the Nazi ideology either.

One key area of conflict between the New Apostolic Church and the Third Reich was the issue of allegiance. The Nazi regime sought to centralize power and control all aspects of German society, including religious institutions. This often led to conflicts with churches that refused to prioritize allegiance to the state over their religious beliefs.

The New Apostolic Church faced pressure to conform to the Nazi regime’s demands, including the incorporation of Nazi symbols and ideology into its practices. However, the church leadership generally avoided direct confrontation with the regime and sought to maintain a degree of independence.

While some members of the New Apostolic Church may have supported the Nazi regime, others resisted its influence or remained neutral. Individual experiences varied widely, with some facing persecution for their refusal to comply with Nazi demands, while others managed to coexist with the regime relatively peacefully.

Despite the challenges posed by the Third Reich, the New Apostolic Church survived the Nazi era and continued to exist after the fall of the regime. In the post-war period, the church, like many other religious organizations in Germany, grappled with questions of complicity, resistance, and reconciliation in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime.

Harry Fränkel
Harry Fränkel was born on 27 April 1882 near Bremen in northern Germany. His parents, Salomon and Eliese Fränkel were Jewish. He converted and became the New Apostolic on 23 July 1908. In 1909 already he was a Sunday School teacher in Dortmund. In 1911 he was ordained as a Deacon and then, around 1922, as a Priest.

He was a successful textile merchant. He could afford to send his three children to college. And the family could afford domestic help. And then the year 1933 dawned—the year in which the Nazis seized power in Germany.

Under Persecution
Fränkel, a so-called full Jew because both parents were Jews, lost his job as managing director of the company Mayer & Günther. He started his own business. Advertisements in the German-language magazine Unsere Familie, for example, document this. In 1938, however, legislation forbade him from running his own business. His son Erich took over. Before long, he too was forbidden from carrying on with the business.

Meanwhile, Priest Fränkel was asked to suspend his ministerial activity—to protect the Church. Reprints of the choir folder omitted his name as a hymn writer. His son Harry Jr., a graphic designer and illustrator, was refused admission to the Academy of Arts. It was becoming harder and harder to find work for him. This is when Fränkel Sr. decided to emigrate.

On the Run
A first attempt was to take him to South Africa. Harry Fränkel wrote to Assistant Chief Apostle Heinrich Franz Schlaphoff, but he was unable to help. By decree, South Africa closed itself off to European Jews. The Apostle, however, gave him the address of a contact in Argentina.

Belgium was the gateway to the free world at the time. The country was more liberal in terms of refugees than its European neighbours. For 17 months, Harry Fränkel lived in Brussels in five different locations—separated from his family, friends, and congregation. While he fought for permission to be able to stay in Brussels, the Gestapo, the secret police of the Nazi regime, knew of his whereabouts. And then came 10 May 1940, the day Germany invaded Belgium.

Deported and interned
Some 10,000 men were arrested in Belgium on that day because they were suddenly labelled as enemy foreigners and were considered a threat to the country. In a mass deportation, they were carted off to France by rail. There was hardly anything to drink in the overheated and overcrowded wagons, nothing to sit on or lie down on, no toilets…

This brought Harry Fränkel close to the French-Spanish border. First, he was taken to the Saint-Cyprien camp, Block 1, Barrack No I 42, and then to a place called Gurs, which was considered the most horrifying concentration camp in France. It was rife with hunger, cold, vermin, disease, and death. And then came the day when France surrendered to Germany, on 22 June 1940.


The armistice was followed by an extradition treaty. Harry Fränkel set out on his final journey. It took him via pre-trial confinement in Frankfurt (Germany) and the notorious Steinwache (a prison used by the Gestapo) in Dortmund—barely two kilometres away from his home and family—to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin and finally to Auschwitz.

Where he was murdered on 5 November 1942 at 8 a.m.: as per the International Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem. However, his name lives on, as the writer of the New Apostolic hymn, “Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy.”



Sources

https://nac.today/en/a/1041771

https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11498826

https://nak.org/en/church/history

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Dresden

Between February 13 and 15, there were four raids on Dresden. The Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden was carried out by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force (USAAF) in four phases from the night of February 13 to 15, 1945.

The photographs included in this blog were by Karl Rauscher. He was part of the Luftwaffe, specifically from the so-called Werftabteilung, tasked with repairing and scrapping downed aircraft. Before the war, he had been a professional photographer.

