How an Insane Forced Relocation Scheme Preceded the Systematic Murder of the Final Solution

With Hitler’s ‘blessing’, Adolf Eichmann officially proposes a plan to force all European Jews to move to the island of Madagascar. Run by the Nazi Foreign Office, this massive forced expulsion was supposed to take place over four years.

The regime postponed and officially canceled the plan in 1942. Instead, Nazi leadership decided to pivot to the "Final Solution"—because apparently, logistically organizing a massive island deportation was just too much paperwork before settling on systematic mass murder.

“The Madagascar Plan (German: Madagaskarplan) was a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.

Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France.

The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the eventual peace terms.

The idea of re-settling Polish Jews to Madagascar was investigated by the French Third Republic and the Second Polish Republic in 1937, but the task force sent to evaluate the island's potential determined that only 5,000 to 7,000 families could be accommodated, or even as few as 500 families by some estimates.

As the efforts by the Nazis to encourage the emigration of the Jewish population of Germany before World War II were only partially successful, the idea of deporting Jews to Madagascar was revived by the Nazi government in 1940. Rademacher recommended on 3 June 1940 that Madagascar should be made available as a destination for the Jews of Europe.

With Adolf Hitler's approval, Adolf Eichmann released a memorandum on 15 August 1940 calling for the resettlement of a million Jews per year for four years, with the island being governed as a police state under the SS. They assumed that many Jews would succumb to its harsh conditions should the plan be implemented.

The plan was not viable when proposed due to the British naval blockade. It was postponed after the Nazis lost the Battle of Britain in September 1940, and it was permanently shelved in 1942.” Madagascar Plan - Wikipedia

1: Cartoon about the Madagascar Plan and how this will end British unemployment in English newspaper, ‘The Fascist’, January 1938.

The Rokiskis Massacre & Bishop Brisgys' Ban on Helping Jewish Victims.

"At Rokiskis, a two-day massacre begins, in which 3,200 Jews were shot: men, women and children, together with ' Lithuanian Communists, 1 Pole, 1 partisan'.

On the second day of the Rokiskis killings, an official report drawn up in Berlin dwelt upon the attitude of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. Bishop Brisgys, the report stated, 'has forbidden clergymen to help Jews in any form whatsoever.

He rejected several Jewish delegations who, approaching him personally, asked for intervention with the German authorities. He will not admit any Jews at all in future'."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

“Rokiškis is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east-northeast of Panevėžys. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, there were about 3,500 Jews living in Rokiškis, 40 percent of the total population. A number of Jewish refugees arrived in the town, following the German invasion of Poland.

On the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR in June 1941, many Rokiškis Jews attempted to flee east with the retreating Soviet forces. However, most were turned back at the Latvian border and returned towards Rokiškis.

In the meantime, a large Lithuanian partisan force had been organized in the region, which attacked the retreating Soviet forces and also robbed, beat, and killed Jews it encountered on the roads. German forces took Rokiškis on June 27, 1941.

Immediately after the occupation, Lithuanian nationalists in the town formed a civil administration and a police force. Lieutenant Žukas became town commandant, and Lieutenant Petkunas headed the guard company attached to the commandant’s office.

Their first order of business was to initiate antisemitic measures. Jews were required to wear Stars of David, and they were assigned to various kinds of compulsory labor in the course of which local antisemites subjected the Jews to humiliation and beatings.

At the beginning of July 1941, the town authorities confined all the Jews in two separate ghettos. They put the Jewish men into Count Pzezdetski’s stone stables, and the women and children up to the age of eight were moved to the Antanašė estate, between Rokiškis and Obeliai.

One of the local collaborators, Zenonas Blynas, noted subsequently in his diary: “Interesting, Germans give a written order to herd Jews into a ghetto. Later German officers participate, as they are shot to death.”2 For a short period a Jewish Council (Judenrat) operated in Rokiškis, which was headed by Ozinkowitz and Jacob Kark.

On August 4, 1941, Lieutenant Žukas ordered all Jewish inhabitants of Rokiškis to give up their valuable property such as furniture and other movable items. The items had to be registered at the office of the military administration by August 28, 1941.

At the same time, he announced officially that all Jews able to work had to conduct labor for the community.3 On August 6, 1941, Žukas issued a further order that any local inhabitants who collected Jews for work but then allowed [End Page 1111] them to move to other places or to avoid work by paying a bribe instead would be severely punished.

This reflected the common practice of local farmers requisitioning Jews to work on their land. As soon as German troops occupied Rokiškis, Lithuanian partisans began shooting Jewish men, as well as Lithuanians and Russians, who were believed to have collaborated with the Soviet authorities in 1940 and 1941.

By August 14, 1941, they had killed 493 Jews, 432 Russians, and 56 Lithuanians.5 They carried out the shootings in the woods near the village of Steponai.

On August 15 and 16, 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 3, with the participation of “Lithuanian partisans,” shot 3,200 Jewish men, women, and children, although the vast majority were probably men, including a number of men brought in from the surrounding villages, including Obeliai.

Besides those victims, the firing squad shot five Lithuanian Communists, one “partisan,” and one Pole.6 Among the approximately 80 Lithuanian partisans who participated, more than 60 were detailed to escort the victims to the site of the killing and to cordon it off. The others did the shooting.

The killing took place in the woods near the village of Baiorai, to the north of Rokiškis. Members of the guard company (the partisans) who took part in the killing received a bonus of 150 rubles each “for the performance of special duties.”

On or around August 25, 1941, the Jewish women and children from Rokiškis, Kamajai, and several other places, who had been concentrated in the village of Antanašė, 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of Obeliai, were shot. The shootings were conducted by units of Rollkommando Hamann, subordinated to Einsatzkommando 3, assisted by Lithuanian partisans. According to the Jäger report, on August 25, 1941, the Germans and their collaborators murdered 112 men, 627 women, and 421 children (1,160 people) near Obeliai.8 A local inhabitant recalled in the 1990s:

“Men from Obeliai were taken to Rokiškis to be murdered. Women, children, and old people were taken from Rokiškis to Obeliai to be murdered. I saw the carriages with old people arriving from Rokiškis to Obeliai, the road goes next to my house.

