The Kindertransports

The history of the Kindertransports is a poignant tale of rescue, separation,  loss and integration following the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi Reich and countries annexed by the Germans during the latter part of 1938.

Following the Kristallnacht outrage against the Jews on the 9 November 1938 as a response to what was happening to the Jews in the Reich a debate was held in the House of Commons as a direct result of an appeal by the British Jewish Refugee Committee.

The British Government had just refused to allow 10,000 Jewish children to enter Palestine, but with the atrocities in Germany, there was a change of heart, best expressed by the words of British Foreign Minister Samuel Hoare, “Here is a chance of taking the young generation of a great people, here is a chance of mitigating to some extend the terrible suffering of their parents and their friends.”

The British Government agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter the United Kingdom. The children were allowed to enter the British Isles on temporary travel documents, with the belief that the children would re-join their parents at a later date, when things returned to normal.

However it was private citizens or organizations had to guarantee to pay for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return for this guarantee, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. It was understood at the time that when the “crisis was over,” the children would return to their families.

Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The few infants included in the program were tended by other children on their transport.  A £50 Sterling bond had to be posted for each child, “to assure their ultimate resettlement.”

A number of people and organisations rose to the immense challenge of organising the transports, Jews, Christians and Quakers worked together to get the children out of Germany and the annexed territories.

The framework for the refugee operation was formed by Lola Hahn – Warburg several years earlier, Lord Baldwin, Rebecca Sieff, Sir Wyndham Deeds, Viscount Samuel, Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld, who saved approximately 1,000 Orthodox children.

In addition Nicholas Winton rescued nearly 700 Jewish children in Prague, Professor Bentwich organiser of the Dutch escape routes and the Quaker leaders Bertha Bracey and Jean Hoare (cousin of Sir Samuel Hoare) who herself led a planeload of children out of Prague.

According to a scrapbook Winton kept, 664 children came to Great Britain on transports that he organized. In the research compiled for the documentary “The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton,” aired on Czech television in 2002, researchers identified five additional persons who entered Britain on a Winton-financed transport, bringing the official number to 669 children. The available information indicates that some children who were rescued have not yet been identified.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/kindertransport.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Malka & Edek Galinski

Escape attempt from Auschwitz–Birkenau

Malka Zimetbaum was the youngest of five children born to Pinkas Zimetbaum and his wife Chaya, in Brzesko, Poland on the 26 January 1918.

The family moved to Belgium and Malka was registered as living in the city of Antwerp on the 21 March 1928. Malka was a model pupil and she excelled in mathematics and languages. She had a command of Flemish, French, German, Polish and English.

As an adolescent Malka joined Hanoar Hatzioni, a Jewish youth organisation in Antwerp and from this time she now preferred to be called Mala. To support her father who had become blind, Mala took a job as a seamstress for Maison Lilian, a major Antwerp fashion house.

Subsequently she worked as a linguist-secretary in a small company in the diamond trade based in Antwerp. Two years after the German occupation of Belgium Mala was arrested on the 22 July 1942, at Antwerp Central Station, on her way back from Brussels, where she had been looking for a hiding place for her family and herself.

The Germans took Mala first to the notorious Fort Breendonk, then five days later she was transferred to Mechelen, where German authorities had turned the Dossin Barracks into a collection and deportation point for Jews. Mala worked in the registry.

On the 15 September 1942, the tenth deportation train left the Dossin Barracks destined for the East, on board were 1048 deportees, including Malka.

After a nightmare journey lasting two days Mala was subjected to the normal selection at the Juden Rampe outside Birkenau. Mala was one of the 101 females considered fit for labour, whilst 717 were gassed immediately.

She was placed in the women’s camp at Birkenau and after undergoing the normal humiliations for new arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was tattooed on her forearm with the number 19880.

Housed in a wooden barrack, originally designed as a horse stable and because of her skill with languages, she was employed in the camp administration as a Lauferin, whose duties were as a messenger and interpreter.

According to a fellow prisoner, “These girls had to stand next to the guardhouse waiting for orders. Whenever Camp supervisor Mandel or overseer Margot Drechsler needed them they yelled “Lauferin, and the girl had to do as ordered on the double.”      

A prisoner called Raya Kagan who knew Mala in Birkenau, described her as such:

“I had known Malka since the summer of 1942. At that time she became a Lauferin – a messenger between blocks and a liaison between the Blockfuerherstube, the Kapo and the prisoners.

She was a young girl, of Polish origin, but she had been living in Belgium and arrived with the Belgian transport. She was very decent, she was known throughout the camp, since she helped everybody.

