(Alter Flugplatz)

The SS Clothing Works (SS- Bekleidungswerke) was established in the summer of 1941, on the premises of the former Lublin Aircraft Factory, the so-called Plage and Laskiewicz Mechanical Plant located on Chelmska Street.

Initially women prisoners from the Lublin Castle and Jewish specialists from the Lublin ghetto were employed there. Production was developed on a large scale, because Himmler in a note dated 21 July 1941, instructed the SS storehouses to place their orders there.

In effect, the enterprise was subordinated, as of 1 September 1942, to the SS- Clothing firm as a branch. This situation lasted until March 1942, when the Clothing Works was again placed under Globocnik’s administration.

Thenceforth, the enterprise was to engage in the segregation, disinfection, and shipment to the Reich of the property of the murdered Jews, in the death camps of Aktion Reinhard.

In connection with this re-organisation and in order to conceal the true nature of the Works activities, SS- Hauptsturmfuhrer Friedrich Opitz was replaced as the works manager by SS- Hauptsturmfuhrer Josef Obermeyer, Globocnik’s trusted right-hand man.

His task was to expand, from the spring of 1942 till the spring of 1943, both the Clothing Works proper and the prisoner barracks. In the newly erected barracks Jews and Jewesses were accommodated.

Just before Christmas 1942 Christian Wirth the former Belzec death camp commandant and since 1 August 1942 the Inspekteur der SS- Sonderkommando moved into a two-storey villa on Chelmska Street, at the north-west corner of the disused Lublin airfield, and adjacent to the main Lublin- Warsaw – Lvow railway line.

The ground floor rooms were used as offices – staffed by Wirth, Oberhauser, Hausler and a couple of secretaries. On the first floor were located a first-class dining room and living quarters for Wirth and his staff.

Here at the old airfield from the commencement of the mass-murder programme three hangers had been used as the main sorting depot for the great heaps of clothing, belongings and valuables taken from the victims of Aktion Reinhard.

About 2,000 prisoners – predominantly women – were employed in sorting the plunder. The articles of clothing were sorted on arrival into kinds – men’s, women’s and children’s. Then sorted again into outer and under –wear, types of footwear. There were also big crates into which were deposited the gold, the silver, diamonds, pearls, gold watches, and other valuables.

At the end of each day, up to six men were needed to carry each crate to the Kommandantur. A great deal of the accumulated wealth was pilfered daily.

Oberhauser who worked at the Kommandantur recalled that:

“The unregistered jewellery and valuables from the individual death camps were delivered to the SS- Verwaltungsamt, whose head was SS- Sturmbannfuhrer Georg Wippern. I had not the slightest thing to do with this.”

 In 1942 the DAW Company opened a tar-paper factory behind Wirth’s villa and beyond that a railway siding led from the main tracks into the depot. The wagonloads of plunder from the death camps arrived at the siding and after unloading, sorting and cleaning were despatched again by rail to the Reich.

Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/labour%20camps/lublinairfield.html

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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

Jewish history in Romania has been recorded as early as the 2nd century when the Roman Empire had established its rule over an area of land that was then known as Dacia. Inscriptions and coins as well as Jewish tombstones have been have been found in such places as Sarmizegetusa and Orsova.

Anti-Semitism in Romania began as early 1579 when the sovereign of Moldavia, Petru Schiopul, ordered the banishment of the Jews on the grounds that they were ruining established merchant businesses, and for allegedly exploiting the Christian  population in order to enrich themselves.

The mostly Sephardic Jewish population then had to endure great hardships during the Russo-Turkish war in 1769-74. They were massacred and robbed of their property in almost every town and village in the country. Despite these early pogroms Jewish communities still managed to flourish. The number of Jews in historic Transylvania jumped  from two thousand in 1766, to thirty thousand in 1880. By 1825, Jewish population in Wallachia was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
 

At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which finalized Romanian independence, the great powers made the grant of civil  rights to the Jews a condition of that independence in spite of opposition by the Romanian and Russian delegates.  After heated debates parliament modified the article of the constitution which made citizenship conditional on Christianity, but stated that the naturalization of Jews would be carried out individually, by vote of both chambers of parliament.

