Greece – History of Sorts

Industrial Murder

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Holocaust is the ‘wholesale murder’ approach the Nazis took, the industrialization of death.

The gassing already started in 1939 as part of the T4 program, the murder of the disabled, what really is sickening is the fact that the first of such killings was on request by parents of a severely disabled child.

But the T4 murders were relatively small scale, for lack of a better word, compared to the gassings that took place in Auschwitz, Chelmno, Sobibor and the other extermination camps.

The gassing was kind of suggested to be a humane way of killing. But there was nothing humane about it. It was only humane for the perpetrators. After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. Gassing also proved to be more effective and cheaper.

On October 24, 1980, Lesław Dyrcz, a student from the Brynek Forestry Vocational School, found a leather briefcase buried at about 40 centimeters deep in the ground while clearing the area around Birkenau crematorium III of stub and roots. Inside the briefcase was a thermos liner which had belonged to Marcel Nadjari. a Jewish Greek

In November 1944, two months before the liberation of the camp, Nadjari had buried a twelve-page manuscript written in Greek on November 3 on pages taken from a notebook, in which he described his observations of Auschwitz

In his manuscript, he writes: I want to live, to revenge the deaths of Dad and Mum, and that of my beloved little sister Nelly.

Below are some notes of his manuscript.

“Our work was first to welcome them. Most didn’t know their fate. The laughed or cried. They were told they were going to take a shower and they went clueless to [their] death. To date, my dear ones, I don’t tell them they they are going for a shower, although I can lie to them, I only told them that I didn’t understand the language they spoke, and to the comrades, men and women, that I realised were doomed I told the truth.”

“Almost every time they kill, I wonder if there is a God and yet I have always believed in Him and still believe that God wants it, let His will be.”

“Often I thought of going in with the others, to put an end to this. But always revenge prevented me doing so. I wanted and want to live, to avenge the death of Dad, Mum and my dear little sister,”

“The crematorium is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Under a garden there are two enormous cellars. One is where people undress and the other is the death chamber. People enter it naked and once about 3,000 are inside it is locked and they are gassed. After six or seven minutes of suffering they die,”

“The gas canisters were always delivered in a German Red Cross vehicle with two SS men. They then dropped the gas through openings – and half an hour later our work began. We dragged the bodies of those innocent women and children to the lift, which took them to the ovens.”

Nadjari did survive.

After the war he got married and in 1951 moved to New York. He already had a one-year-old son, and in 1957 his wife Rosa gave birth to a girl, whom they named Nelli – after Marcel’s beloved murdered sister.

Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/at-the-killing-centers

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42144186

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gassing-operations

https://www.history.com/news/the-jewish-men-forced-to-help-run-auschwitz

Marcel Nadjari’s Manuscript November 3, 1944

Click to access Microsoft%20Word%20-%206234.pdf

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.

$2.00

The Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Covid 19 Vaccine and Viagra.

Some people will probably accuse me for using specific words in the title as ‘clickbait’, and to an extend that is true. But anyone who writes a blog, and especially one with an extraordinary story, want readers to click on that link to read that story.

I make no excuse for the use of the title, basically because all the words are linked.

There were an approximate 50,000 Jews in Thessaloniki ,Greece, before World War 2. Only 2000 of them survived.

In the summer of 1942, the persecution of the Jews of Thessaloniki started. All men between the ages of 18 and 45 were conscripted into forced labor, where they stood for hours in the hot summer sun and were beaten and humiliated. The Jewish community was depleted of its wealth and pride. Jews were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David and forced into an enclosed ghetto, called Baron Hirsch, adjacent to the rail lines.

On March 15, 1943, the Nazis began deporting Jews from Thessaloniki. Every three days, freight cars crammed with an average of 2,000 Thessaloniki Jews headed toward Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the summer of 1943, the Nazi regime had deported 46,091 Jews.

Two of the survivors were the parents of Albert Bourla. For many of you the name Albert Bourla will mean very little. However is the CEO of a company which will have made an impact to millions ,and possibly billions, of people across the globe. The company if Pfizer, the first company ,the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was the first approved vaccine used to provide protection against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in order to prevent COVID-19. Of Course Pfizer is also known for Viagra, initially used as a treatment for heart-related chest pain. But is now primarily used as a treatment of erectile dysfunction (inability to sustain a satisfactory erection to complete sexual intercourse). Its use is now one of the standard treatments for erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Albert Bourla joined the Sephardic Heritage International on January 28th for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where he shared his family’s story of tragedy and survival during the Holocaust.

Below is an excerpt of his speech.

“My father’s family, like so many others, had been forced from their homes and taken to a crowded house within one of the Jewish ghettos,” recounted Bourla. “It was a house they had to share with several other Jewish families. They could circulate in and out of the ghetto as long as they were wearing the yellow star.”

“But one day in March 1943, the ghetto was surrounded by occupational forces and the exit was blocked. My father and his brother (my uncle) were outside when it happened. Their father (my grandfather) met them outside, told them what was happening and asked them to leave the ghetto and hide because he had to go back inside as his wife and two other children were home. So later that day, my grandfather, Abraham Bourla, his wife Rachel, his daughter Graziella and his youngest son David were taken to a camp outside the train station and from there, left for Auschwitz. My father and uncle never saw them again,”

“When the Germans had left, they went back to Thessalonki and found that all of their property and belongings have been stolen or sold.”