And her opportunities and the power, as it were, that she possessed were never wrongfully exploited by her, as was often done by the Kapo’s. She suffered like everybody else. However, she had better conditions – she was able to take a shower in Birkenau.”

Another Birkenau survivor Anna Palarczyk recalled after the war that:

Read more here:  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/auschescape.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

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A crematorium at the Majdanek extermination camp 484 X 344 28 KB	A mass grave containing the bodies of 230 victims, uncovered in the Majdanek camp 702 X 483 84 KB	A mass grave uncovered at Majdanek 796 X 568 114 KB	A pile of ashes of cremated victims in the Majdanek camp 738 X 419 87 KB
A shower room in the gas chamber building of the Majdanek camp 789 X 519 117 KB	A Soviet soldier walks through a mound of victims' shoes piled outside a warehouse in Majdanek soon after the liberation 476 X 370 66 KB	A starved prisoner liberated from Majdanek 350 X 537 45 KB	A table used for examining corpses, next to the gas chamber in the Majdanek camp 776 X 506 76 KB
A view into one of the crema-ovens at Majdanek 640 X 453 61 KB	Aerial view of Majdanek 480 X 346 61 KB	Ashes at Majdanek that were used to fertilize the surrounding fields 793 X 508 127 KB	Bodies of a mother and child killed at Majdanek 438 X 583 97 KB

The Auschwitz – Birkenau and Sub-Camps

Evacuation and the Death Marches – January 1945

17 January 1945

Units of the Red Army advance on the outlying areas of Krakow from the north and the northwest and surprise the German positions, which do not expect an attack from this flank.

The last official meeting of the General Governor Hans Frank takes place at 12.0 o’clock, barely two hours later Hans Frank leaves Krakow in the direction of Silesia.

On this day 178 female prisoners and two boys were transferred from the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow to the women’s camp in Birkenau.

The male and female prisoners fall in for their last roll call. The number of prisoners incarcerated in the main camps and sub-camps are as follows:

In the wake of the decision to remove the prisoners from Auschwitz, Commandant Baer personally chooses the leaders of the evacuation columns from among the members of the guard companies and orders them to liquidate ruthlessly all prisoners who attempt to escape during the evacuation or drag their feet.  

Among the SS guards who were chosen to lead the evacuation columns were the notorious SS- Oberscharfuhrer Wilhelm Boger, who was a feared member of the Politische – Abteilung, SS-Unterscharfuhrer Oswald Kaduk, Rapportfuhrer, who was also considered one of the more brutal members of the SS guards.

In the auxiliary camps that belong to Monowitz, formerly Auschwitz lll, are the  following number of male prisoners:

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschdeathmarch.html

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Copyight Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

The Breendonck

Internment Camp in Belgium

The camp known as Breendonck was located in the village of Breendonk, about 20 km outside of Mechelen. Built in 1906 the fortress was erected near the junction of the Antwerp – Brussels and Mechelen – Dendermonde roads, as part of a chain of fortifications.

The fortress fell during the German invasion in 1914 and later it became the general Headquarters of the Belgian Army. In May 1940 Breendonck was briefly used as the General Headquarters of King Leopold III, leading the Belgian armed forces.

After Belgium's surrender to the Germans the fortress was transformed into an internment camp by the Nazis (primarily as a transit camp for transport to Auschwitz). It gained a grim reputation as a place of torture and interrogation of a wide variety of prisoners.

This fortress surrounded by a moat, consists of a building measuring 200 by 300 meters and can still be seen today, as a museum and memorial.The museum is only a part of the entire complex. There are different rooms with displays detailing the Nazi-occupation of Belgium, the SS rule at Breendonk, as well as to the post-war trials of the executors.

In the former showers and  kitchen works of art can be seen that was made by the prisoners.

Breendonck as an internment camp

At the end of August 1940 the Germans turned the fortress into a Polizeihaftlager and three weeks later, on 20 September the first group of detainees, numbering twenty persons, mostly “politicals”   and Jews of foreign nationality, were brought to the camp.

The camp was under the control of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and was run by SS men, with Wehrmacht personnel serving as guards. At the end of 1941 they were joined by Belgian SS men. Among the Belgian SS –men were Wijss, De Bodt, and Pellemans, who were renowned for their cruelty.

The physical conditions at Breendonk were among the worst in Western European camps. In addition, the camp commanders subjected the prisoners to terrible cruelty and violence.

During the first year of the Occupation, the Jews made up half the total number of prisoners. From 1942 onwards and the creation of the internment camp at the Dossin barracks where the Jews were assembled before their departure towards the east and the extermination camps, most of the Jews disappeared from Breendonk, which gradually became a camp for political prisoners and members of the Resistance.