However, it was only after World War I was legislation enacted to emancipate Romanian Jewry. Despite the prevalent anti-Semitism that abounded in Romania, Jews played an important role in the transformation of of the nation from a feudal system into a modern economy and were also active in the country’s cultural life. Romania was the birthplace of the Yiddish theater. It also produced many of the first chalutzim who settled in Israel. 
 
Read the full story here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/romanianjews.html


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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

Preben Munch-Nielsen

Rescuer of Danish Jews

Preben Munch- Nielsen was born on 13 June 1926 in the fishing village of Snekkersten, Denmark. He was brought up by his grandmother, who was also responsible for raising five other grandchildren.

During his schooling he commuted daily to a school in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, approximately 25 miles south of Snekkersten.

Preben Munch Nielsen recalled his schooldays:

“There were very few Jews in my elementary school, but I didn’t think of them as Jews, we were all just Danes.”

On 9 April 1940 the Germans invaded Denmark and Preben recalled his early contact with the occupiers, and his rescue work:

“In April 1940 I arrived in Copenhagen, where I saw planes overhead and German officers in the street. I joined the resistance as a courier, but I became more involved in October 1943, when the Gestapo hunting down Danish Jews.”

In the spring of 1943, however, the situation changed. Inspired by the Allies’ progress in the war, the Danish people stepped up their resistance to the German occupation. Labour strikes and acts of sabotage intensified.

Read the full story here:  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/preben.html

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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

 Ghetto Fighter

Mordechai Anielewicz was born in Wyszkow near Warsaw in 1919, and grew up in a working class Jewish family. After finishing secondary education he joined the Zionist movement Ha-Shomer ha- Tsa’ir where he distinguished himself as an organiser and leader.

On the 7 September 1939 a week after the German invasion of Poland Anielewicz went with members of his group from Warsaw to the eastern regions of the country. Anielewicz attempted to cross the Rumanian border in order to open a route for young Jews to go to Palestine. However, he was apprehended and imprisoned in a Soviet prison cell. He was released and returned to Warsaw.

He went to Vilna where Jewish refugees and other political groups had gathered, to convince Jews to return to Poland and resist the harsh German rule. He returned to Warsaw in January 1940 with his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer where he continued his work with the Jewish underground.  

By mid-1941, Anielewicz began concentrating on transforming the underground youth movements into an armed resistance movement and he also began creating self-defence organisations within the Warsaw ghetto.

Emanuel Ringelblum recalled a Ha-Shomer ha – Za’ir seminar in January 1942:

“Once, during a break between classes in the Ha-Shomer seminar (I lectured on the history of the Jewish labour movements), Mordechai Anielewicz and Yosef Kaplan called me down into the yard of the building at 23 Nalewki Street.

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

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 Treblinka Death Camp Guard – Brought to Justice  

Fedor Federenko was born on the 17 September 1907 in the village of Sivash, in the Dniepro- Petrovsk region in the Ukraine. At his denaturalisation trial in Fort Lauderdale in 1978, the court’s protocol recorded the evidence as to his conduct during the Second World War:

Defendant was mobilized on June 23 1941, almost immediately after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. He was a truck driver, and the truck he drove was also mobilized.

He had no previous military training, and in the next two or three weeks his group was encircled twice by the German army. He escaped the first time, but was captured three days later by the Germans.

The Germans transported several truckloads of prisoners to Zhitomir, a former Soviet training camp, and defendant described the conditions as very bad and with little water or food.

The camp housed about 50-100,000 prisoners, with no barracks available for them. About two to three weeks he was transferred to Rovno. Next he was transferred to Chelm, Poland, a camp surrounded by barbed wire rolls.

Defendant estimated the population at Chelm at about 80,000 prisoners. Defendant described the conditions at Chelm as so bad that if you became ill, you rarely recovered.

He also indicated that food was at a minimum and that approximately 40,000 prisoners of war died over the winter 1941/42. One day at Chelm the Germans assembled the Soviet prisoners and walked down the line selecting 200 to 300 who were sent to Trawniki.