Some people say that the citizens of Dresden were victims of the Allied bombings. I believe the citizens of Dresden were victims of the regime that some of them had voted in. The bombings were a consequence of the policies of the Nazi regime.

The pictures speak for themselves.

Source

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=Dresden%20Bombardement&rows=25&page=1

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Murdered Athlete

The year 2024 will be a busy year sports-wise. We’ll have the UEFA Euro 2024 starting on June 14, and just over a month later on July 26—the Paris Olympic Games will start.

That’s why I wanted to remember Jewish athletes murdered during the Holocaust. However, I have done several blogs on that already, and that’s why I opted to remember a sporting hero—from the second largest group of victims during the Holocaust. When we remember one—they all are remembered.

Johann Trollmann—known by his family as “Rukeli,” a term from the Romani language (meaning tree) was born on 27 December 1907 in Wilsche, a district of Gifhorn. He grew up with his eight siblings in humble circumstances in Hanover’s Altstadt, the old part of the city.

He began boxing training at the tender age of eight. He started in the gym at the town‘s school—in Schaufelder Strasse, located in the heart of Hanover’s Nordstadt district.

He went on to make a meteoric career as a boxer. On 9 June 1933, he competed for the German light-heavyweight title, and even though he defeated his opponent Adolf Witt by points, the fight was judged “no result.” The spectators at the match rebelled, and the Nazi officials were forced to acknowledge Trollmann as the victor. However, six days later, he was stripped of the title.

Despite the championship being revoked, Trollmann’s manager was able to Despite the championship being revoked, Trollmann’s manager arranged another big match in Berlin. Before this match, Trollman was pressured to fight in an “Aryan German way.“ During the game, he should stand foot-to-foot with his opponent in the middle of the ring, and therefore, abandoning his dynamic fighting style. He felt compelled to meet these demands. He entered the ring with his hair dyed and skin powdered white. This was his way of criticising Nazis’ racial ideology. Trollmann lost the match.

Over the years 1933–1935, he fought in several other matches. However, he lost them all, or rather was forced to ‘lose’ them. Losing had been demanded by Nazi sports officials. He would fight nine more professional bouts before his licence was finally revoked, in 1935.

The persecution of Sinti and Roma in Germany dramatically increased in the following years.

Sterilization often preceded their internment in concentration camps, and Trollmann also underwent this operation. In 1939, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and fought on the eastern front. He was wounded in 1941 and returned to Germany as a result. The Gestapo arrested him in June 1942. Shortly after, they transported him to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg. They murdered him in the Wittenberge Satellite Camp on April 9, 1944.

Sources

Click to access JOHANN-RUKELI-TROLLMANN.pdf

Remembering a murdered boxer: Johann-Trollmann-Weg

https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/olympics/?content=holocaust_athletes

https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/en/fidicinstr/1-2/johann-rukeli-trollmann

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Eyewitness Accounts of the Porajmos

Porajmos—sometimes spelt Porrajmos or Pharrajimos—means devouring or destruction—in some dialects of the Romani language, is the term for the Roma Sinti Holocaust during World War II. It was introduced by Romani scholar and political activist Ian Hancock in the early 1990s. He chose to use the term coined by Kalderash Roma when he picked it up during an informal conversation in 1993.

Like the Jews, the Roma were also persecuted for centuries in Germany.

The first German anti-Romani law was issued in 1416 when they were accused of being foreign spies, carriers of the plague, and traitors to Christendom.

In 1725, Friedrich Wilhelm I condemned all those 18 years and older to be
hanged.

By 1922, all Romanies in Baden were to be photographed and fingerprinted. The Bavarian parliament issued a new law “to combat Gypsies, nomads and idlers.” The Provincial Criminal Commission endorsed another law dated 16 July 1926, aimed at controlling the “Gypsy Plague.”

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis murdered an estimated 500,000 Roma-Sinti people.

Below are two eyewitness accounts of survivors. The term Gypsy is used in the statement, and I know some people might find this offensive, but it is in the context of the time. It is also a term which is still used by Romani people themselves.

Hermine Horvath
Mrs Horvath gave this interview because she wished her sufferings to be recorded for posterity.