The first commandant of the camp was Sturmbannfuhrer Philip Schmitt, who was followed in 1943, by an Austrian Karl Schonwetter.

The officer in charge of forced labour was Untersturmfuhrer Artur Prauss, who had the reputation of being the most cruel person in the camp staff. The camp commandant came directly under the authority of the Security Police chief for Belgium and Northern France, Konstantin Canaris, and then of his successor Ernst Ehlers.

In the initial phase conditions in the camp were reasonably tolerable, and the Jewish prisoners were not separated from the non-Jews. But at the end of 1940 this changed, and the “Aryan” prisoners were put into separate living quarters, although both groups continued to work side by side.

 
Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/breendonck.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Anschluss & Extermination

The fate of the Austrian Jews

History of Jews in Austria

Evidence found in the form of ancient artifacts demonstrates the presence of a Jewish community in Austria as early as the time of the Roman empire and corroborates the previous assumption that Jews settled in what later became Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia in the third century B.C.E.

It is believed that the flow of Jewish immigration in the region increased after the rebellion against the Roman occupation of Judea. Many Jews were sold as slaves and were shipped across the empire. Others emigrated of their own accord.

However documentary evidence points to the first true settlement of Jews in the 12th century. A charter of privileges was granted by Emperor Frederick II in 1238, giving the Jewish community extensive autonomy. But over the course of the following eight centuries this status was to change, and the commercial and political clout of the Jews in the Austrian Empire would rise and fall many times over

In 1420, the status of the Jewish community hit a low point when a Jewish person from Upper Austria was charged with the desecration of the sacramental bread. This led Albert the Fifth to order the imprisonment of all of the Jews in Austria. Two hundred and ten Jews were burnt alive in public and the rest were deported from Austria, leaving their homes and belongings behind.

Between 1848 and 1938, the Jewish Austrian population enjoyed a period of prosperity beginning with the start of regime of Franz Joseph I of Austria who bestowed on the Jewish population equality of rights saying, "the civil rights and the country’s policy is not contingent in the people’s religion".

Jews took advantage of their new freedoms by establishing wool factories in Bohemia and Moravia, Silk factories in Hungary, as well as playing an important role in the building of steel mills and the railroads. In Vienna, Jews built the only factory that produced chocolate.

At the turn of the century some 300,000 Jews in Austria were scattered in 33 different settlements. Most of them; approximately 200,000, lived in the capital city of Vienna.

Vienna was also a center of Zionist thought and Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, had studied at the University of Vienna. Many Viennese Jews were well-integrated into urban society and culture. Jews made up significant percentages of the city's doctors and lawyers, businessmen and bankers, artists and journalists.

The Days of the Republic

The end of the First World War brought the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and the rise of Republic of Austria. Although many of the leading heads of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and especially the leaders of the Austro-Marxism were assimilated Jews, the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the rise of ethnically defined nation states created an "identity crisis" for the Jews.

Most anti-Semites considered Jews to be biologically or racially alien, and this prejudice force many Jews to cling more tightly to their Jewish ethnicity as opposed to a national identity based on ethnic origin.

The Jewish population in Vienna declined dramatically during the years of the Austrian Republic (1918 -1938), yet their profile amongst the population in certain areas of the city increased. Mainly due to industrial, professional and economic factors. According to Jewish scholars at the time, 62 percent of all lawyers in Vienna were Jewish. 47 percent of physicians, and nearly 29 percent of all University professors were also Jewish.

When the Nazis took power in Austria in 1938 they estimated that 25 percent, some 36,000 business enterprises in Vienna were owned by Jews. Including some 60 percent of all those engaged in Finance or big industry.

After the takeover of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in the German Reich on 30 January 1933 a concerted effort to subjugate their smaller neighbor was undertaken by the Austrian Nazi parties which were subsequently outlawed in June of the same year.

However the ban did not stop terrorist activities from occurring and on 25 July 1934  an attempted a coup d'état resulted in the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss.

Although the coup failed, the assassination of Dollfuss was accompanied by Nazi uprisings in many regions in Austria, resulting in further deaths. In Carinthia a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to grab power but were subdued by the patriotic Heimwehr units.

Similarly, the Nazi assassins in Vienna surrendered and were executed. Kurt Schuschnigg became the new chancellor of Austria

Treblinka Death Camp

The Removal of Dr Eberl and the Re-Organisation of the Camp – August 1942

Odilo Globocnik, the SS Police Leader for Lublin, and head of Aktion Reinhard appointed Christian Wirth, the first commandant of Belzec death camp, as Inspector of the Aktion Reinhard death camps at the beginning of August 1942.