At Trawniki most of the guards were Volksdeutsche. Defendant is not a Volksdeutsche but Ukrainian. In the spring of 1942 the Germans gave black uniforms to all the prisoners. Volksdeutsche also wore black uniforms, but theirs were well tailored and of better material.

Read the full article here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/fedorenko.html

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 Sobibor Death Camp Wachman

MINUTES OF THE INTERROGATION

September 20 1948 – The City of Dniepropetrowsk

We, the Deputy Director of the Department of Investigations at the Ministry of State Security in the District of Dniepropetrowsk, Major Nitchayew, and the Director of the Department of Investigations Captain Ribalka, interrogated the accused:

Mikhail Affanaseivitch Razgonayev

Read the full article here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/sobiborwachman.html

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Selected Extracts
                                                                  

Chaim Aaron Kaplan was born in a village called Horodyszcze near Baranovichi, today it is the town of Gorodische in Belarus in 1880. He received a Talmudic education at the famous Yeshiva of Mir and later studied at the Government Pedagogical Institute in Vilna.

In about 1902 he settled in Warsaw, where he founded an elementary Hebrew school, of which he was the principal for the next forty years. He visited America in 1921 and Palestine in 1936 and published a number of books including a Passover Haggadah for children.

He kept a detailed personal diary starting in 1933 written in Hebrew, which is one of the rare original documents of its kind that has survived the Nazi era. It describes the decline of Jewish Warsaw and the holocaust period in general, the diary as Kaplan put it became my soul brother, my colleague and companion.

Until the beginning of the Second World War it was a private personnel account, but when the war erupted the diary changed its character and in addition to his own experiences and troubles, Kaplan recorded the story of the Jews of Warsaw, his own speculations on future developments, the behaviour and policies of the Germans as they unfolded before his eyes, and his opinions about the Poles.

Chaim Kaplan had a penetrating mind and a sharp eye and his diary faithfully reflects the events of most of the ghetto’s existence. The War diary begins on the 1 September 1939 and ends on the 4 August 1942, during the height of the mass deportation of the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp.

Selected extracts from his diary:


Read the full story of Chaim Kaplans Diary here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/chaimkaplan.html

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Holocaust Ghettos

Jewish Order Service police units were established by the German authorities in certain locations under their brutal occupation. Almost immediately after their establishment the Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe were ordered to organise these units, usually as a forerunner to the creation of ghettos.

Whereas the Judenrat itself, although also created on German orders, often contained elements of pre-war voluntary association, the Jewish police came into being only after the German occupation. There was no precedent for the existence of a Jewish police force, and there was no indication that the Jews played any part in the establishment of a Jewish police force within the ghettos.  

The Germans set the guidelines for the Judenrat to recruit members which included physical fitness, military experience, and secondary or higher education. 

In practice these guidelines were not always closely followed. Formally the Jewish police constituted one of the departments of the Judenrat, but from the very beginning many Jewish Councils were apprehensive about the police force’s public character and the way it would function. 

They suspected that the Germans would have direct supervision of the police and use it for the implementation of their policies. Aware of this danger, many Jewish Councils sought to establish their own means of controlling the police and the standards of its behaviour, and tried to attract young Jews who would be trustworthy. 

In the initial period some of the recruits did indeed believe that by joining the ranks of the Jewish police gave them an opportunity to serve the community. But there were other reasons for joining. Belonging to a protected organisation, provided immunity from being seized for forced labour. Service in the Jewish police also offered greater freedom of movement and the possibilities of obtaining food and money. 

The size of the Jewish police force was not fixed but depended on the size of the Jewish community. Thus in Warsaw the Jewish police at first numbered 2,000, in Lvov 500, in Lodz 800, in Krakow 150 and in Kovno 200.

In the larger ghettos the Jewish police commanders held officer ranks and units were made up of sub-divisions and district stations. The policemen were identified by the different caps they wore and by the unit’s designation inscribed on their armband, the yellow badge that they, like all other Jews, had to wear.