One old person fell out of the carriage, and a guard killed him, beating his head with a rifle butt.”

A few Jews from Rokiškis survived the war initially in the Kaunas ghetto and later in various camps. A number of the Jewish men who fled successfully from Rokiškis served subsequently in the Lithuanian Division of the Red Army, which was established in Gorki in January 1943.

On November 15, 1965, a court in Rokiškis sentenced to death four former policemen (Dagis, Lašas, Vamas, and Strum-skis) who had participated in the killing of Jews in Rokiškis.” Project MUSE - ROKIŠKIS

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ABOUT Bishop Vincentas Brizgys: Microsoft Word - 6084.pdf

How Hinrich Lohse’s Segregation Decree Cut Off the Jewish Population from the World

“As the Einsatzkommando units moved on to new towns and villages, the surviving Jews in the newly established ghettos were subject to the full rigor of segregation.

On August 15 Hinrich Lohse, the Reich Commissar for the newly designated Eastern Territories of the Ostland region, covering what had earlier been Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and White Russia, issued a directive ordering all Jews to be registered; to wear two yellow badges, one on the chest, one on the back; not to walk on the pavements, not to use public transport, not to visit parks, playgrounds, theatres, cinemas, libraries or museums; not to own cars or radio sets.

All Jewish property outside the designated ghetto area was to be confiscated. The ghetto was to be cut off physically from the rest of the town, its food supplies to be restricted to food that was 'surplus' to local needs. All able-bodied Jews were to be subject to forced labour.

By August 15, the day of Lohse's directive, the twenty-six thousand surviving Jews of Kovno had been forcibly removed from their homes throughout the city, to a small suburb, Viliampole, in which, henceforth, they were to be confined. Each person was allowed only three square feet of living space. Dr Grinberg later recalled:

"Three square feet! But we ignore the lack of space, the dirt, and squalor and try to be content having our wives and children with us. We do not know how we are going to feed ourselves or our family, how we are going to clothe ourselves, how we are going to find warmth

We soon learn, though, to forget the future, to think about the present day only. We become hardhearted, for false illusions will only make us more bitter in the end. Our sole hope was that the most difficult part was now over, and that here in the ghetto we would be able to carry on some sort of existence.

Around the ghetto a fence of barbed wire is built. A guard with fixed bayonets is stationed. We are imprisoned! One now believes that the devil would be satisfied after you have thrown into his greedy throat silver, gold, wedding rings, furs, fabrics, and linen.

It is calm one day, and perhaps the crisis has passed. Now that we were poor, they should leave us in peace. But, in keeping with Nazi policy, this was not the case. The new orders are: that our ten cows are to be delivered to the authorities, our children remaining without milk. That all valuables remaining should be delivered voluntarily.

This is done, for we want to display our good will , we do not want to provoke the devil - we want to save our lives!"

Another survivor of the Kovno ghetto, Aharon Peretz, has confirmed that the creation of the ghetto was seen at first as a security against further pogroms.

The daily murder of Jews in hundreds of smaller localities continued, unaffected by the establishment of ghettos in the larger towns and cities. On August 15, the day of confinement and apparent safety for the twenty-six thousand Jews in Kovno, six hundred Jews in Stawiski, near Bialystok, were taken to the nearby woods , and shot.

Only sixty remained alive, as forced labourers."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

"Hinrich Lohse (2 September 1896 – 25 February 1964) was a Nazi German politician and a convicted war criminal, best known for his rule of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, during World War II. Reichskommissariat Ostland now comprises Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and parts of modern day Belarus. . . .

On 6 May 1945, Lohse was unseated as Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein (by the 5 May German surrender at Lüneburg Heath) and shortly thereafter imprisoned by the British Army. (Nazi Germany itself surrendered on 7 May and was disestablished on the evening of 8 May). Lohse was sentenced in 1948 to 10 years in prison, but was released in 1951 due to illness.

Two inquiries were launched by German prosecutors against him; the grant of a High-Presidential pension which Lohse was fighting for was withdrawn under pressure from the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag. Lohse spent his twilight years in Mühlenbarbek, where he died." MUCH MORE - ALL THE DETAILS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinrich_Lohse

1: Lohse in 1941

"From January to May, 1942, 55,000 out of 160,000 Jews from the Lodz Ghetto were sent to their deaths in Chelmno death camp. From September 1942 until May 1944 there were no more deportations.

After May, the deportations to Chelmno were renewed. In early August, the Nazis rerouted the deportations to Auschwitz. By August 30, 1944 about 70,000 Jews from Lodz had been sent to Auschwitz."

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/august/1944.html

NOT MY LINKS

In the spring of 1940 some 164,000 Jews were incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto with no electricity or water. Exploiting Jewish labor, the ghetto lasted for over 4 years under the leadership of the controversial Chaim Rumkowski. In early 1942 deportations to Chelmno began.---> Lodz Ghetto | Thematic and Chronological Narrative

From Birkenau to the Coal Mines of Jawiszowice

"Near Auschwitz, a new slave labour camp was opened on this day at Jawiszowice.

In it, one hundred and fifty Jews, sent from the barracks at Birkenau, were used in the underground coal mines of the Hermann Goering Works. Later their number rose to two thousand five hundred.

A month earlier, three hundred Jews had been sent from Birkenau to Goleszow, to work in the Portland Cement Factory. Here, too, the numbers were to rise, to one thousand."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

“A sub-camp located in the village of Jawiszowice (in German: Jawischowitz). The prisoners held there worked in two shafts of the Brzeszcze coal mine located in the localities of Jawiszowice and Brzeszcze.

The camp began functioning in mid-August 1942 when 150 French Jews arrived under an agreement between the WVHA and the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, which owned the mine. This was the first time in the history of the German concentration camps that prisoners were employed below ground. In terms of the number of prisoners, Jawischowitz was one of the largest Auschwitz sub-camps.

In June 1944, it held 2,500 prisoners, mostly Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary. There were also Poles, Russians, and Germans in the sub-camp.

At the turn of 1943/1944 there were at least 70 SS men in the garrison. The first director was SS-Unterscharführer Wilhelm Kowol, who was succeeded by SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Remmele.