Wirth set up his temporary headquarters in two rooms of the Julius Schreck Kaserne on Pierackiego Street in Lublin, which also served as the staff headquarters for Odilo Globocnik, and the headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, whose administrative chief was Herman Julius Hofle.

As his adjutant Wirth took Josef Oberhauser, from Belzec, who was also given responsibility for the control of Ukrainian guard units responsible for security at various workshops in Lublin.

Wirth carried out an initial inspection of Treblinka death camp on the 19 August 1942 have been described by Josef Oberhhauser who accompanied him on this visit:

“In Treblinka everything was in a state of collapse. The camp was overstocked. Outside the camp, a train with deportees was unable to be unloaded as there was simply no more room. 

Many corpses of Jews were lying Inside the camp, these corpses were already bloated. Particularly I can remember seeing many corpses in the vicinity of the fence. These people were shot from the guard towers.”

Christian Wirth and Josef Oberhauser went to Warsaw where they held a conference with Odilo Globocnik at the Bruhl Palace and two unidentified men in civilian clothes, who then travelled back with Globocnik, Wirth and Oberhauser to the death camp at Treblinka.

After inspecting the camp Globocnik decided that Dr Eberl should be relieved of his command and that Christian Wirth would remain in the camp to sort out the chaotic mess created by Dr Eberl.

Josef Oberhauser recalled:

“I heard them in Treblinka how Globocnik and Wirth summed up the following; Wirth would remain in Treblinka for the time being. Dr Eberl would be dismissed immediately. In his place Stangl would come to Treblinka from Sobibor as commander, Globocnik said in this conversation that if Dr Eberl were not his fellow countryman, he would arrest him and bring him before an SS and police court.

Globocnik said to the two civilians in uniform that all the transports from Warsaw to Treblinka had to be stopped. Wirth was ordered to enlarge the camp and to report when transports could be dealt with again. I then travelled back to Warsaw with Globocnik and the two gentlemen in civilian clothes. We were then in Warsaw for two or three days. I know that Eberl also showed up there about a day later.

I learned then in Warsaw that Dr Eberl would be sent back to Berlin, and everything would be further controlled from there by the Fuhrer Chancellery.”  

Franz Stangl in an interview with Gitta Sereny in 1971 his arrival in Treblinka, during late August 1942:\

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/treblinka/camprestructure.html

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Carmelo Lisciotto Copyright 2008 H.E.A.R.T

Summary of Examination of Paul Beder of Poland

Summary of Examination of Paul Beder of Poland, duly sworn states

I was taken to the Lodz Ghetto in March 1940 because I am a Jew and had to live at Wolborska 25 until August 1944. I was then sent to Auschwitz for three weeks and from there to the Dora Concentration Camp near Nordhausen.

At the end of March 1945 I was transferred to Belsen where I was liberated by the British on 15^th April 1945.

On 31^st December 1945 I was taken to the Belsen Detention Cells where during an identification parade consisting of five men, I picked out the man referred to in my deposition as Seifert. He was in charge of the administration of the Ghetto at Lodz.

I was employed by the Food Office at the Ghetto and so often came into contact with Seifert. I know that he was largely responsible for the appalling conditions in the Ghetto and especially for the inadequate rations and feeding arrangements which must have been the direct cause of the death of many thousands of the Ghetto inmates.

Between 1942 and 1944 when the Ghetto was finally dissolved many different transports of men, women and children were sent away for extermination. Since on such occasions I was always employed on loading the victims on to the lorries I saw Seifert take an active part in the selections.

The people had to come downstairs and line up in front of Seifert who made some stand to one side. These people were then loaded on to the lorries and never seen or heard again.

In September 1942 I was present when Seifert selected my four sisters Mala Beder, Regina Beder, Ibka Beder and Sala Beder and my brother Schimson Beder, all Polish Jews, outside Wolborska 25 to be taken away with a transport that left Lodz for extermination.

He also included an old friend of mine the Polish Jewess Friedman who lived at Wolborska 25, they were made to mount the waiting trucks together with many others who had been selected by Seifert and that was the last I ever saw or heard of them.

During the round up for this extermination transport in September 42, I was again employed on loading the people who had been selected on to the lorries. I naturally tried to make them as comfortable and so told them to sit as closely as possible.

Seifert supervised the loading and when he noticed what I was doing came up to me and said “Don’t make such a fuss with these creatures, just pile them on, one on top of the other and when the lorry is filled, get up and jump on their bodies in order to make room for some more.”

