The Belzec Memorial

It was not until 1961 that the Polish authorities decided to clean up the site of the former death camp and erect a monument to the memory of the victims.

This work was completed and the area of remembrance and memorial officially opened on the 1 December 1963. The monument showed two emaciated figures, and a number of concrete plinths that marked the supposed mass graves.

There was also a row of monumental concrete urns, symbolising ever-burning fires, on the west side of the alley to the left of the former gas chamber building.

Over the years the monuments and surrounding wall and fence fell into disrepair and littered the site, human remains were visible and the site was totally neglected, and a poor memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were murdered there.


Read the full story of the memorial at Belzec here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec/belzecmemorial.html

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Testimony of Yacov Gurfein about the

Sobibor Transport "Jumpers"

Israeli Police

6^th Bureau

Date: 23.6.1960

Investigating Officer:  Rosenfeld

Yacov Gurfein

Date of Birth: Born 1921

Place of Birth:  Sanok, Poland

Profession: Carpenter

Father’s Name:  Abraham Gurfein


Read the full testimony here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/sobijumper.html

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Jews may have been present in Chelm in the 12^th Century and contributed one of the largest and most important communities in Poland by the 16^th Century. Over time the Jews of Chem inexplicably earned a reputation for simple –mindedness, giving rise to many entertaining stories and making Chelm or Chelmer bywords in the Jewish world.

Disaster struck the Jewish community in Chelm in the mid-seventeenth century, when one of Bogdan Chmielnicki’s armed Cossack units burst into the town, killing many Jews.

On the eve of the Second World War there were about 15,000 Jews in Chelm, by circa 1941/ 1942 the population according to Das General Government by Du Prel, was around 35, 000 made up of 18,000 Poles, 12,000 Jews and 5,000 Ukrainians.

The Germans occupied the city on 9 October 1939 immediately instituting a regime of severe persecution, such as the incident described below:

“In December 1939 several hundred Jews from Chelm were taken in trucks to Hrubieszow, where together with more than a thousand Jews from Hrubieszow they were forced to walk to the Soviet border.

The Jews were told that they would be going out to work. Many women and children tried to join their men-folk, not wishing to be separated from them, but were ordered to return home. Craftsmen, shoemakers and carpenters were ordered to lead the march.”

Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/chelmborek.html

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The Lodz Ghetto

    Salomon Hercberg Arrest and Resettlement of the Lodz Ghetto Prison Commandant

12 March 1942

The Hercberg affair has made for one of the greatest sensations in the annals of the ghetto thus far. The “Hercbergiada” will no doubt stand out in bold relief in the history of our Ghetto. Who was Hercberg?

A tall obese man of some forty-odd years, bursting with health, splendidly dressed, he was one of the most popular figures among the leading representatives of the ghetto’s administration.

His prison commandant’s cap, adorned with thick gold braid, like the beautiful gold- embroidered armband he wore, set him apart from those around him. He was a child of the Balut neighbourhood. In this neighbourhood he had worked as a projectionist in a third rate theatre before the war.

it is said that he was initially taken on for the post of Order Service commissioner on the basis of documents he presented that showed him to have been an officer in the Polish army. The authenticity of those documents is doubtful to say the least.

In June 1940, he was arrested by the German authorities on a charge of concealing a radio. He was kept in the Radogoszcz camp for several months. After his release in the fall of 1940 he was appointed to the post of commandant of the prison here, which was at the time, in the process of being established.

After some time Hercberg’s authority increased significantly. He became chief of the Order Service precinct in Marysin and, at the same time, head of the administration of Marysin II.

 
Read the full story here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/Lodz/hercberg.html

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The Neuengamme Image Gallery

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Aerial view of Neuengamme concentration camp 800 X 568 83 KB	An SS guard watches prisoner laborers at construction work. Neuengamme concentration camp 640 X 406 31 KB	Fence at Neuengamme 521 X 355 38 KB
Neuengamme Car port 799 X 706 74 KB	Neuengamme crematorium ovens 797 X 577 89 KB	Neuengamme crematorium schematic 794 X 671 102 KB

Part 1

III. Sporrenberg’s Activities as SS &Police Chief Lublin

In the course of the interview described above PW must have been aware of the task facing him. He must have known that he was chosen for this position for quite definite reasons by a man who knew only too well how to select personnel to carry out work to his own satisfaction and conforming with the principles laid down by him.

In spite of this alleges that Himmler informed him at the time that he was not to concern himself with the Jewish question in Lublin as this was in the hands of the infamous Globocnik and his henchmen. Globocnik was PW’s predecessor in Lublin and Sporrenberg was quite aware of the type of work that had been carried on there for some years past under his leadership.

In the course of a long and detailed talk on policy Himmler told PW it would be his task to care for and look after the German settlers in Lublin and that he expected the entire district to be Germanised by the end of 1944.

Sporrenberg asked him where the Poles were to be sent and received the reply that these were to be despatched to the Ukraine as they were on no account to move westwards.