She is a Gypsy but came from a respectable artisan family who had settled in Jabing (Burgenland). When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, her father was taken to Dachau, and her mother and 6 young siblings were sent to work. Mrs Horvath, aged 13, worked for the Ortsgrupppenleiter at Gross Petersdorf, who exploited her cruelly. When he tried to seduce her, she fled to Rechnitz. In March 1943, she was ordered to return home for registration, and two days later, she, her mother and sisters, with a 3-year-old brother, were sent to Birkenau.

At first, they were housed in stables without blankets, food or water. Later, they were given the usual starvation diet, and then, after being tattooed, they were allocated to various Arbeitskommandos. Gypsies were given the heaviest work, and only the German-speaking Gypsies were kept alive at least for some time. Foreign (Serbian) Gypsies were gassed straight away. When typhoid broke out, Mrs Horvath’s mother died. Mrs Horvath was taken to the Hospital Block, where 9-13 patients had to share a bunk. Food and water were practically non-existent, but patients were given some sweet tea and tablets. Mrs Horvath noticed that all who partook of them died soon afterwards.

Mrs Horvath was saved by a Polish doctor who repeatedly succeeded in eliminating her name from the lists for the gas chambers. On the days of Blocksperre, no one was allowed out, and the air was heavy with the smell of burnt human flesh. On one such occasion, Mrs Horvath saw people being burnt alive in a large pyre outside the crematorium. She has been suffering from epileptic fits ever since. When Mrs Horvath was selected with other young women for medical experiments—she tried to escape but was caught and brutally punished. Owing to the fact that Mrs Horvath had a friend who was in the German Army, she finally managed to get sent to the Ravensbrück Camp with her sister. She had to work for Siemens & Halske. While a supervisor there sometimes gave her some food, her sister died of starvation.

Shortly before Ravensbrück was to be closed down, Mrs Horvath rallied her last strength to be passed as fit for work and was thus included in a march to another camp. After the march, she escaped and went back to her hometown.

See related report P.III.h. (Mauthausen) No. 794 for further information. Mrs Horvath died on 10 March 1958 at age 33.

Julius Hodosi
“It was the hardest time of my life. It’s hard for me to remember. I would like to forget…”

My home is in Burgenland, where the majority of Austrian Gypsies lived. After the annexation of Austria, we heard different things about Nazi racial persecution. Many people believed they could escape this fate by registering voluntarily for the German army. Me too.

The captain of my Air Force unit liked me. When the order came to expel all Gypsies from the army, he wrote to Goering. The response was that I could stay if the captain thought it was justifiable. But for the local NSDAP[1] group of my hometown, it was shameful to have a Gypsy in the army. They complained about it, so the captain wrote to Hitler. Hitler answered briefly, “When it’s the local NSDAP group’s wish, you have to expel him.”

So I took off the uniform and went back to my hometown. One night, the SS[2] came into the village. They came with trucks and randomly loaded entire families. That’s why almost all the Gypsies hastily left the village. I moved to Gisshübel near Vienna and lived there in a subtenancy.

My little brother, who still went to school, was expelled. A Gypsy wasn’t an adequate member of society.

In 1941, my wife and I were arrested by the Gestapo[3] in Gisshübel. We went to the Lackenbach reception camp in Burgenland. In this camp, we got a foretaste of what was in store. The SS beat us. The food was horrible. I did the only thing possible and tried to flee. In fact, my wife and I were able to escape.

Together, we hid in Vienna and lived as so-called—submarine boats. We were not registered and didn’t get food cards. Because we had no money, I had to look for a job. That was very dangerous, but I had no choice. A coal trader was happy to get me as a delivery man because it was difficult to find male employees at this time. But it happened as I had foreseen. My cover was blown, and I was arrested by the Gestapo again. For three weeks, I was in Rossauerlände prison. During a hearing, the Gestapo official Schreiner said literally, “We will destroy you like cats!”

At home, I had a wife and two little children. Two girls, aged one and two years. I didn’t know if I would see them again. But when I was on the transport to Auschwitz, the Gestapo brought my wife and the children to the station. Together, we rode to the Birkenau Extermination Camp.

The transport was an agony. Penned up, without food, without water, and without light, we rode into the unknown. Finally, when the wagons opened, the SS received us with blows and bloodhounds—we were at our destination.