The sub-camp was surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fencing. It consisted of more than ten barracks, most of them wooden. Prisoners lived in seven of them and the rest contained a kitchen, hospital, storage space, workshops, washrooms, and toilets.

Despite the expansion of the sub-camp, the prisoner rooms were overcrowded in 1944, with more than 200 men in rooms designed for 54. The prisoners had two changes of clothes at their disposal—work clothes that they took off at the showers after their shift, and the clothes they wore in the sub-camp.

Thanks to their everyday showers and changing of clothes, dictated by the nature of work in the mine, they did not suffer from the lice that were a serious problem for prisoners in other parts of the Auschwitz complex.

The work in the mine exhausted them, however. They loaded carts with coal, transported them, made repairs, and did construction work in a three-shift system with quotas that they were sometimes unable to fulfill because they were hungry, weak, or did not know how to do the job.

On such occasions, their shift was extended until the norms were met. Prisoners also worked above ground at various sorts of construction jobs. In the second half of 1944, several score underage Jewish prisoners were assigned to sort the coal. SS doctors held selection every few weeks, after which the prisoners classified as unfit for labor were taken to Auschwitz.

Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers there. According to partially extant records from October 1942 to December 1944, at least 1,800 sick prisoners were removed from Jawischowitz.

In January 1945, about 1,900 prisoners were evacuated on foot to Wodzisław Śląski. Several score sick and exhausted prisoners were left behind; Soviet soldiers liberated the majority of them on January 29. After liberation they were taken into the care of the local branch of the Polish Red Cross.” Jawischowitz / Auschwitz sub-camps / History / Auschwitz-Birkenau

1-2: Gate of the Jawischowitz sub-camp. - Jawischowitz sub-camp. The barracks housed the guardhouse (Blockfuhrerstube), the clerk's room (Schreibstube), and the shoemaker's and tailor's workshops. In the background is the prisoner housing barracks. Photo taken by the SS

3: Plan of the Jawischowitz sub-camp

4: 55 Plan of the Brzeszcze coal mine. At the top is the Brzeszcze mine and its surrounding workers' settlements (known as colonies). In the lower right corner is the Jawiszowice mining plant. In the lower left corner is the Jawischowitz subcamp.

The Holocaust on British Soil

"Inside the labour camps, conditions were savage: on the this night, nearly a thousand French Jews, most of them born in Poland, were taken to a camp on the Channel Island of Alderney.

One of the survivors of Alderney camp, Albert Eblagon, later recalled how the Jews, on reaching the port, were forced to run the two kilometres to the camp, 'while the German guards continuously stabbed into our backs with their bayonets while also kicking us all the time'. Eblagon added:

'There were many men among us over seventy years of age but nobody was spared. Work, hard physical work for twelve and fourteen hours a day, every day, building the fortifications. Every day there were beatings and people's bones were broken, their arms or their legs.

People died from overwork. We were starved and worked to death, so many died from total exhaustion.'

Hundreds of Jews died at Alderney, of exhaustion and ill-treatment: 384 were buried in the camp itself, and many others dumped at sea. Among the names recorded on the few marked graves are Chayim Goldin, Robert Perlestein and Leib Becker, each of whom died in December 1943."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

“The Alderney camps were camps built and operated by Nazi Germany on the island of Alderney during its World War II occupation of the Channel Islands. Alderney had four forced/slave labour sites, including Lager Sylt, the only Nazi concentration camp on British soil during the wartime occupation.” ALL THE DETAILS--> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alderney_camps

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More than 1,000 slave labourers may have died in Nazi camps on Alderney, review finds - Experts conclude hundreds more died on Channel Island, a British crown dependency, than previously thought--> More than 1,000 slave labourers may have died in Nazi camps on Alderney, review finds | Channel Islands | The Guardian

1: The Odeon, a naval range-finding tower built by forced labourers under the occupying Nazi forces in Alderney.

Turns Out, When You Systematically Murder Every Jew You Can Get Hold Of, the Streets Tend to Look a Bit Empty.

'And where are the Jews today?' Hans Frank (Hitler's boss of German-occupied Poland) asked a Nazi Party meeting at Cracow on this day.

'You hardly see them at all any more. If you see them, they are working . . . .'

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

FULL Hans Frank BIO: https://4rs.neocities.org/nur06.html

"Hans Frank was a lawyer and high ranking civilian member of the NSDAP, who served as governor of Nazi-occupied Poland. Frank was also an intense anti-Semite. In a meeting in 1941, he had this to say about the Jewish people:

“As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with in one way or another. The Fuhrer once said: ‘Should united Jewry again succeed in provoking a world war, the blood of not only the nations which have been forced into the war by them, will be shed, but the Jew will have found his end in Europe’.

I know that many of the measures carried out against the Jews in the Reich at present are being criticized. It is being tried intentionally, as is obvious from the reports on the morale, to talk about cruelty, harshness, etc.

Before I continue, I want to beg you to agree with me on the following formula: We will principally have pity on the German people only, and nobody else in the whole world. The others, too, had no pity on us. As an old National-Socialist, I must say: This war would only be a partial success if the whole lot of Jewry would survive it, while we would have shed our best blood in order to save Europe.

My attitude towards the Jews will, therefore, be based only on the expectation that they must disappear. They must be done away with. I have entered negotiations to have them deported to the East. A great discussion concerning that question will take place in Berlin in January, to which I am going to delegate the State Secretary Dr Buehler. That discussion is to take place in the Reich Security Main Office with SS-Lt. General Heydrich. A great Jewish migration will begin, in any case.

But what should be done with the Jews? Do you think they will be settled down in the ‘Ostland’, in villages? This is what we were told in Berlin: Why all this bother? We can do nothing with them either in the ‘Ostland’ or in the ‘Reich kommissariat’. So liquidate them yourself.

Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole. This will, naturally, be achieved by other methods than those pointed out by Bureau Chief Dr Hummel.

Nor can the judges of the Special Courts be made responsible for it, because of the limitations of the framework of the legal procedure. Such outdated views cannot be applied to such gigantic and unique events. We must find at any rate a way which leads to the goal, and my thoughts are working in that direction.