In the smaller ghettos where the Jewish police consisted of a few men organisational differentiations were not required. 

The duties of the Jewish police can be divided into these categories: 

• Directing traffic in the streets.  

• Supervising garbage collection and clearing snow and dirt off the streets. 

• Supervising sanitation in the buildings. 
  
  Read more about the Jewish Order Police here:
  http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/orderpolice.html
  
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 Sobibor Death Camp Survivor

Selected Extracts from USHMM Interview  Interview held on the 18 February 1992   

 (Photo's added to enhance the text)

Can you describe for me the transport to Sobibor and your arrival there, and what is was like and what happened? I didn’t come by train, I came by horse and wagon because I came from a small working camp. We were like 800 young girls and men and we rode the whole day to Sobibor and the month it was December 1942, December 22 1943, 42, I’m sorry.

And after riding the whole day in the mud and the wagons got stuck in the mud and we had to go down and pull them out, and on the way the farmers were outside, and they said there’s no way your going, they’re going to kill you and they’re going to burn you.

As much as we knew before and as much we heard, we didn’t believe. It was very hard to comprehend, to believe. Why take innocent people and just kill them with no reason at all, and as the day came to an end, was only 20km’s but it took a whole day.

Everybody of us, from us, was so disgusted that we wanted to get it over with. If that’s what they’re going to do to us, let’s do it fast, so we, wont have to suffer.

I mean not physically, we didn’t but mentally. You know it was very hard to sit there and think I have 4 hours or 3 and a half hours or 3 hours. And as we came close to Sobibor, the whole day naturally without food, without water, but that really didn’t bother, we were used to it.

The the SS came out with dogs and started barking, I mean they never talked they barked. You could never make out what they are saying. Although I spoke very well in German, I had it in school and I picked it up more experience during the time, and they started barking.

The SS told us to assemble on the platform, the railroad platform, and we all assembled there and I stood in every way, that and, and you felt already the smell there from the burning bodies and you saw the fire, but you, you didn’t believe it.

Read the full story about Esther Raab here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/raab.html

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 Excerpts from the Belsen Trial and Biography

Irma Grese was born on the 7 October 1923 and in 1938 she left elementary school and worked for six months on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which she worked in a shop in Lychen for six months.

When she was fifteen she went to a hospital in Hohenlychen where she stayed for two years, she tried to become a nurse but the Labour Exchange would not allow that and sent her to work in a dairy in Furstenburg.

In July 1942 she tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent her to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, although she protested against it, she stayed there until March 1943, when she was transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

She remained in Auschwitz until January 1945.

After Auschwitz Irma Grese was sent to the Bergen – Belsen Concentration Camp where she was captured by the British Army when they liberated the camp on 15 April 945.  She became known as the “Bitch of Belsen” as the details of her crime became known.

Helene Grese testified:

“I am the sister of Irma Grese, 20 years old and live at Wrecken in Wreckensburg. My father was an agricultural worker, and I have two sisters and two brothers, my mother died in 1936. When she was 14 years old, my sister Irma worked on a farm of a peasant in a village near where we lived.

From the time she entered the Concentration Camp Service I saw her twice. In 1943 she came home on leave, and the only thing she told us about her work was that her duties consisted of supervising prisoners so that they would not escape.

Read the full story of Irma Grese here:
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Heinrich Himmler the Reichsfuhrer –SS visited Lublin in March 1943 and toured the death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka, it became clear that the Aktion Reinhard death camps had fulfilled their gruesome task, and that virtually all of the Jews in the General Gouvernment had been exterminated.

The SS were determined to erase all traces of their crimes, and Himmler ordered all the corpses to be exhumed and cremated. In addition the camp structures were to be destroyed the area ploughed over, and trees to be planted.

The first camp to be dismantled and closed was Belzec, with transports ceasing in mid –December 1942, thereafter cremations became the main focus of activity.