When I would not do so Seifert drew his pistol and threatened to shoot me for disobeying his order.

During the same round-up in September 1942, I remember on one occasion our lorries drew up outside the Hospital in the Drewnoska Strasse. Seifert was with us at the time and as we arrived there were a number of people in the streets nearby.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/paulbeder.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Hartheim Euthanasia  

War Crimes Investigation - The Charles H. Dameron Report

When this team arrived in Hartheim, Austria and was directed to the address Hartheim 1, it found a large building which apparently, at least at one time, had been a castle.

It is referred to throughout the investigation as “Schloss Hartheim” and for the purposes of this report will, therefore, be designated as the “Castle.” The building is presently being used as an orphanage housing 70 young children and 10 Catholic nuns and has been so used since 12 January 1945. According to one witness the building is between 300 and 500 years old.

 It was operated by the German Welfare Institute for the insane from 1903 to 1938.

In approximately May 1940 the building was taken over by the SS and a crematory was installed. The witness Ignaz Schuhmann, present Burgermeister in Hartheim, personally saw the materials brought in for such use.

At this time there was installed on the ground floor of the building a receiving room, photography room, a room in which to undress patients, a gas chamber, a mortuary, a room equipped with a cremating oven, and one room to be used for dissecting. This part of the building was concealed from view by the erection of a board wall around two sides of the courtyard in the centre of the building.

An electrical bone crushing machine was also part of the equipment and there is some evidence that there were two ovens instead of one in the crematory. The purpose of the renovation was to make the building suitable for disposing of weak-minded and insane people in the German Reich, in accordance with what was explained to the employees as a “Secret German Law which would be made public after the War.”

Prominently exhibited in a framed plaque hanging on the wall near the main entrance to the castle was the printed admonition: “Whoever is not healthy and worthy in body and soul, is not permitted to immortalise his ailments in the body of his child.”

Immediately adjacent thereto was to be found a plaque with the further admonition: “Respect for great men must be impregnated upon the German youth as a holy inheritance.”

Of the documents which were left behind and found by this team in the castle, books on Euthanasia predominated. In short, the purpose of the establishment was to put to death by gassing such mentally weak and insane persons of Germany, as were directed by higher authority and to then cremate their bodies.

One of the witnesses was reluctant to use the word death in this connection and preferred to use the word “redeem.” Even in the report on the number of persons executed the execution of these idiots is referred to as “disinfection.”

The entire institution was operated under the direction of what was known as the “Foundation for Asylum Care,” Headquarters Berlin 35 Tiergatenstrasse 4. Most of the employees arrived in Hartheim during April and May 1940 and were either from the SS or SA or were employed by the former.

All of the employees interviewed from the director’s secretary to the scrub woman were required to sign an oath to keep secret anything they might see or hear in the establishment under penalty of death or confinement in a concentration camp.

The exact date on which operations began is not definitely known, but it is known that some victims arrived as early as May 1940. This date coincides with that found in the unidentified statistical report recovered from the premises.

In the beginning they were brought from insane asylum such as Linz-Niedernhart, Baumgartenberg, Gallneukirchen, Wien-Steinhof, Graz- Feldhof, Wiesengrund and others.

The victims were brought to the castle in Hartheim in large busses, the capacity of which has been estimated at between 50 and 90. The number of such busses which arrived each day has been variously estimated at 2-3, six.

The witness Ignaz Schuhmann stated that he has seen as many as 7 or 8 busses arrive in one day. The victims were always accompanied by male or female nurses depending upon their sex.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/euthan/dameron.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

                                        Belzec Death Camp Images

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2004 Memorial path - Belzec 508 X 383 40 KB	Aerial Map of Belzec 1 800 X 516 69 KB	Aerial Map of Belzec 2 566 X 488 95 KB	An SS man on the staff of the Belzec camp, posing in front of the flour mill used as an assembly place for Jews deported to the camp. 379 X 580 68 KB
Anna Imich killed at Belzec 98 X 129 4 KB	Artist Painting of SS at Belzec 308 X 195 21 KB	Artist Painting of the Belzec Camp 308 X 222 23 KB	Belzec gates 2000 388 X 284 40 KB
Belzec Kommandantur 648 X 427 62 KB	Belzec Memorial Ramp area under construction in 2004 508 X 383 35 KB	Belzec Pre 2004 Memorial 1 767 X 558 112 KB	Belzec Pre 2004 Memorial 2 745 X 558 117 KB

 
See the full image gallery here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/images/Belzec/index.html

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Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009