Bourla’s mother was well known which caused her to hide at home “24 hours a day” out of fear of being recognized on the street and turned over the Nazis . She left the house very rarely, but it was during one of her rare ventures outside that she was captured and taken to a local prison.

“My Christian uncle, my mother’s brother-in-law, Costas de Madis approached a Nazi official and paid him a ransom in exchange for a promise that my mother would be spared,”

“However, my mother’s sister, my aunt, didn’t trust the Germans. So she would go to the prison every day at noon to watch as they loaded the truck of prisoners. One day, her fear had been realized, and my mom was put on the truck. She ran home and told her husband, who then called the Nazi official and reminded him of their agreement – who said he would look into it. That night was the longest night in my aunt and uncle’s life because they knew that next morning, my mom would likely have been executed.”

“The next day, my mom was lined up with other prisoners. And moments before she would have been executed, a German soldier on a motorcycle arrived and handed some papers to the men in charge of the firing squad. They removed my mother from the line. As they rode away, my mom could hear the machine gun slaughtering those that were left behind. Two or three days later, she was released from prison after the Germans left Greece.”

Eight years later Bourla’s parents met by way of matchmaking, through which they agreed to get married.

I fully respect anyone’s decision whether to take or not to take the vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter. Once this decision is based on sound, verified and peer researched information, and not by social media memes or sources which can’t be traced or verified.

However I will never condone the current vaccinations being compared to the Holocaust, it is absolutely vile and disgusting.

Just imagine i

sources

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/pfizer-ceo-shares-his-familys-tragic-story-during-the-holocaust-658818

https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/holocaust-in-greece/thessaloniki

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-familys-story-why-we-remember-albert-bourla/

Friedrich Schubert-Greek -German Nazi convicted 27 times to death.

Friedrich (Fritz) Schubert (21 February 1897, Dortmund – 22 October 1947, Heptapyrgion) was a Greek-speaking German NCO Sonderführer of the Wehrmacht. Fritz_Schubert_porttrait (1)

As head of the Jagdkommando Schubert, a paramilitary force terrorizing the civilian population during the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II, he committed numerous atrocities in Crete and Macedonia.

Tried by a special court for war crimes in Athens, he was found guilty over the killing of over 250 civilians, sentenced 27 times to death and executed.

According to some sources, Schubert was born as Petros Konstantinidis , son to a rich tobacco merchant in Smyrna and emigrated to Germany at a young age. There, he joined the National Socialist Party and became a dedicated Nazi. Schubert made his first appearance on Crete in 1941 as an interpreter to the German commander of Rethymno. Later, he succeeded Hartmann as the head of the German counter-espionage network. Due to his speaking of Turkish and his strong accent of Greek, Cretans nicknamed him “the Turk”. In 1943, after recruiting several convicted Greek criminals and Germanophiles (e.g., members of the Tzoulias family from Krousonas), he established his notorious Jagdkommando in eastern Crete.

Schuberites_in_Tzermiado

The Jagdkommando Schubert was an anti-communist militia unit intended to capture local resistance fighters and those who helped them. Its conscripts, who were dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms, become known among Cretans as the Schuberai or Schubertiani . They were notorious for their sadistic practices during attacks against civilians that involved beating, torture, shootings and the destruction of numerous villages (e.g., Oropedio Lasithiou, Rodakino, Kali Sykia, Kallikratis).

On the 6th of October 1943 they burnt 13 civillians alive in the village of Kaly Sykia

Even today, calling someone a Schuberai is considered in Crete to be a serious insult synonymous to treachery and cruelty.

These events had enraged the local resistance fighters and made them want to eliminate the Schuberai at all costs. Soon, Schubert’s unit lost its effectiveness as it could not operate away from Chania without the escort of a large Wehrmacht protective force. Hence, in 1944 Schubert and his unit were transferred to Macedonia where they reinforced Poulos’s collaborationist battalion (a.k.a. Poulos Verband). While in Macedonia, Schubert’s group continued their hideous activities, being responsible for the massacres of Chortiatis and Giannitsa, among others.

After the war, Schubert attempted to return to Greece. On 4 September 1945 he was arrested in Eleusina on board a plane repatriating ex-concentration camp prisoners back to Greece.

151

On August 5, 1947 he was found guilty of 271 murders and several other crimes including arson, rapes and thefts. For these, Schubert was convicted 27 times to death and several thousand years of imprisonment. He was executed in Eptapyrgio, Thessaloniki on October 22, 1947.

download

Massacre of Kondomari

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

The Massacre of Kondomari refers to the execution of male civilians from the village of Kondomari in Crete by an ad hoc firing squad consisting of German paratroopers on 2 June 1941 during World War II.The shooting was the first of a series of reprisals in Crete. It was orchestrated by Generaloberst Kurt Student, in retaliation for the participation of Cretans in the Battle of Crete which had ended with the surrender of the island two days earlier.