At that moment, we stopped being humans. We were just numbers. All that we had was taken from us. All of us (the women and children) had our heads shaved. All of us, my little girls too, were tattooed with numbers. Then, we were sent into the so-called entrance barrack.

We were in this barrack for about one week until we were called to different commandos. On the fifth day, we saw that there were more terrible things than getting almost nothing to eat. 300 people from Burgenland were selected for the gasification and immediately gassed. The SS visibly revelled in the agony of the people.

I came with my wife to the commando ”earthworks.” Amongst other places, we laid rails to the crematories.

Every day from 9–10, there was the so-called—punishment work. In this hour, we had to do work on the double. When someone fell down with a heavy barrow or tippler, they battered him to death immediately. So, we lost 50–60 people daily. In the morning, the SS whispered to the Capo[4] the number of people who should not return, and the Capo tried to fulfil this order.

For all children, the camp was certain death. There was no nourishing food, no milk, nothing a developing child needs for their body. In addition to that—the uncertain life. No minute were you safe. We had to muster in the night for hours— little children too—which made hounded, tortured beings of us. Very often, the drunken SS made fun of us. They lined us up and selected those who had to go to the gas. Sometimes it was true, sometimes not.

During this time, I lost my two young children. They literally died of hunger.
The food was the following: 5 people would receive daily—1 army bread, and every prisoner—1 spoon of marmalade, ½ kg swede and sometimes 50 grams of ham and 20 grams of margarine. There were extra portions, but they were always for a select purpose. The result of the distribution led very often to affrays. There were always people killed. The hunger was enormous.

In addition came epidemics of typhus, malaria, mange, etc. The sick people were gassed. So they reduced our number from 24,000 to 7,000 within one year.

1944, in Birkenau and as I heard in Lackenbach (Burgenland), they selected (especially) dark-skinned Gypsies (men and women) for transports to Bergen-Belsen. They were experimented on to learn how long a man could survive without food and drink.

At the end of this year, they organised further transports. They separated people who were fit for the military and such young women and men who agreed to be part of sterilisation experiments in the hope of freedom. They were promised release from the camp. In truth, it was very different. 8 days after such an operation, which was done without anaesthetic, they had to go back to work. Many perished because of that.

I became part of the so-called Bewährungstruppe and was installed at the front near Cottbus on 12 April 1945. Those who did not die during the fighting were killed by the SS from behind. From 4,000 men, just 700 survived. We were happy to get into Russian imprisonment. Later, I heard that none of the 4,000 who stood in Birkenau lived anymore. They were all gassed.

__________
It is just so important that the stories of all Holocaust victims are heard. Only when we educate ourselves—we can tackle hate.

Sources

Click to access OPRORRAJMOS-ian-hancock.pdf

Click to access roma-holocaust-factsheet%20(3).pdf

https://www.testifyingtothetruth.co.uk/viewer/fulltext/105889/1/eng/

https://www.testifyingtothetruth.co.uk/viewer/metadata/105947/1/eng/

Donation

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Liberation of Wöbbelin Concentration Camp

The hate of the Nazis for all who were not Aryan was so great that even in the last months of the war, they still set up a new concentration camp.

The camp, near the city of Ludwigslust, was a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. The SS had established Wöbbelin in early February 1945 to house concentration camp prisoners whom the SS had evacuated from other camps to prevent their liberation by the Allies. At its height, Wöbbelin held some 5,000 inmates, many of whom were suffering from starvation and disease.

On 2 May 1945, the camp was liberated by US troops, These are some of the testimonies.

Living conditions in the camp, when the U.S. 8th Infantry and the 82nd Airborne arrived were deplorable. There was little food or water and some prisoners had resorted to cannibalism. When the units arrived, they found about 1,000 inmates dead in the camp. In the aftermath, the U.S. Army ordered the townspeople in Ludwigslust to visit the camp and bury the dead

James Megellas, was among the first soldiers to enter the Wöbbelin camp. He was 28 at the time and wrote about his experiences in his book ‘All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe.’

“I was not prepared mentally to deal with the horror of the camp,” Inside, he said he found “two hundred twisted, nude bodies of skin and bone piled four to five feet high.” In the corner of the room was a pile of clothes taken off the bodies for reuse. Individual forms were almost indistinguishable. There could not have been a body more than sixty pounds,”

In another building, Megellas found living prisoners.

