Category Archives: Mauthausen
Mauthausen Liberated
On 5 May 1945, Mauthausen Concentration Camp was liberated by the US Army.
Just a simple poem to commemorate that day.
In Mauthausen’s shadow, where darkness did dwell,
In the heart of despair, where horrors did swell,
There came a day of courage, a day of light,
When the chains of oppression were shattered in flight.
From the depths of anguish, where freedom seemed lost,
Rose the spirit of resistance, no matter the cost.
In the eyes of the weary, defiance did gleam,
As they dared to dream of a world redeemed.
Through the barbed wire fences, they saw hope’s distant gleam,
A beacon of liberation, like a radiant stream.
With each step towards freedom, they reclaimed their might,
Breaking the shackles of tyranny, banishing the night.
In the echoes of Mauthausen, the voices of the brave,
Sing of resilience, of the souls they saved.
Though the scars may linger, and memories remain,
Their triumph stands eternal, a testament to pain.
So let us remember, the courage of that day,
When the walls of oppression crumbled away.
In the liberation of Mauthausen, let freedom resound,
A triumph of humanity, on hallowed ground.
Adriana Valkenburg—Prostitute and Collaborator whose Fiancé was Murdered in Mauthausen
Before I go into the main story about Adriana Valkenburg, I have to explain something about prostitution in the Netherlands to put this into context. It has always been acceptable in the Netherlands. However, it was only in 1988 that prostitution was considered a legal profession—but in the year 2000, prostitution was legalized by the government.
Adriana (Jeanne)Valkenburg was born in Schiedam on 10 June 1894, the fourth of fourteen children of Jacob Valkenburg and Adriana Cornelia de Ligt. She had a difficult childhood. Her deeply religious father was violent, while her mother neglected to raise the children. She first came into contact with the police in 1911 when she stole a gold ring.
From age eighteen, Jeanne Valkenburg worked as a costume seamstress at the fashion warehouse Gerzon in Rotterdam. She also went to live in that city after she met the wealthy shipbuilder Jan Pot in 1916. As his mistress, she received generous compensation and a roof over her head. Possibly to escape the pressure of Pot’s sexual needs, Valkenburg married the Jewish businessman Jacob Stibbe, whom she had met recently, that same year, 1916. After a few weeks, Stibbe disappeared without a trace, and she never saw him again. Twelve years later, the divorce was granted. Valkenburg stayed with a sister in the east of the country for six months but restored contact with Jan Pot when she settled in a boarding house on Frederiksplein in Amsterdam in 1918. Pot paid the rent, and depending on her services, Valkenburg received an allowance.
In addition to the contract with Pot, Jeanne Valkenburg had a lucrative practice in the 1920s as a prostitute and later guest housekeeper (whore madam) in her own brothels in Amsterdam and The Hague. That career was boosted by the waiter Arnoldus (Nol) van Leersum, with whom Valkenburg had had a relationship since 1919. Because he was living in her pocket, Valkenburg wanted to get rid of him. Attempts to have him convicted of pimping failed due to the legal wrangling and Valkenburg was freed from Van Leersum in 1933—although it cost her the lion’s share of her fortune.
In 1931, Adriana started a relationship with the Jewish businessman Jacob Acohen. First, he was a customer later, as a love affair.
At the end of December 1938, Adriana was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for illegal abortion—a practice which she had started in the mid-1930s in addition to her brothel operation at Noorder Amstellaan 52. After her release in June 1939, she was in financial ruin: she lost Pot’s financial support and her brothels were closed down. Valkenburg rented a room in Van Ostadestraat and had to contact Social Services. Now 45 years old, she maintained herself as a street prostitute for some time.
Shortly after Valkenburg and Acohen got engaged to be married on 17 March 1942, Acohen was arrested by the SD. He was murdered on 29 June 1942 in Mauthausen.
During the war, Valkenburg was an opportunist. In 1942, Adriana helped Jews find a hiding place in her own house on Van Ostadestraat for financial compensation. When she was arrested for this in 1943, she started working as a V-Frau for the occupiers. To avoid persecution, the Jews were brought to the infamous Jewish Affairs Bureau. She reportedly betrayed several dozen people in this way.