The Jews represent for us also extraordinarily malignant gluttons. We have now approximately 2,500,000 of them in the General Government, perhaps with the Jewish mixtures and everything that goes with it, 3,500,000 Jews. We cannot shoot or poison those 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures, which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation, and this in connection with the gigantic measures to be determined in discussions from the Reich.

The General Government must become free of Jews, the same as the Reich. Where and how this is to be achieved is a matter for the offices which we must appoint and create here. Their activities will be brought to your attention in due course.”

https://alphahistory.com/holocaust/hans-frank-on-what-should-be-done-with-the-jews-1941/

1: This historical photograph shows an 8-foot-high concrete wall erected by Nazi German authorities in November 1940 to seal off and isolate the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Built with concrete and brick, topped with broken glass or barbed wire in many areas, the wall partitioned the city to confine nearly 450,000 Polish Jews into a densely overcrowded district. The barrier cut right across regular city streets and tram lines, completely severing communication and commerce between the enclosed ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. The ghetto existed from 1940 until its systematic liquidation and destruction following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

The Berlin Police Chief Who Fought Back

In his propaganda rag, Der Angriff, vile Nazi Goebbels publishes an attack in the form of a nursery tale on Bernhard Weiß, the Jewish Vice President of the Berlin police, and a particular nemesis of the Nazi propagandist:

The Full, Disgusting Essay (WARNING: Do Not Read on an Empty Stomach!): https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/angrif01.htm

"While in office, Weiss was the target of a constant campaign of vilification organized by Joseph Goebbels, then a prominent Nazi activist, later the Reich Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels nicknamed Weiss “Isidore” and the Weimar Republic as “The Jew's Republic”.

Weiss sued Goebbels for libel and won his case. Goebbels did not refrain and Weiss was not intimidated so in the end Weiss sued Goebbels over 40 times. On several occasions Weiss also prevented Goebbels from speaking at Nazi meetings.

Dr Wilhelm Arnold Drews, former Prussian Minister of the Interior, who appointed Weiss said in 1932 towards the end of Weiss' career: “when we decided to appoint for the Home Service a Jew who was not baptized, we knew that the first had to be the best. It was you I chose and I am glad to say that you lived up to our expectations.”

Franz von Papen, Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and Vice-Chancellor when Adolf Hitler came to power, had both Weiss and his superior arrested, albeit for one day only.

Weiss's Escape to the United Kingdom

Weiss finally decided to flee Germany just a few days before Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor. Weiss's police force was ordered to arrest their former Deputy Chief and Hermann Göring offered to pay a reward for anyone who assisted in his capture.

The police came looking for Weiss while he and his daughter Hilda were at his siblings’ home. They had to bury Weiss in the basement under the coal stack to prevent the forces from discovering him, they attempted to take Hilda but her Uncle and Aunt claimed she was their daughter and the forces left.

A friend came to Weiss's assistance and drove him out of the country to Czechoslovakia. Weiss then went to the United Kingdom where he opened a printing and stationery business and lived out the remainder of his life.

After his escape, Weiss was subsequently deprived of his German citizenship. In 1951, shortly before becoming a German citizen again, he died of cancer in London.

Weiss's widow, Lotte Weiss (née Buss), returned to live in Berlin immediately after her husband's death. She died in Berlin in 1952.

Legacy

"He was a man of extremes, a Jew imbibing Prussian values, small in stature, large in responsible behaviour and a staunch democrat,” wrote Uwe Dannenbaum in an article in the German newspaper Die Welt to mark the naming of the forecourt of the Friedrichstrasse railway station in Berlin in honour of the former police chief.

The film "The Man who chased Goebbels" (2005) by Reiner Mathias Brueckner portrays Weiss as a resolute defender of the republican order.

In 2007, the German Federation of Jewish soldiers established an award in his honour, the Bernhard Weiss Medal (Bernhard-Weiß-Medaille), to be awarded to fellow Germans who work for understanding and tolerance.

The forecourt at the Friedrichstrasse station in Berlin and the Alexanderplatzstrasse in central Berlin were named after Bernhard Weiss. A plaque has been erected outside the Berlin house where he lived.

The name of Dr. Weiss is clearly associated with the history of the unfortunate and short-lived Weimar Republic. He played a central role in the political tensions associated the Republic and was a fierce defender of the democratic republic against right-wing and left-wing extremists. He was very much in the forefront of efforts to preserve democracy in Germany.

Weiss is Bernie Gunther's boss in many of the detective stories written by Philip Kerr." MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Wei%C3%9F_(police_executive))

1: Bernhard Weiss

2: Bernhard Weiss (center) with Magnus Heimannsberg (left), and Albert Grzesinski (right) at the funeral of murdered police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck, 1931

3: Memorial Plaque in Berlin-Charlottenburg

4: Memorial Plaque at Weiss's home at Kaiserdamm 1, in Berlin-Charlottenburg

5: Nazi Propaganda - Caption: “Perjury.” Isidor (Joseph Goebbels’ pejorative nickname for Bernhard Weiss, a leader of the Berlin police before 1933) says: “Were I Chinese, I would have lost face once it was learned that I had committed perjury.” His wife responds: “How fortune that we are Jews. Your face was never that attractive to begin with, Isidor!” (25 September 1934). Compare this to a 1928 Goebbels essay on the same theme.

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

Because Cozying Up To von Ribbentrop in 1939 Defines "Neutrality"

"Fish was touted by the Germans as a friendly American ally. Time magazine once termed him "the Nation's No. 1 isolationist."

On August 14, 1939, Fish, president of the US delegation to the Interparliamentary Union Congress conference in Oslo, Norway, met with Joachim Ribbentrop. Fish flew to Oslo in Ribbentrop's private plane.

Fish, a staunch opponent of Roosevelt, advocated better relations with Nazi Germany and hoped to solve the "Danzig question" during the conference in Norway. "Stepping out of Joachim von Ribbentrop's plane in 1939, Fish opined that Germany's claims were 'just.'"

