Execution
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This story is both heartbreaking and uplifting — heartbreaking because it tells of a mother who knew she was going to die, and uplifting because her final words revealed remarkable courage and hope in the face of certain death. Olga Bancic was born on May 10, 1912, into a large Jewish family in Bessarabia, then…
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Introduction During the dark days of Nazi Germany, dissent was met with ruthless suppression. Among those who dared to resist was a small but determined student group known as the Weiße Rose (White Rose). Led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, along with Christoph Probst and other members, the group sought to awaken the German…
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The saying goes, “Music can soothe the savage beast,” but what if it is the savage beast that is using the music as a cynical form of evil and torture? In July 1942, Hans Bonarewitz attempted to escape from the Mauthausen concentration camp by trying to hide himself inside a box and was captured on…
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Ah yes, it’s that time of year again—when men frantically dash into stores, scrambling for last-minute cards and gifts for their beloved. Sweaty palms, nervous twitches… you get the picture. I say men because, let’s face it, you rarely see women in shops panic-buying Valentine’s presents. They’re smarter—they got theirs a week ago. Valentine’s Day…
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Helmuth Hübner, was a young member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), he lived in the St. Georg Branch in Hamburg. His short life was shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany. The Nazis changed nearly every aspect of everyday life for Germans, and Helmut was no exception. He…
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When the guns of World War II finally fell silent in 1945, Europe faced not only the monumental task of rebuilding cities and economies, but also of seeking justice. Few names were as synonymous with betrayal as Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian politician whose collaboration with Nazi Germany turned his surname into a byword for “traitor.”…
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Masha Bruskina was a Russian teenage female partisan. She was a 17-year-old Jewish high school graduate and was the first teenage girl to be publicly hanged by the Nazis in Belarus, since the German invasion of the Soviet Union on the 22nd of June 1941. Masha Bruskina was born in Minsk, in the Soviet Union,…
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The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 left the world not only devastated by years of total war but also confronted with the unparalleled crimes of the Holocaust. Among the many perpetrators brought before courts in the immediate aftermath was Amon Leopold Göth, the Austrian SS officer who had served as commandant of the Płaszów…
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On March 10, 1865, just weeks before the final collapse of the Confederacy, a slave named Amy Span was hanged on a sycamore tree before the courthouse of Darlingon, S.C., for anticipating her liberty a little too exuberantly. Amy Spain’s slave master was Major Albertus C. Spain, a Mexican-American War veteran who owned a large…
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Amon Göeth was sentenced to death and was hanged on 13 September 1946 at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków, not far from the site of the Płaszów camp, the camp he had been in charge of until two years, to the date, prior to his execution. On 13 September 1944, he was relieved of his…
History of Sorts 