“Most were lying on the dirt floor or propped against the sides of the building too weak to get up. With sunken eyes and skin taut, they looked like skeletons.”

On May 7, 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division conducted a funeral service in Ludwigslust for 200 inmates. Engineers dug the graves, and citizens of Ludwigslust buried each one in parachute silk, Megellas said.

A chaplain from the 82nd delivered the following eulogy:

“The crimes here committed in the name of the German people and by their acquiescence were minor compared to those to be found in concentration camps elsewhere in Germany. Here there were no gas chambers, no crematoria; these men of Holland, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and France were simply allowed to starve to death. Within four miles of your comfortable homes, 4,000 men were forced to live like animals, deprived even of the food you would give to your dogs.”

Megellas said he will never forget what he saw at Wöbbelin. The incident reinforced why he and his men fought the war.

“We stood there and we realized that it was to destroy the monstrosity that the Nazis had created.”

In accordance with a policy mandated by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, the U.S. Army in Ludwigslust ordered “all atrocity victims to be buried in a public place” with crosses placed at the graves of Christians and Stars of David on the Jewish graves, along with a stone monument to commemorate the dead.

sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/woebbelin

https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de/en/history/satellite-camps/satellite-camps/woebbelin/

https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/wwii/special-features/VE-day/remembering-the-liberation-of-wobbelin.html

https://eu.fayobserver.com/story/news/2013/02/28/the-little-known-story-w/22143513007/

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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The Demmin Mass Suicide— A Final Desperate Act

(Originally posted on 1 May 2016)

On 1 May 1945, hundreds of people committed mass suicide in the town of Demmin, in the Province of Pomerania (now in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Germany. The suicides occurred during a mass panic provoked by atrocities committed by soldiers of the Soviet Red Army, who had sacked the town the day before. Although death toll estimates vary, it is acknowledged to be the largest mass suicide ever recorded in Germany. It was part of a mass suicide wave among the population of Nazi Germany.

For years, people indoctrinated by German propaganda as to what was bound to happen should the Soviet troops set foot on German soil responded with suicide.

For years, people indoctrinated by German propaganda as to what was bound to happen should the Soviet troops set foot on German soil responded with suicide. Three Soviet negotiators were shot prior to the Soviet advance into Demmin. The Hitler Youth, amongst others, fired upon Soviet soldiers once they were inside the town. The retreating Wehrmacht had blown up the bridges over the Peene and Tollense rivers, which enclosed the town to the North, West and South, thus blocking the Red Army advance and trapping the remaining civilians. The Soviet units looted and burned down the town, and committed rapes and executions.

Karl Schlösser spent his childhood in Demmin and witnessed the mass suicide of about 1000 residents and refugees in the spring of 1945. He was only ten years old.

Schlösser recalled how his mother clutched a razor in her hands ready to kill him, his brother, and his grandfather rather than be captured by the Stalin Red Army—and die in reprisals

“As parts of the town burned we fled into the woods and later made camp in a nearby field. One morning after nearly a week I woke up to see corpses floating in the river. Later I saw people hanging from trees. They had killed themselves rather than be taken by the Russians,” Schlösser remembered.

Karl Schlösser died on 21 March 2018 at age 83.

Manfred Schuster was another survivor. He was only ten years old when he witnessed women tying children to their bodies with rope or clotheslines and jumping into a river North of Berlin as Soviet forces entered the town.

He remembered seeing around 50 women with up to four children jumping into the river Peene in the small town of Demmin.

Speaking to the Times, Schuster, said, “I shall never forget the cries of ‘mum, mum’.”

“The most horrible part was when a couple of children broke free and made it back to the bank, from where they looked on helplessly, screaming back at the water where their mothers and siblings had drowned,” he said. “In absolute horror, we dropped our bag of sugar, which exploded in a cloud of white dust, and we ran home as fast as we could.”

For three days, The Soviet soldiers were allowed to loot the town. They committed mass rapes of local women, according to eyewitnesses, regardless of age, and shot German men who spoke up against this practice.