SS-Oberscharfuhrer Heinrich Gley made a statement on the 6 February 1962 about the cremations in Belzec:

“I was assigned with a big Jewish work brigade to the cremation of the corpses by means of railway lines which served as a grate. About 80 -90 Jews then worked under my supervision in three shifts.

The cremation site was as long as a rail and about 4-5 m wide. The rails were placed on top of big rocks and narrow-gauge rails served as a cross-mesh.

Read the full article about the Aktion Reinhard Conclusion here:
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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

Krakow Ghetto

The Ghetto which was established here covered the area enclosed within a few streets around Zgody Square and included 320 buildings. It was an area between the Vistula River, Podgorski Square, the Krzemionki hills and the Krakow - Plaszow railway line.

Two significant “Aktions” aimed at deporting the Jews of Cracow took place on the 1-8 June and 27 –28 October 1942. As a result 11,000 Jews from Cracow were sent to the death camp at Belzec. Not one person survived these deportations.

Zgody Square was the main place for the deportation of Cracow’s Jews – the “Umschlagplatz”.

Here all those who were refused the right to stay in the Ghetto were gathered in the square. All who did not have a stamp in their job cards to confirm employment in a German company were brought here during a deportation Aktion in 1942.

As the crowd filled the square horse-drawn wagons came and from the balcony above the Eagle Pharmacy Gestapo men took photographs which were to serve as evidence that the resettlement was being performed in a “humane” manner. After taking the photographs the Jews were brutally chased off the wagons, with much shouting and beatings, and the wagon drivers were dismissed.

The crowd was escorted to the railway station in Prokocim and sent in a transport to the Belzec death camp.

On 4 June 1942 a formation of Security Police(SIPO) and squads of Special Service (Sonderdienst) took positions along the buildings surrounding Zgody Square. Across the square facing the pharmacy the “navy –blue” police was stationed. Behind the Germans in front of the pharmacy groups of young people from the Building Service (Baudienst) were installed.

At the outlet of a dead-end street – 3 Zgody Square which led to the Infectious Diseases Hospital, ten people from the medical service – physicians, nurses and assistants with stretchers – were ordered by the Germans to help those who had fainted or were sick. The Germans shot into the crowd, whilst doctors and nurses tried to help those wounded, by transporting them to the hospital in Jozefinska Street.

 
Read more about Zgody Sq. and the Krakow ghetto here:
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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

The most successful anti-Semitic film the Nazi's ever made.

On the even of war in 1939, while Hitler was working through the details of Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, leading the way for invasion of Poland. Nazi Propaganda minister Goebbel's attention was strongly focused on three anti-Semitic film projects:

    ˚ Der Ewige Jude

    ˚ Die Rothschilds

    ˚ Jud Süss

With Jud Süss being the most commercially successful of the three.

Long recognized as history’s most incendiary film, Jud Süss was the cultural centerpiece in Joseph Goebbels’ campaign against the Jews. Released in 1940, it was a box office sensation across Germany and Europe; alongside the movie’s theatrical distribution, it became a staple of Nazi propaganda evenings organized by the Hitler Youth, SS and others.
 

The film as based on a historical novel, "Jud Süss "written in 1925 by best selling author Lion Feuchtwanger, a Munich born playright, novelist and also a Jew. Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss was an international bestseller and was translated into over twenty languages.

The book was also adapted for the stage by Ashley Dukes in the UK in 1929 and later inspired a film version by English director Lothar Mendes in 1934. But it wasn't until Goebbels saw the British film-adaptation did he realized the anti-Semitic potential the material had, if interpreted not as a human tragedy, but as a tale of Jewish arrogance and infiltration.

Goebbels foray into the film for propaganda was not new, it had been part of the strategy designed by the National Socialist German Workers Party as early as 1930, when the party first established a film department. In order to maximize the effect for propaganda potential, Goebbels took control of the entire German film industry and even nationalized film production and distribution.

Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/judsuss.html

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Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;

Executions and Euthanasia

Executions in Koscian

In Koscian, called Kosten during the occupation, 47 kilometres from Poznan, eight persons were executed together on 2 October 1939, eighteen on 23 October and forty-two on 7 November 1939. These executions were held in the market-place, against the wall of the Town Hall.
 