Valkenburg moved to Zuider Amstellaan 120 in 1943 because a fellow collaborator had been assassinated by the resistance. When she moved, she met the handyman Joop Bom, with whom she started a relationship and later married. She collaborated with him in betraying Jews.
After Mad Tuesday, 5 September 1944, Valkenburg fled with her partner to Bergen op Zoom, where her sister lived. The couple was arrested there—at the request of her sister on 31 March 1945, and they were taken to Meilust Internment Camp.
In total, Jeanne Valkenburg was estimated to have betrayed fifty Jews, including the relatives of her ex-lover Louis Ritmeester. At least 33 of Valkenburg’s victims died. On 3 July 1947, she was sentenced to death by the Special Court of Justice in Amsterdam, a sentence that was confirmed in 1949 by the Special Court of Cassation. Yet she was pardoned. That same year, the sentence was commuted to life in prison. Ten years later, in 1959, the detention period was shortened to 22 years, after which Valkenburg was released in January 1960. In total, she had been imprisoned for almost fifteen years.
During her detention, Jeanne the Liar kept her reputation alive. She caused a lot of mischief in the air yard and in the sewing room of the Noordsingel penitentiary in Rotterdam by recruiting and inciting newcomers, according to a social work report in 1958. In her last years, Valkenburg led a secluded life at various addresses in Amsterdam and the border village of Putte (N.Br.). She no longer had contact with family except her half-brother, Jules de Ligt, who took care of her. In the 1960s, she ended up in a wheelchair because she became obese. Ultimately, Valkenburg, weighing over a hundred kilos, was admitted to the Algemeen Burger Gasthuis (Guesthouse) in Bergen op Zoom, where she died on 19 February 1968.
Sources
https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Valkenburg
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Adriana-Valkenburg/03/0004
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Mother and Baby—A Miracle Upon a Miracle
There is no bond stronger than that between a mother and child. The photograph above appears to be of a mother showing off her beautiful newborn cosily wrapped in a blanket and the smiling, doting mother.
However, there is more to this photo. It really is a double miracle—giving birth is a miracle itself is a miracle—giving birth on a train journey in an open coal car is a double miracle, for lack of a better word.
The mother is Anka Nathanová. She arrived at the gates of Mauthausen. She gave birth to her daughter, Eva, on a cart there. Anka weighed less than 80 pounds and had managed to hide her pregnancy long enough to keep her and her unborn child safe from the Nazi gas chambers. The Americans arrived six days later, and an Army Signal Corps cameraman filmed the human wreckage as evidence of Nazi atrocities. He also filmed Anka with her new baby.
Despite the miracle of Anka Nathanová and her daughter being alive—more suffering was yet to come for them. Upon arriving home in Prague, she discovered that all 15 members of her immediate family were murdered during the war. That included her husband, who had been shot on a death march.
Anka did find love again, remarried and moved to Wales with her new husband and daughter, Eva.
Her daughter, Eva Clarke, did describe her mother as an eternal optimist. It always amazes me so many kept a positive mindset despite all the horrors they witnessed.
Source
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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Resistance Through Sabotage
Sabotage: a destructive or obstructive action carried out by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation’s war effort.
The Dutch are often criticized for not having done enough to protect their fellow citizens during World War II, especially their Jewish neighbours. To an extent, it is a justified criticism. However, this doesn’t mean there was any resistance, far from it. In February 1941, the Dutch trade unions and communist party organized a nationwide strike. The February strike is considered the first public protest against the Nazis in occupied Europe and the only mass protest against the deportation of Jews to be organized by non-Jews. Afterwards, there were harsh retaliations by the Nazis.
Throughout the war, there were many acts of sabotage. The line at the start of the post is one of the definitions of sabotage, the one most appropriate for the WWII context. Many acts of sabotage were carried out on the railways. However, there are other examples. Below are a few examples.
Railway Sabotage between Dronrijp and Deinum
From a series of 12 watercolours (1945) a few days just before the liberation of Friesland. The drawings show various sabotage actions that the Frisian resistance carried out in April 1945, such as opening bridges, removing or destroying signage and barriers and sabotaging the railway.