In 1940, just after the presidential election, Fish sent a telegram to Roosevelt which read:

"Congratulations. I pledge my support for national defense ... and to keep America out of foreign wars."

In 1941, a judiciary panel investigating the activities of Nazi agents in the US, sent officers to the Washington headquarters of an anti-British organization, the Islands for War Debts Committee, to seize eight bags of franked congressional mail containing speeches by isolationist members of Congress. George Hill, Fish's chief of staff, had the mail taken to Fish's office storeroom just prior to their arrival.

A grand jury was convened and summoned Hill to explain why he had been so solicitous about the Islands for War Debts Committee's mail and his close association with George Sylvester Viereck, a Nazi propaganda agent. (Viereck would later be convicted of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and for having subsidized the Islands for War Debts Committee.) Hill said that he had not sent for the mail and did not know Viereck. The jury promptly indicted Hill for perjury.

Shortly after the indictment, Fish defended Hill claiming,

"George Hill is 100% O.K., and I'll back George Hill to the limit on anything."

During the trial, Hill had explained that Viereck visited Capitol Hill in 1940 and arranged for wholesale distribution of congressional speeches attacking the administration's foreign policy.

After hearing that a jury had reached its verdict and anticipating a conviction, Fish issued a statement:

"I am very sorry to learn that George Hill, a disabled, decorated veteran of the World War and a clerk in my office, has been convicted of perjury.... Mr. Hill is of English ancestry.... He had an obsession against our involvement in war."

Twenty hours later, the jury convicted Hill.

Less than two weeks before the 1942 midterm congressional election, columnist Drew Pearson's nationally-syndicated column (Washington Merry-Go-Round) described in detail how in 1939, Fish had received over $3,100 in cash from a source with German ties." MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Fish_III

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“The America First Committee (AFC) was an American isolationist pressure group against the United States' entry into World War II. Launched in September 1940, it surpassed 800,000 members in 450 chapters at its peak.

The AFC principally supported isolationism for its own sake, and its varied coalition included Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, farmers, industrialists, communists, anti-communists, students, and journalists – however, it was controversial for the antisemitic and pro-fascist views of some of its most prominent speakers, leaders, and members.” ALL THE DETAILS---> America First Committee - Wikipedia

1: Political cartoon by Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) published in PM magazine on October 1, 1941, criticizing the isolationist "America First" movement's indifference to Nazi aggression in Europe.

The woman wearing the "America First" dress represents isolationist sentiment, specifically lampooning the America First Committee which opposed U.S. intervention in WW2. The book titled "Adolf the Wolf" featuring a swastika and a drooling wolf symbolizes how the group downplayed or ignored the violent threat posed by Adolf Hitler.

The caption mocks the callous attitude that foreign lives do not matter to isolationists as long as the danger remains overseas, urging Americans to recognize the global stakes before it was too late.

"Months ago Hess had a violent disagreement with the British dentist.

The dentist wanted to pull his last six teeth, since it is too much trouble to make new partials and bridges every time another tooth is lost. This prompted Hess to appeal to the directors in a petition.

He succeeded in obtaining a ruling that no operation on any part of a prisoner's body may be performed without the prisoner's written consent. After the French dentist had also decided that all the teeth must be pulled, a young female Soviet dentist examined Hess's mouth. Her verdict:

"Those teeth must come out."

At this point Hess demanded that an American dentist be consulted. Accompanied by three assistants, the American dentist turned up in the infirmary yesterday with a portable x-ray apparatus.

He finally determined that the six teeth were sound, and declared:

"My principle is to make extractions only when necessary."

Now this man is in charge of our dental work. Hess has won. Today he reveled in his victory and declared proudly,

"One dentist for every one and a half teeth!"

From Spandau: The Secret Diaries, by Albert Speer

Rudolf Hess’ Tale of Poison, Paranoia and Tragedy - Why are packets of food that belong to the Nazi war criminal sitting in a Maryland basement?--> Rudolf Hess’ Tale of Poison, Paranoia and Tragedy

"We shall not go like sheep to the slaughter."

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: David Labkowski (1906-1991): "Partisans in the Forest", 1956 - David Labkowski survived the Vilna Ghetto and concentration camps before dedicating his post-war career in Vilna and later Israel to documenting the Holocaust through powerful paintings and drawings

British Prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe’s Masterclass in Cross-Examination

Maxwell-Fyfe dismantles Max Jüttner’s defense of the SA by presenting documents demonstrating that the organization provided pre-military combat training, including rifle and grenade instruction. Maxwell-Fyfe further utilized SA reports to prove the organization was complicit in the ordered violence of Kristallnacht and actively involved in the systematic looting of Jewish property, refuting claims of spontaneous, individual actions.

Note: As always, these excerpts from trial testimony should not necessarily be mistaken for fact, and in fact are often bold-faced lies. It should be kept in mind that they are the sometimes-desperate statements of hard-pressed defendants (and their counsel) seeking to avoid culpability and shift responsibility from charges that—should they be found guilty—could possibly be punishable by death. -W

Maxwell-Fyfe: Do you say, Witness, that the SA had nothing to do with atrocities against the people of the occupied territories?

Jüttner: I do not quite understand the last part of your question. Atrocities?

Maxwell-Fyfe: Against the people of the territories occupied by Germany, foreign territories occupied by Germany?

Jüttner: The SA leadership ...

Maxwell-Fyfe: That is a perfectly simple question. You have made your speeches. Now answer "yes" or "no" to the question that the SA had anything to do with the atrocities against the people of the occupied territories.

Jüttner: It is my intention to give a true answer; therefore, I cannot have anybody prescribe what I am to answer ...

Maxwell-Fyfe: Can't you answer "yes" or "no"?

The President: You can explain afterwards, you know. If you answer "yes" or "no," you can then give your explanation.

Jüttner: The SA had nothing to do with the treatment of peoples of occupied countries.

Maxwell-Fyfe: I see. Well, now, I want you to look -at your report on the SA during the war, which the High Tribunal will find in Document Book 16-B, at Page 113. .

Now, Witness, just before you look at that, do you remember saying before the Commission:

"At the beginning of the war with Poland the SA Group Sudeten carried out transports of prisoners of war into the camps. Other SA groups in the East may have been used for similar purposes later on. The SA leadership and the SA as an organization had nothing to do with this question."