Read the full story here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/sporrenberg.html

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The Family Brichta

Part One – Backgrounds and Life in Berlin  

Hermann Brichta

My father, early days

My Father was very similar in upbringing and outlook to that of my mother. Born on a farm in 1897 among and surrounded by Czechs that is not all that surprising. There were other Jewish farmers in Moravia and Slovakia, ownership of land and equal, or more equal, opportunities, even in the army, were much more and more widely available within the Habsburg empire than in Russian Poland, the latter did not become an independent state until 1919. He was fully aware of his Jewish origins but as a nationality, not as a religion.

Instead the boys were called up, Ernst was killed and by 1915 Oswald and Hermann were Prisoners of War thousands of miles away. It is reasonable to assume that farm labourers too had been called up. With farming then  being very labour intensive, horses having been requisitioned and shortage, or absence ,of  fertiliser and lack of manure made it impossible to carry on. It seems that grandmother just left the farm unable to cope and moved to Vienna in 1915.

That also meant that when her two sons finally returned from Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast and at the terminal of the Trans-Siberian railway, in 1920 and 1921 respectively, they did not return to Vlkoš in Moravia, their birth place, but to Vienna and to their mother. Therese Brichta survived her husband by 18 years. She died of the same sickness, cancer of the stomach.

As I shall explain later, on the two forms he completed in 1919 in Vladivostok, one an application to become a Czechoslovak citizen and the other to join the Czechoslovak army in Russia he, and his brother Oswald in Irkutsk thousand miles and many time-zones away, both put "Jewish" after "nationality" when they could just as easily have put "Czech".

 In Germany my father had both German and Jewish friends, boxed at the Maccabi, worked for a Jewish private bank, yet never set foot in a synagogue. He married an equally Jewish woman but at a registry office.

Toni Brichta

My mother Toni and her twin brother Fritz

My mother Toni and her brother Fritz Wasservogel were born on 22.06.1892 in the Kreutzberg district of Berlin. Possibly because they were twins both were very small. They were about ten years old when their father died in 1902 at the age of 52.

Because he had had no life insurance and probably very few savings the children were sent to orphanages although they kept in very close contact with their mother to whom they were devoted. They were also very close to one another.

Fritz went to a Jewish orphanage; I believe it was called the Auerbach, where he received a classical education and where he became fluent in Latin and Greek. I was told that he could translate fluently from one into the other. He was also very good at sports and chess.

Toni, my mother, was sent to a Protestant orphanage where she received a liberal education, became fluent in English and French to interpreter standard and also learned shorthand and typing at a time when girls only gradually entered office work.

This entry into commerce was helped by WW1 when men, who as clerks had carried out such work, had been called up. I have a photo of her with her female colleagues  but cannot tell whether that was taken at the offices of the Berlin branch of the Allianz or at the Victoria of Berlin Life offices, she worked for both. I would just like to add that at her Protestant orphanage she was indoctrinated with anti-Catholicism which made a change from anti-Semitism.

Read all five chapters here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/brichta1.html

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The Bielski Brothers

Jewish Resistance and the "Otriad"

Prior to the onset of WWII, conditions throughout occupied Poland & Belarus varied greatly. In some areas, especially in eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently "formally" annexed, the situation was particularly volatile.

During the two year' occupation till the Soviet-German war outbreak in 1941, the Soviets carried out the ethnic cleansing of Poles considered as a potential threat to full annexation of these territories into Soviet Union.

Hundred of thousands of Polish officials, officers, soldiers, policemen, teachers, churchmen, landowners, and civilians with their families were sent to Siberian concentration camps.

Some Jews had welcomed the Soviets as liberators, believing that life under the communists might be preferable to that of the Poles.  However time would soon disprove that theory.

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http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/bielski.html

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Budzyn Labour Camp 

The Leo Freitag Statement 

Statement by Josef Mueller

Former Commander of the SS Camps in Krakow

Julag 1 in Plaszow - Julag 2 in Prokocim - Julag 3 in Bierzanow

Flensburg 17 June 1960

In the case against Fellenz, it has been necessary to obtain evidence from the witness Mueller which is being taken in the regional court prison.

The witness Mueller described the following:

In the months between January and February 1942, I have performed normal office duties in the head office of the SS und Polizeifuhrer in Krakow. Nothing special happened during that period.

First in March 1942, the exact date I cannot quote, I had to accompany and take part, as a personal bodyguard, the Oberfuhrer Scherner, on a so called Jewish Action.

Altogether, I have participated as an escort, in five such Jewish Actions with various SS Fuhrers. All these incidents happened during the period between March and June 1942.

At the end of June 1942, I have taken over command of the Jewish camps “Judenlager” of Plaszow – Bierzanow – and Prokocim. Following the taking command of these camps, I have no longer been called upon, to escort duties for Jewish Actions.

The Actions mentioned by me happened in the following order:

Read the full article here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/jmueller.html

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