Sabotage by a resistance group in Weert, Limburg. The sabotage actions were intended to prevent coal transport from Limburg to the west of the Netherlands. The big cities are all in the west. The transport would mainly be done via the waterways.
The saboteurs were punished severely, many were executed or murdered in concentration camps. These are just some of the heroes who paid the ultimate price.
Willem Pahud de Mortanges began to actively resist the German invaders soon after the start of the German occupation. A chemistry student at the Technical University since 1939, he was one of the organizers of the Student Contact in 1942. In addition, he formed a sabotage group with his friends Huurman, Van Raalte, Koenig, Smit and Van der Plas, which mainly targeted railways and ships, making their own explosive devices. Finally, however, an agent provocateur managed to penetrate their ranks, which resulted in their arrest in Rotterdam on the night of 8/9 March 1943. Willem was executed by the firing squad two months later at the age of 22.
Jo Buizer was born on September 11, 1918, in Almkerk as the fifth and youngest child of Jan Buizer and Klaaske Heukels. He grew up in a reformed environment and lived in Rotterdam as an adult. Buizer was a radio operator at the Rijkstelegraafkantoor (State Telegraph office) in Amsterdam during the first months of the German occupation. The Germans ordered him to listen to the British, American and African radio stations, but he resisted. Jo decides to get to Great Britain to participate on the Allied side in the fight against the Germans. Buizer with Jan de Haas and Ab Homburg in mid-February 1942, escaped to Great Britain on the steam trawler Beatrice as stowaways. As soon as the boat was on the high seas, the three emerged and persuaded the skipper to sail to England. After arriving, Jo trained as a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive. On the night of 22-23 June, he and radio operator Jan Jacob van Rietschoten were parachuted into Holten, Drenthe, to train resistance groups on how to commit sabotage. However, it would not come to that for Jo. The Nazis were waiting for him on the ground and arrested him immediately. As a result of the German counterintelligence operation Nordpol (the ‘Englandspiel’ in which the Germans order a captured radioman to continue signalling with the English), they were aware of his arrival. Jo was taken to the SD-Polizeigefängnis in Haaren for questioning. On 27 November 1943, he was transported to Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, where he was shot on 6 September 1944, five days before his 26th birthday.
Jacob Smeer worked at Hollandia-Kattenburg, a clothing factory in Amsterdam. On charges of having distributed the illegal magazine ‘De Waarheid'(the Truth) in the company and of having called for sabotage of the production of raincoats intended for the German army by working slowly or disabling the assembly line, Jacob Smeer was arrested and in January 1943 a lawsuit was filed against him and four other employees of Hollandia-Kattenburg in Utrecht. Bernard Luza was considered the leader of the group. The death penalty was demanded against all members of the group. Luza and Mijer Konijn were sentenced to death, and the three others received a prison sentence. Jacob Smeer belonged to these three.
On 25 May 1943, Jacob Smeer was transported from Camp Westerbork to Sobibor. He was murdered there on 28 May 1943.
Sources
https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/personen/114469/willem-theodoor-pahud-de-mortanges
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Johannis-Jan-Cornelis-Buizer/02/22920
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Jacob-Smeer/01/25777
https://map.stolpersteine.app/nl/amsterdam/locaties/formosastraat-13
Born in Mauthausen
A truly remarkable story of love and survival.
In the late 1930s, Anka Bergman was a lively law student living in the Czechoslovakian capital, Prague.
“I wanted company and boyfriends and to enjoy myself. I didn’t know that Hitler was coming, but I filled my time with only cinemas and theatres and concerts and parties,” she says.
At a nightclub, Anka met her husband, Bernd Nathan, an attractive German-Jewish architect who had fled Germany in 1933.
“He thought that it was far enough to be safe,” said Eva. “It wasn’t but, if he hadn’t come to Prague, he wouldn’t have met my mother.”
In March 1939, the Nazis invaded Prague. From that moment on, Anka’s life, and Bernd’s, was changed forever. Anka and her entire family were sent to Theresienstadt.
Although men and women were segregated, the couple met secretly, managed to have sex, and Anka became pregnant. They had a boy that died from pneumonia when he was two months old.