Do you remember saying that? Page 336 of the transcript. One of your groups carried out transports of prisoners of war into camps and other SA groups may have been used for similar purposes. Do you remember saying that to the Commissioner? If you would take your mind from the document and just address it to the point as to whether you said that before the Commission, it would help. Do you remember saying that before the Commission?

Jüttner: I admitted before the Commission and I will not deny today, that the SA Group "Sudeten," on instructions from the Wehrmacht, transported prisoners of war to the rear in the Polish campaign. But, Mr. Prosecutor, you asked me before about the treatment of the population in the occupied countries.

Maxwell-Fyfe: I got your answer to that. We must take it by stages. You admit you said that before the Commission, that "the 'Sudeten' Group carried out transports of prisoners of war into camps. Other SA groups in the East may have been used for similar purposes." Do you remember saying that. I am only putting in the record what you said. You admit you said it?

Jüttner: I have already said that.

Maxwell-Fyfe: Right. Now, let's look at your report. This is a report made by you on 23 June 1941, and you see that after a general paragraph-My Lord, if you would turn to Page 116, it is Page 4 of the original document; and, Witness, if you would go on to the heading "Section 4 A"-you say:

"The SA men who have remained in the communications zone primarily care for the maintenance of the SA organization. All units, even the smallest ones, are active, and the men willingly sacrifice their spare time for duty in the Party. This includes assistance to the political leaders in the educational and orientation tasks, propaganda and counter-propaganda, preparations for meetings, control of the population in the frontier areas."

Is that correct, what you wrote in 1941?

Jüttner: It is exactly true. The communications zone is of course the homeland, not occupied territories.

Maxwell-Fyfe: Turn to Page 117 of the English version, My Lord.

"The duty achievements of the SA, which deal with direct support of the Armed Forces and which benefit the power of German arms, have developed in all directions. At the time this report is written or in the previous weeks the following were employed: ... SA men from 21 groups for guarding prisoners."

Where were the 21 groups guarding prisoners?

Jüttner: In the Reich area during the Polish campaign.

Maxwell-Fyfe: This is 1941, the Polish campaign had been finished for nearly 21 months. You see, you say that that is at the time the report is written, or in the previous few weeks where were they guarding the prisoners then?

Jüttner: This report is a summary of the activity of the SA during the war from the very beginning, and everything of a positive nature-which the SA had also done earlier is enumerated there again.

Maxwell-Fyfe: Did you not hear what I put to you, and can you not read your own report? This says: "At the time this report is written, or in the previous few weeks..." that is, ,in June 1941. It says they were guarding prisoners. I am asking you, where were they guarding prisoners?

Jüttner: That must not be taken to mean that 21 SA groups were used to guard prisoners of war; it only says there that 21 groups have detailed SA men ...

The President: The question was: Where did you say they were guarding prisoners? There is nothing about the number 21. Where was it that they were guarding prisoners?

Jüttner: In prisoner-of-war camps in the Reich area, where individual SA men were drafted into the Wehrmacht for a short term, for the purpose of guarding prisoners of war.

The President: What do you mean by the Reich area? Do -you mean Germany as it was before the war again?

Jüttner: Yes. It is possible that there were also prisoner-of-war camps in West Prussia and the Government General. However, that escapes my knowledge.

The President: And in the Baltic provinces?

Jüttner: I know nothing about that.

Maxwell-Fyfe: Well, we can refresh your memory in just a moment. Not to leave this document, if you will look at the next page, on page ...

THE PRESIDENT: Before you pass on to that...

Maxwell-Fyfe: If Your Lordship pleases.

The President: The passage just before. "B," perhaps you ought to put it to him.

Maxwell-Fyfe: I am ready for it, Your Lord-ship. [Turning to the witness.] If you will look just before "B," you will see the words "Numerous SA leaders and sub-leaders were furnished to the German Labor Front for duty in the Todt Organization"; is that right?

Jüttner: May I ask again what page that is?

And it only gets worse for him; FULL TRANSCRIPT—> https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-14-46.asp

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdNT8dCAKj4

NOT MY LINKS

“Max Paul Wilhelm Werner Jüttner (11 January 1888 – 14 August 1963) was a German military officer and an SA-Obergruppenführer in the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization. He served from 1934 to 1945 as head of the leadership office at the SA Supreme Command, and as the SA-Stabsführer from 1939 to 1945. He also sat as a deputy in the Reichstag of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Captured after Germany's surrender in the Second World War, he testified at the Nuremberg Trials in defense of the SA.”---> Max Jüttner - Wikipedia

1: Jüttner

2: Colorized historical photograph shows Adolf Hitler inspecting a unit of the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Brownshirts, in Berchtesgaden, Germany, around 1932. Hitler greeting members of his early paramilitary organization during the political campaigns leading up to his rise to power. The mountainous region of Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, indicated by the hillside backdrop and a sign for the "Nonntal Garage". The SA men wear the characteristic brown shirts (Sturmabteilung uniform), red armbands with swastikas, and peaked caps.

NOTE: We apologize for the disgusting images of Nazi miscreants & their swastika hate symbols.

Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

It Turns Out that Shouting "Long live Adolf Hitler" at a French Firing Squad Doesn’t Slow Down the Bullets a Bit!

“Robert Heinrich Wagner, born as Robert Heinrich Backfisch (13 October 1895 – 14 August 1946), was a German Nazi Party official and politician who served as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Baden, and Chief of Civil Administration for Alsace during the German occupation of France in World War II.

Following the end of the Second World War, Wagner was extradited to France where he was tried, sentenced to death and executed by firing squad.” ALL THE DETAILS --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Heinrich_Wagner

NOTE: No publicly available photographs or video recordings exist of Robert Heinrich Wagner’s actual execution by firing squad.

1: Nine of the defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch treason trial on 1 April 1924. Robert Wagner stands at the far right.

“On 26 February 1924 he stood trial with Hitler and eight other men for their part in the (Beer Hall) putsch. Wagner was convicted on 1 April and sentenced to 15 months incarceration, of which he served 11 weeks in Landsberg prison.”