Bernhard-Hermann Ramcke, Kurt Student

The massacre was photographed by a German army war propaganda correspondent whose negatives were discovered 39 years later in the federal German archives by a Greek journalist.

The civilian population of Crete had joined in the defence of their island alongside Greek and British armed forces. There are many accounts of them killing parachutists, some as they were still hanging in their parachutes as they landed. Some might regard this as a matter of self defence but the Germans interpreted it as “partisan” activity because they were not wearing uniform, and in their eyes outside the rules of warfare. There were also rumours that bodies had been mutilated or that even some parachutists had been tortured – although a much more likely explanation that bodies – necessarily left on the landing grounds – very rapidly decomposed in the heat.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

Following Student’s order, the occupants of Kondomari were blamed for the death of a few German soldiers whose bodies had been found near the village. On 2 June 1941, four lorries full of German paratroopers from the III Battalion of Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1 under the command of Oberleutnant Horst Trebes surrounded Kondomari. Trebes, a former member of the Hitler Youth, was the highest-ranking officer of the Battalion to have survived the Battle unwounded.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

Men, women and children were forced to gather in the village square. Then, a number of hostages was selected among the men while women and children were released. The hostages were led to the surrounding olive groves and later fired upon. The exact number of the victims is unclear. According to German records, a total of 23 men were killed but other sources raise the toll to about 60. The whole operation was captured on film by Franz-Peter Weixler, then serving as a war propaganda correspondent (kriegsberichter) for the Wehrmacht.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

Franz Peter Weixler, Wehrmacht kriegsberichter (Army war correspondent) photographed and preserved his negatives of the massacre. Weixler was later charged with treason and held by the Gestapo. Here is an English translation his original statement for the trial of Hermann Goering.

“The punitive expedition consisted of Trebes, another lieutenant, an interpreter, two sergeants and about twenty five parachutists of the Second Battalion. As a photographer assigned to my division I was permitted to accompany this commando. Near the village of Malemes, we stopped and Trebes showed us the corpses of several soldiers, obviously in the process of decay. He incited the men against the civilian population. We continued our drive to the village of Kondomari.

The men got off, and ran into the few houses of the little community. They got all men, women, and children onto the little square.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

A German soldier brought out the coat of a parachutist which he had picked up in one of the houses. and which had a bullet hole in the back. Trebes had the house burned down immediately.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

One man admitted having killed a German soldier, but it was not possible to convict any of the others of any crimes or plundering, and I therefore asked Trebes to stop the contemplated action and give us orders to return, taking with us only the one man. Trebes however gave orders to separate the men from the women and children; then he had the interpreter tell the women that all of the men would be shot because of having murdered German soldiers, and that the corpses would have to be interred within two hours.

When Trebes turned his back for a few moments, I made it possible for nine men to get away. Trebes had the men form a half circle, gave the order to fire, and after about fifteen seconds, everything was over.

Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten

I asked Trebes, who was quite pale, whether he realized what he had done, and he replied that he had only executed the order of Hermann Goering, and avenged his dead comrades. A few days later he received the Knights Cross from Goering for his “braveness” in Crete.”

Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-166-0525-30,_Kreta,_Kondomari,_Erschießung_von_Zivilisten

The following day an even worse massacre was conducted in the village of Kandanos, where 180 civilians were killed, possibly by a squad also led by Horst Trebes. The village was razed to the ground.

Karl Schümers- the butcher of Greece

a0e07477271991827c0344a831cafb89

Karl Schümers (17 October 1905 – 18 August 1944) was a high-ranking commander in the Waffen-SS and Ordnungspolizei (police) of Nazi Germany during World War II. He commanded the SS Polizei Division in July – August 1944. He was directly or indirectly involved in many of the major atrocities committed in Greece during 1944. Killed by a landmine on 18 August 1944, he was posthumously awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross

DE_Band_mit_RK_(1) .

On 5 April 1944, Karl Schümers commanded the 7th unit of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division to the execution of 277 unarmed women, children and elders in the village of Kleisoura in Greece as a retaliation of the killing of 3 German soldiers.In the official investigations by his command hierarchy for the massacre he testified that his soldiers had to kill them all because guerrilla forces were hiding in the village, and was acquitted, while it was proven after the war that his testimony was false.
On 24 April the his 7th unit committed the Pyrgoi massacre where 368 children were slaughtered.
Men from the same 7th unit, under the command of Hans Zampel and Fritz Lautenbach committed the Distomo massacre, on 10 June, where 218 civilians were brutally murdered for retaliation, one of the cruelest atrocities of WW II; no one was ever tried for this war crime.
On 17 June 1944 Karl Schümers commanded the execution of 28 civilians and total destruction of Ipati, and the next day, the burning down of Sperchiada and the killing of 35 civilians.
After he was assigned the command of the 4th Panzer Grenadier Division, on 22 July 1944,the 8th unit of his forces took part in the operation Kreuzotter (5-31 August 1944) in a failed attempt to eradicate ELAS bases from the mountains of central Greece, Roumeli, Greece , that resulted, among others, in the killing of approximately 170 civilians and the partial or complete destruction of dozens of villages and cities.