She fell pregnant again in late 1944. Mr Nathan was sent to Auschwitz, and Anka volunteered to follow him.
She was pregnant with Eva on her arrival. However, she was never reunited with Bernd and later discovered that he had been murdered on 18 January 1945. He never knew his wife was even pregnant.
Anka was moved from Auschwitz–Birkenau to a slave labour camp near Dresden, Germany, where she remained for six months. She was later forced to endure a horrific seventeen-day journey to Mauthausen, in open coal wagons, without food, little water and filthy conditions. On arrival at Mauthausen, Anka was so shocked when she saw the name of the notorious concentration camp that she went into labour. Anka weighed just five stone when she gave birth to Eva, who weighed just 3 pounds. It was 29 April 1945, just a few days before Mauthausen was liberated. Her birth certificate was issued on 14 April 1948 by the Standesamt registry office of Mauthausen an der Donau, a small town in Austria where the concentration camp was located.
Previously, when arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Nazi SS doctor Josef Mengele asked Anka if she was pregnant, to which she lied and replied no. The Americans arrived six days later, and an Army Signal Corps cameraman filmed the human wreckage as evidence of Nazi atrocities. He also filmed Anka with her new baby.
Anka was never reunited with her Husband Bernd and later discovered that he had been murdered on 18 January 1945. He never knew his wife was even pregnant.
After returning to Prague, Anka met Karel Bergman, who served as a translator in the RAF during the war but returned to his home country. The birth certificate was needed so Anka and her family could emigrate from Prague to the UK, where they settled in Cardiff.
Anka’s Daughter Eva grew up in the UK. In the 1960s, she met and married Malcolm Clarke, a lawyer from Abergavenny, and they had two sons. Her father-in-law, Kenneth Clarke, was a navigator in RAF Bomber Command who participated in the bombing of Dresden.
sources
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-13069586
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-13069586
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-38945394
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/born-in-a-concentration-camp-eva-clarke
Remembering Two Dutch Heroes
An estimated 1,800 Dutch citizens attempted to escape to England during World War II. The majority chose to travel via neighbouring countries, while a minority went straight across the North Sea. Many different vessels were used and at least 204 people made the crossing successfully. Most of the attempts were made in 1941 when the Dutch coast was still somewhat accessible. One crossing from Scheveningen was undertaken on 16 March 1941: seven young fishermen from Scheveningen journeyed to England on the shrimp barge Anna KW 96. All of them subsequently enlisted in the Royal Netherlands Navy and survived the war. Four Engelandvaarders (Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema-aka Soldier of Orange, Chris Krediet, Peter Tazalaar and Bob van der Stok) started Contact Holland as a way of improving contact between London and the Dutch resistance. Reliable radio communications were crucial. Dutchmen who had previously ventured across the North Sea as Engelandvaarders were trained as secret agents, ready to return to the Netherlands armed with instructions and Morse code equipment. These secret agents then had to be dropped off on the coast of Scheveningen along with radio gear. Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Krediet and Tazelaar carried out two landings off the coast of Scheveningen during the winter of 1941-42. A number of agents were arrested in the spring of 1942; Anton van der Waals, the most significant Dutch traitor in World War Two, played an important role in this. The Allied secret agents were captured and forced to continue to communicate with England through messages written by the Germans. This was the start of the Englandspiel. Not realising that the agents were sending their messages while in the enemy’s clutches, the British continued sending secret agents to the continent. Upon arrival in the Netherlands, they were immediately captured by the Germans. At the end of the war, most of the secret agents were deported from the Netherlands; 54 did not survive the Englandspiel.
Two of these men were captured respectively 80 and 81 years ago today on 9 March 1942 and 9 March 1943.
Thijs Taconis born in Rotterdam, on 28 March 28, 1914—Mauthausen, was a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. On 15 May 1940, he arrived in England on a fishing boat. In January 1941 he travelled to Canada to enlist. On his return to England, he started his training with the SOE on 28 May 1941. After he was parachuted into the Netherlands on 7 November 1941, he was arrested on 9 March 1942. He was deported to Mauthausen via internment in Kamp Haaren. Here he was executed on 6 September 1944.