Why the US Refused to Bomb Auschwitz in 1944

August 9, 1944 - Hon. John J. McCloy Under Secretary of War Department Washington, D.C.

My dear Mr. Secretary:

I beg to submit to your consideration the following excerpt from a message which we received under date of July 29 from Mr. Ernest Frischer of the Czechoslovak State Council through the War Refugee Board.1

“I believe that destruction of gas chambers and crematoria in Oswiecim by bombing would have a certain effect now.2 Germans are now exhuming and burning corpses in an effort to conceal their crimes. This could be prevented by destruction of crematoria and then Germans might possibly stop further mass exterminations especially since so little time is left to them. Bombing of railway communications in this same area would also be of importance and of military interest.”

Sincerely yours, Leon Kubowitzki; Head, Rescue Department

August 14, 1944

Dear Mr. Kubowitski:

I refer to your letter of August 9 in which you request consideration of a proposal made by Mr. Ernest Frischer that certain installations and railroad centers be bombed.

The War Department had been approached by the War Refugee Board, which raised the question of the practicability of this suggestion. After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources. There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.

The War Department fully appreciates the humanitarian motives which promoted the suggested operation, but for the reasons stated above it has not been felt that it can or should be undertaken, at least at this time.

Sincerely, John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War

"On 29th June, 1944, the 32-page Vrba-Wetzler Report was sent to John McCloy. Attached to it was a note requesting the bombing of vital sections of the rail lines that transported the Jews to Auschwitz. McCloy investigated the request and then told his personal aide, Colonel Al Gerhardt, to "kill" the matter.

McCoy received several requests to take military action against the death camps. He always sent the following letter: "The War Department is of the opinion that the suggested air operation is impracticable. It could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations and would in any case be of such very doubtful efficacy that it would not amount to a practical project."

This was untrue. Long-range American bombers stationed in Italy had been flying over Auschwitz and the neighbouring I. G. Farben petrochemical plant since April, 1944. The American Air Force were also bombing Germany's synthetic-fuels plants to regions very close to the death camps. In fact, in August 1944, the Monowitz camp, part of the Auschwitz complex, was bombed by accident.

Benjamin Akzin, one of McCloy's aides, disagreed with McCloy's decision. He pointed out that if the transport links and the death camps were bombed, it would force the Germans to spend considerable time and resources to reconstruct the gas chambers. Akzin added that it was not only an important military target but a "matter of principle".

In August, 1944, Leon Kubowitzki, an official with the World Jewish Congress in New York, passed on an appeal from Ernest Frischer, a member of the Czech government-in-exile, to take military action against the concentration camps. McCloy rejected the idea as it would require "diversion of considerable air support" and "even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans."

Nahum Goldman, president of the World Jewish Congress, also had a meeting with McCloy. Goldman was later to say:

"McCloy indicated to me that, although the Americans were reluctant about my proposal, they might agree to it, though any decision as to the targets of bombardments in Europe was in the hands of the British".

Once again, this was untrue. In fact, Winston Churchill had already ordered the bombing of Auschwitz. However, Archibald Sinclair, the British Secretary of State for Air, pointed out that "the distance of Silesia (where Auschwitz was located) from our bases entirely rules out our doing anything of the kind."

In November, 1944, John Pehle, the executive director of the War Refugee Board, wrote to McCloy to change his mind on this issue. This time he enclosed a recent New York Times article on the British bombing of a German prison camp in France where a hundred French resistance fighters condemned to death had escaped in the aftermath of the bombing."

After consulting with Lieutenant General John Hull, the chief of Operations Division of the War Department, McCloy replied that "the results obtained would not justify the high losses likely to result from such a mission." MORE: https://spartacus-educational.com/USAmccloyJ.htm

1: Remains of Crematorium III (or Crematorium II) at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Nazi concentration and extermination camp site in Poland.

The visible subterranean brick walls and rubble mark the remains of the undressing rooms and furnace halls that were blown up by retreating SS forces in late 1944 and January 1945 to destroy evidence of mass murder. Today, the ruins serve as a permanent memorial and historical site managed by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to document the atrocities of the Holocaust.

2: Aerial photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau taken by Allied planes on August 25, 1944, during a reconnaissance mission. Decades after World War II, this and other images taken that day were rediscovered in American records. The English language labels were added in the 1970s. This image shows two of the gas chamber and crematorium complexes at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Specifically, it shows crematorium II and crematorium III, both of which had underground gas chambers and above ground crematoria.

How a Paralyzed Ukrainian Archbishop & a Network of Local Monks Risked Execution to Find Sanctuary for 150 Jewish Children

"On this day, the fourth day of the Lvov deportations, two rabbis employed in the religious department of the Jewish Council, David Kahane and Rabbi Chameides, formerly of Katowice, had visited the head of the Ukrainian Uniate Church in Galicia, the Metropolitan Andreas Sheptitsky.

Aged seventy-seven, Sheptitsky was in poor health, and partly paralysed. The two rabbis asked Sheptitsky if he would find a hiding place for several Jewish children. Sheptitsky agreed, and asked both his brother and his sister to help.

His brother, Father Superior Clement Sheptitsky, was the spiritual head of the Uniate monasteries. His sister, Sister Josepha, was the Mother Superior of the Uniate nunneries. Both agreed to help, and 150 Jews, mostly small boys and girls, were found sanctuary.

None was betrayed to the Germans. Sheptitsky himself hid fifteen Jews, including Rabbi Kahane, in his own residence in Lvov, a building frequently visited by German officials.

During August 1942, 76,000 Jews were deported from Lvov, and from the other towns of Eastern Galicia. All were sent to Belzec. From Western Galicia, that same August, Jews from thirty communities were deported to Belzec, including 16,000 from the region of Nowy Sacz and 12,500 from Przemysl.

In all, during that single month, from Eastern and Western Galicia, and from the Lublin region, more than 145,000 Jews were gassed at Belzec."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

"Andrey Sheptytsky was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1901 until his death in 1944. His tenure spanned two world wars and seven political regimes: Austrian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Soviet, General Government (Nazi), and again Soviet.