Demmin chronicler Gisela Zimmer, then 14 years old, recalls:

“My mother was also raped. And then, together with us and with neighbours, she hurried towards the Tollense River, resolutely prepared to jump into it. My siblings realized only much later that I had held her back, that I had pulled her out of what may be called a state of trance, to prevent her from jumping into the water. There were people. There was screaming. The people were prepared to die. Children were told, ‘Do you want to live on? The town is burning. These and those are dead already. No, we do not want to live any more.’ And so, people went mostly into the rivers. That made the Russians feel creepy, too. There are examples where Russians, too, tried to pull people out or hinder them. But these hundreds of people, they were unable to withhold. And the population here was extremely panicked.”

The mass suicide came just eight days before German General Jodl signed the unconditional surrender document in Reims, France, which formally ended the Second World War in Europe.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074624/How-thousands-Germans-committed-mass-suicide-Allies-approached-final-days-WWII.html

https://www.lukasverlag.com/programm/belletristik/titel/454-vertreibung-aus-dem-paradies.html

https://thewire.in/books/promise-me-youll-shoot-yourself-nazi-germanys-suicide-wave

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/tragedy-demmin-900-died-mass-5134001

https://dbpedia.org/page/Mass_suicide_in_Demmin

Edward R. Murrow—Reporting the Horrors

Edward R. Murrow was born on 25 April 1908. Although he is in uniform in the picture above, he was a journalist and broadcaster. I am not going to do a piece on his life as such. I will only go into one report.

He was one of the first reporters to go into Buchenwald as it was liberated in April 1945, Before I post the manuscript of his report I want to pick out one line because it is so relevant today.

“I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words…. If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry.”

Some people nowadays get so easily offended by the truth.

The manuscript of the report:

“Permit me to tell you what you would have seen and heard had you been with me on Thursday. It will not be pleasant listening. If you are at lunch, or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald. It is on a small hill about four miles outside Weimar, and it was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, and it was built to last.

As we approached it, we saw about a hundred men in civilian clothes with rifles advancing in open order across the field. There were a few shots. We stopped to inquire. We’re told that some of the prisoners have a couple of SS men cornered in there. We drove on, reached the main gate. The prisoners crowd up behind the wire. We entered. And now, let me tell this in the first person, for I was the least important person there, as you can hear.

There surged around me an evil-smelling stink. Men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death had already marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over that mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing. A German, Fritz Kersheimer, came up and said, ‘May I show you around the camp? I’ve been here for ten years.’

An Englishman stood to attention saying, ‘May I introduce myself? Delighted to see you. And can you tell me when some of our folks will be along?’

I told him, ‘Soon,’ and asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovakians. When I entered, men crowded around tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description. When I reached the centre of the barracks, a man came up and said, ‘You remember me, I am Petr Zenkl, one-time mayor of Prague.’ I remembered him but did not recognize him. He asked about Benes and Jan Masaryk. I asked how many men had died in that building during the last month. They called the doctor; we inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more—nothing of who had been where what they had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242, two hundred and forty-two out of 1200 in one month.

As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the hand-clapping of babies, they were so weak. The doctor’s name was Paul Heller. He had been there since ’38. As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others–they must have been over 60–were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.

In another part of the camp, they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. An elderly man standing beside me said, ‘The children–enemies of the state!’ I could see their ribs through their thin shirts. The old man said, ‘I am Professor Charles Richer of the Sorbonne.’ The children clung to my hands and stared. We crossed to the courtyard. Men kept coming up to me to speak to me and touch me, professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all of Europe. Men from the countries that made America.

We went to the hospital; it was full. The doctor told me that two hundred had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: ‘Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult.’ Dr Heller pulled back the blanket from a man’s feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients could not move.

As we left the hospital, I drew out a leather billfold, hoping that I had some money which would help those who lived to get home. Professor Richer from the Sorbonne said, ‘I should be careful of my wallet if I were you. You know there are criminals in this camp, too.’ A small man tottered up, saying, ‘May I feel the leather, please? You see, I used to make good things of leather in Vienna.’

Another man said, ‘My name is Walter Roeder. For many years I lived in Joliet. Came back to Germany for a visit and Hitler grabbed me.’

I asked to see the kitchen; it was clean. The German in charge had been a Communist, had been at Buchenwald for nine years, had a picture of his daughter in Hamburg. He hadn’t seen her in twelve years, and if I got to Hamburg, would I look her up? He showed me the daily ration: one piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every twenty-four hours. He had a chart on the wall; very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each ten men who died. He had to account for the rations, and he added, ‘We’re very efficient here.’