Pieter Arnoldus Arendse,
Born: 14 February 1912 The Hague. Dutch agent of the SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachuted into the South of Ermelo and was arrested the same day 9 March 1943. He was executed on 6 or 7 September 1944, in Mauthausen.
The aforementioned Antonius van der Waals (Rotterdam, 11 October was a traitor and a spy for the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). He played a leading role in the Englandspiel, in which at least 83 resistance members were arrested, thanks to him. After the war, he was sentenced to death for this betrayal. Van der Waals was executed on 26 January 1950 on the Waalsdorpervlakte.
sources
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8952583
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Anton-van-der-Waals/03/0004
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Thijs-Taconis/02/151811
https://www.liberationroute.com/stories/102/engelandvaarders-and-das-englandspiel
February Raids Amsterdam
On 19 February 1941, the German Grüne Polizei stormed into the Koco ice cream salon in the Van Woustraat. In the fight that ensued, several police officers were wounded. The Nazi authorities did not put up with the attack on their police officers. To end the unrest, they decided to hold a raid the weekend of 22 and 23 February. Revenge for that and other fights came and a large-scale pogrom was undertaken by the Germans. 425 Jewish men, ages 20–35 were taken hostage and imprisoned in Kamp Schoorl and eventually sent to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps.
The February raids were only a prelude to much worse to come. These men were only the first of some 102,000 Jews from the Netherlands murdered during the Holocaust, a figure that represents 75 per cent of the Dutch Jewish population. Himmler, Seyss-Inquart and Rauter decided to set an example: the first raid on Jews became a fact. On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a column of German trucks appeared near Waterlooplein. The area was cordoned off, and men were seized in Amsterdam. February 1941 were the first Nazi raid on Jews in Western Europe.
Something that recently became known is that most of the Dutch prisoners, were taken to the Hartheim gas chamber for killing. Their families received false causes of death. Assumptions surfaced that the men had died of lead poisoning in the mines.
Historian Wally de Lang reported 108 murders at Hartheim Castle, a nearby Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Hartheim was also one of the T4 euthanasia centres.
Wally de Lang made it her mission in 2017 to discover the fates of each and every one of the men taken that day. “It was impossible for me to comprehend that 400 people of this town just disappeared without anyone knowing who they were,” said de Lang, who has spent several decades writing about Jewish history in the Netherlands.
The owners of the Koco Ice Cream Parlour were severely punished. Ernst Cahn was executed by the Nazis on the Waalsdorpervlakte, in the dunes near The Hague, on 3 March 1941. Alfred Kohn died in Auschwitz.
The arrests and brutal treatment shocked the population of Amsterdam. To respond, Communist activists organized a general strike on 25 February and were joined by many other worker organizations. Major factories, the transportation system, and most public services came to a standstill. After three days, the Germans brutally suppressed the strike, crippling the Dutch resistance organization.
The February strike was considered the first public protest against the Nazis in occupied Europe and the only mass protest against the deportation of Jews to be organized by non-Jews.
Sources
“Blanche, if it’s a boy, name him Jacob Ben Meier. If it’s a girl, name her Rachel.”
Mail was allowed to be sent from the concentration camps under strict censorship. It had to be written in the German language and the number of lines was limited. Only simple information about health and daily life was allowed. The Blockführer had to read and sign the mail and then it went to the censorship office. Jews were forced to write that they were in a labour camp to reassure those left behind. This mail was collected in bulk and sent to Berlin.
Meier Vieijra was born on 26 December 1918 in Nieuwe Kerkstraat in Amsterdam. He was the son of Jacob Vieijra and Rachel Simons and had two brothers, Joop (Joseph) and Piet (Louis), and three sisters Elisabeth, Clara and Branca. Like his father and his brothers, Meier was a tailor by trade. They all worked together in his father’s company.
• On 9 August 1939, he married Blanche Nabarro.
• On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a convoy of German trucks arrived near Waterlooplein. Meier was one of the men who were arrested during the raid in Amsterdam.
• On 28 February 1941, he arrived in Buchenwald (prisoner no. 4754).
• Then he was deported to Mauthausen on 22 May 1941.
Meier sent six letters and postcards to his wife Blanche from Buchenwald.