On 23 October 1939 the Germans shot:

Read the full article about the executions at Koscian here:
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A badly mutilated corpse of an inmate at Jasenovac 397 X 586 42 KB	A formal Ustasha order for a Jew Samuel Hirschenhauser to report to Jasenovac 448 X 314 33 KB	A Jasenovac survivor shows his hiding place in the camp 634 X 450 72 KB
Ante Pavelic Head of the Independent State of Croatia 442 X 640 43 KB	Area of the Jasenovac Camp complex 440 X 315 13 KB	Bodies of Jasenovac prisoners on the banks of the Sava river 631 X 450 69 KB

The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected offers by the Nazi Germany to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaša, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).

The new Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a  clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustaša Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Gypsies living within its borders.

The NDH was ruled by Ante Pavelic under the title Poglavnik, or "Headman". Pavelic served as leader of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of the Axis Powers, throughout the four years of its existence, but since the Ustaše did not have a capable army or administration necessary to control the territory, the Germans and the Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence, one in the southwest controlled by the Italians (with Pavelić as Headman),  and the other in the northeast controlled by the Germans.

Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on June 6, 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941. The Ustaša's organization was a typically fascist organization and its military strength was an instrument for the implementation of the Ustaša's Nazi ideology.

The first "Legal order for the defense of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honor of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941.

The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile court-martials with extended jurisdictions.

Read more about the Jasenovac Extermination Camp here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/jasenovac.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The "Dutchman"

Pieter Nicloas Menten was born on the 26 May 1899, in Amsterdam into a wealthy Amsterdam family. He claimed descent from the founders of Van den Bergh’s (Unilever) and that his father had been in Royal Dutch Petroleum, but broke away after the Shell take-over.

In truth and this was not to become apparent until well after the war, in 1980 at the conclusion of a protracted War Crimes Trial, it was disclosed that his predecessors had never had anything to do with Shell or Unilever.

His father had been a dealer in rags and waste paper, the company was named Menten and Stark and his grandfather had been a butcher’s assistant. Pieter had a brother Dirk who was two years younger, had joined the family’s waste paper business, but lived most of his life in the shadow of his elder brother.

On his father’s death in 1922 Menten broke away from the family empire and established a business in Danzig under the name “Menten and Stark.” With his business activities and deals of a dubious nature, he became a millionaire overnight, and the largest timber trader between Holland and Eastern Europe.

Most of his acquired wealth in Danzig was the result of fraudulent activities and as a result he fled with his wife to Lvov where they occupied a small flat. Dirk took over the family business in Amsterdam, and was to pay regular visits to his elder brother on his country estates in Poland.

Read the full Peter Menten story here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/menten.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The Polish parliament honoured Irena Sendlerowa last year for her heroism

The death of a Polish woman who almost certainly saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II has been announced.

Irena Sendlerowa organised the rescue of the children from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation.

She died in a Warsaw hospital at the age of 98, her daughter said.

After Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, she took great risks to help Polish Jews held by the Nazis - an act that was punishable by death.

In 1942 Irena Sendlerowa joined the Zegota resistance movement.

With the rest of her team of 20, she rescued the children between 1940 and 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, condemning its residents to death.

Saved from execution

In October 1943 she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but refused to give up the names of the children.

She was saved on the day of her scheduled execution after the Polish underground bribed her SS guards.

She said persuading parents to part with their loved ones was particularly traumatic.

The children were smuggled out in different ways - in ambulances, through the sewers, and once under her skirt.

The BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says Irena Sendlerowa hated the term "hero", and said her conscience was troubled because she had done so little.

Last year the Polish parliament unanimously passed a resolution honouring her for organising the "rescue of the most defenceless victims of the Nazi ideology: the Jewish children".

In recognition of her efforts she has also been awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel.

Read the full article on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7395767.stm


Republished from the BBC world news website
Copyright 2008

© MMVIII

Read more about Irena Sendlerowa here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/irenasendlerowa.html
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/zegota.html

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

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;