We went again into the courtyard, and as we walked, we talked. The two doctors, the Frenchman and the Czech agreed that about six thousand had died during March. Kershenheimer, the German, added that back in the winter of 1939 when the Poles began to arrive without winter clothing, they died at the rate of approximately 900 a day. Five different men asserted that Buchenwald was the best concentration camp in Germany; they had had some experience of the others.

Dr Heller, the Czech, asked if I would care to see the crematorium. He said it wouldn’t be very interesting because the Germans had run out of coke some days ago, and had taken to dumping the bodies into a great hole nearby. Professor Richer said perhaps I would care to see the small courtyard. I said yes. He turned and told the children to stay behind. As we walked across the square, I noticed that the professor had a hole in his left shoe and a toe sticking out of the right one. He followed my eyes and said, ‘I regret that I am so little presentable, but what can one do?’ At that point, another Frenchman came up to announce that three of his fellow countrymen outside had killed three SS men and taken one prisoner.

We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall was about eight feet high. It adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little. All except two were naked. I tried to count them as best I could, and arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than five hundred men and boys lay there in two neat piles.

There was a German trailer, which must have contained another fifty, but it wasn’t possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed. But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last twelve years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than twenty thousand in the camp. There had been as many as sixty thousand. Where are they now? As I left the camp, a Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris came up to me and said, ‘You will write something about this, perhaps?’ And he added, ‘To write about this, you must have been here at least two years, and after that–you don’t want to write any more.”

sources

https://cssh.northeastern.edu/jewishstudies/edward-r-murrow-and-the-holocaust/

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/edward-r-murrow-broadcast-from-buchenwald-april-15-1945

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/edward-r-murrow

The Start of the Holocaust

The Holocaust did not start at the start of World War II, although this is what many people believe. The foundation for the Holocaust, was laid out long before that. There had been Anti-Semitism in Europe and other parts of the world for centuries.

However, during the Weimar Republic in Germany, the seeds were planted for Anti-Semitism and bigotry to become genocide.

The concerns of great groups of the population weren’t listened to, or dismissed. This gave the opportunity for the NSDAP to rise. They told the people what they wanted to hear. They promised them employment and a good standard of living, Then when they finally got to power they started to ‘deliver’ on those promises. They did, however, fail to tell the people what price was going to be paid for those promises.

In the media, I have seen very little coverage of some disturbing events which had the 90th anniversary in the last few weeks.

The Enabling Act, also known as The Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich was passed by the German parliament (444 voted for/ 94 against/109 absent) on 23 March 1933, and proclaimed the next day, it became the cornerstone of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship. The act allowed him to enact laws, including ones that violated the Weimar Constitution, without the approval of either parliament or Reich President von Hindenburg. Making Hitler the totalitarian leader of Germany.

The first measures against the Jews included:

April 1, 1933: A boycott of Jewish shops and businesses by the Nazis.

April 7, 1933: The law for the Re-establishment of the Civil Service expelled all non-Aryans (defined on April 11, 1933, as anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent) from the civil service. Initially, exceptions were made for those working since August 1914; German veterans of World War I; and, those who had lost a father or son fighting for Germany or her allies in World War I.

April 7, 1933: The law regarding admission to the legal profession prohibited the admission of lawyers of non-Aryan descent to the Bar. It also denied non-Aryan members of the Bar the right to practice law. (Exceptions were made in the cases noted above in the law regarding the civil service.) Similar laws were passed regarding Jewish law assessors, jurors, and commercial judges.

April 22, 1933: The decree regarding physicians’ services with the national health plan denied reimbursement of expenses to those patients who consulted non-Aryan doctors. Jewish doctors who were war veterans or had suffered from the war were excluded.

April 25, 1933: The law against the overcrowding of German schools restricted Jewish enrollment in German high schools to 1.5% of the student body. In communities where they constituted more than 5% of the population, Jews were allowed to constitute up to 5% of the student body. Initially, exceptions were made in the case of children of Jewish war veterans, who were not considered part of the quota. In the framework of this law, a Jewish student was a child with two non-Aryan parents.

The Holocaust didn’t start with murdering, but with false promises.

sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-enabling-act

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Enabling-Act

https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/36-questions-about-the-holocaust.html#3