Below is the translated text of one of those letters
31 August 1941
Dear Blanche,
Thank you for your letters and money orders. Today I have the opportunity to write to you. Blanche, please thank Aunt Aggelen for the money order. You ask in your letter if you can send me 15 RM weekly. It is probably allowed. Blanche, if it will be a boy, name him Jacob Ben Meier. If it is a girl, name her Rachel…
Please send regards to the entire family and especially to Clara and Chellie, and consider yourself warmly greeted and kissed by your loving Meier Vieijra.
Dear Parents and Mother-in-Law! How are you? Well, I hope. Please write to me sometimes.
Regards,
Meier Vieijr
The handwriting in the letter was not Meier’s. It had been re-written and was also censored. The text that was censored apparently expressed condolences on the death of Samuel Vieijra. Samuel, Meier’s uncle, his father’s brother, was murdered on 7 August 1941 in Mauthausen. Only the signature was original.
Even the written word was controlled, monitored and silenced by the Nazis.
On 17 September 1941, Meier Vieijra died from the consequences of his hard life in Mauthausen. He may not have been gassed or shot but he was murdered nonetheless.
Blanche gave birth to a baby daughter on 2 October 1941 and called her Rachel. In May 1943, Blanche and her daughter went into hiding in Oldebroek with the Flier family. Both Blanche and Rachel survived the Holocaust.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/205236/meier-vieijra
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1941/vieijra.asp
My Interview with Racheli Kreisberg—Granddaughter of Simon Wiesenthal
On 18 December, I had the privilege to interview Racheli Kreisberg, the granddaughter of Simon Wiesenthal.
Anyone who has an interest in history, specifically Holocaust history, will know who Simon Wiesenthal is, but in case there are a few people who don’t know.
Simon Wiesenthal was born on the 31st of December 1908, in Buczacz (nowadays in Ukraine). He graduated from the gymnasium in 1928 and completed his architecture studies at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1932.
He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp.
In May 1945, Wiesenthal, just barely having survived the hardships, was liberated by a US Army unit. Severely malnourished, he weighed less than 45kg by this time. He recovered and was reunited with his wife Cyla by the end of 1945. 89 members of both their extended families were murdered during the Holocaust.
Immediately after the liberation, Simon Wiesenthal started to assist the War Crimes Section of the US Army and later worked for the Army’s Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps. He headed the Jewish Central Committee of the US Zone of Austria and was also involved with the Bricha, the clandestine immigration of Holocaust survivors from Europe to Mandate Palestine.
Simon Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down former Nazis and their collaborators. He established the Jewish Documentation Center in Linz (1947–1954), with the purpose to assemble evidence of Nazi war crimes.
Simon Wiesenthal started searching for Adolf Eichmann shortly after the war when it had become clear that he was the architect of the final solution, i.e. to annihilate the Jewish People. Simon Wiesenthal was several times very close to catching Adolf Eichmann; however, the latter managed to escape or avoid attending events at which he was expected. In the mid-1950s, Simon Wiesenthal donated his entire archive to Yad Vashem, except for the Eichmann file. He was instrumental in providing the Israeli Mossad with an early picture of Adolf Eichmann. In addition, Simon Wiesenthal provided evidence that Adolf Eichmann lived in Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Clement. Eichmann was captured by Mossad on the 11th of May 1960. He was sentenced to death and hung on the night of the 1st of June 1962; his body was incinerated and his ashes were scattered outside Israel’s territorial seawater.
In the interview with Racheli, we briefly discussed her grandfather but focused more on her work for The Simon Wiesenthal Genealogy Geolocation Initiative (SWIGGI). It links genealogy and geolocation data in a novel way. They currently have the country of the Netherlands, the cities Lodz and Vienna and the Shtetls Skala Podolska, Nadworna and Solotwina. SWIGGI shows all the residents of a given house and links residents to their family trees. Simon Wiesenthal’s Holocaust Memorial pages are developed for Holocaust victims.
There are links below, and I urge you to look at them. If possible, please consider givIng a donation to this very noble and well-worthy cause.
https://simonwiesenthal-galicia-ai.com/swiggi/index.php
https://simonwiesenthal-galicia-ai.com/bs/index.php
History of Sorts 
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