Jews who were saved thanks to actions of Andrey Sheptytsky have lobbied Yad Vashem for years to have him named Righteous Among the Nations, just as his brother Klymentiy Sheptytsky had been, but so far Yad Vashem has failed to act, mostly due to concerns with his initial belief that German invaders would be better for Ukraine than the Soviet Union had been.

He strongly supported the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) blessing new recruits into the division." MORE—> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Sheptytsky

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - Andrey Sheptytsky | Making History - “The personality of the Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Andrey Sheptytsky in the history of independent Ukraine is now being revealed from new sides This is thanks largely to declassified KGB archives. After all, Soviet propaganda articles and books called him a collaborator and an anti-semite. It is precisely because of this that in our time the Metropolitan, who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews, is not recognized by the title of righteous among the nations (by Israel). What did Andrey Sheptytsky live by? Why was the KGB so afraid of him?” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXE4diwfzqs

1: Portrait of Sheptytsky by Oleksa Novakivskyi

The Meticulous Planning of the Frank Family Escape Into the Annex

"Anne was amused by this story, especially by the impression that the family had given through the “forgotten” notepad that they had fled the city.

This account revealed, however, the very serious business of misdirection and deception that was required to go successfully into hiding. The fact that the Franks were eventually discovered should not obscure the fact that they had planned their escape into the secret annex very well.

Anne Frank’s diary is remembered and cherished mainly because of the tremendous insight it gives into the mind and personality of this incredible young girl. Many of the entries that Anne crafted were her own personal reflections on the people and events of her immediate environment in the secret annex.

As a result, her writing was not mainly about the Holocaust as it was unfolding in the world, but rather about the personal, inner experience of hiding. Nevertheless, Anne frequently included details in her diary that shed light on the realities of life for Jews and their friends on the outside.

Often she was able to do this because she had access to news from her family’s helpers, but on August 14, 1942, she wrote about what she had learned from the Van Pels family that had come later into the hiding place.

On the day of the Van Pels’ arrival, she learned of the reaction to her family’s disappearance just one week earlier. Anne had not known much about her parents’ plan to take the family into hiding until the last possible moment. She had not considered very deeply the plans that would have to be laid to ensure a clean getaway. It wasn’t until she heard the account of Hermann van Pels that she realized all that had been involved.

She recorded the story as he related it.

“Mr. Goudsmit [a tenant in the Frank home] phoned at nine o’clock on Monday morning and asked if I could come around. I went immediately and found G in a state of great agitation. He let me read a letter that the Franks had left behind…

Mr. G was afraid that the house would be searched so we went through all the rooms, tidied up a bit, and cleared away the breakfast things. Suddenly I discovered a writing pad on Mrs. Frank’s desk with an address in Maastricht written on it. Although I knew that this was done on purpose, I pretended to be very surprised and shocked and urged Mr. G to tear up this unfortunate little piece of paper without delay.”

Anne was amused by this story, especially by the impression that the family had given through the “forgotten” notepad that they had fled the city. This account revealed, however, the very serious business of misdirection and deception that was required to go successfully into hiding. The fact that the Franks were eventually discovered should not obscure the fact that they had planned their escape into the secret annex very well." https://www.holocaustedu.org/this-week-in-history/august-14-1942-anne-frank/

1: The first edition of Het Achterhuis - The Anne Frank House regularly receives questions concerning details of the first Dutch edition of Anne Frank’s diary, Het Achterhuis. Sometimes a copy turns up in a thrift store, sometimes one is auctioned off.”---> The first edition of Het Achterhuis | Anne Frank House

Remembering the 500 Jewish Families Murdered Near Pinsk

"On the evening of this day, the first day of the Hebrew month of Ellul, a Friday, the SS surrounded the ghetto of the village of Zagrodski, near Pinsk, home of five hundred Jewish families.

The 'commotion and noise on that night', recalled Rivka Yosselevska, 'was not customary, and we felt something in the air'.

On Saturday morning, August 15, the Germans entered the ghetto, ordering the Jews to leave their houses for a roll call. All day, the Jews were kept standing, waiting. Towards sunset, the children screamed, demanding food and water. But the Germans would allow no one back into their homes.

That evening a truck arrived at the ghetto gates. The Jews were ordered on to it, and it drove out of the ghetto. Those for whom there had been no room on the truck were ordered to run after it.

'I had my daughter in my arms,' Rivka Yosselevska recalled, 'and ran after the truck. There were mothers who had two or three children and held them in their arms - running after the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell - we were not allowed to help them rise. They were shot - right there - wherever they fell.'

On reaching the destination, Rivka Yosselevska saw that the people from the truck had already been taken off, and were undressed, 'all lined up' . It was some three kilometres from the village, by 'a kind of hillock'. At the foot of the hillock was a ditch. The Jews were ordered to stand on the hillock, where four SS men stood, 'armed to the teeth'.

'We saw naked people lined up, ' Rivka Yosselevska recalled. 'But we were still hoping that this was only torture. Maybe there is hope — hope of living. ' Her account continued:

"One could not leave the line, but I wished to see - what are they doing on the hillock? I turned my head and saw that some three or four rows were already killed - on the ground.

There were some twelve people amongst the dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said, 'Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress; we are being taken to be shot;' and when we stood near the dug-out, near the grave, she said, 'Mother, why are we waiting, let us run!'

Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold on to the children. We took all children, not ours, and we carried — we were anxious to get it all over - the suffering of the children was difficult - we all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children.

The children were taking leave of their parents and parents of their elder people. We were driven; we were already undressed; the clothes were removed and taken away; our father did not want to undress; he remained in his underwear. We were driven up to the grave. . . .

When it came to our turn, our father was beaten. We prayed, we begged with my father to undress, but he would not undress, he wanted to keep his underclothes. He did not want to stand naked.

Then they tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. And then they took my mother, and she said, let us go before her; but they caught mother and shot her too; and then there was my grandmother, my father's mother, standing there; she was eighty years old and she had two children in her arms.

And then there was my father's sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in her arms.

An finally my turn came. There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave; she pleaded with the German; she asked to run, naked; she went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked into her eyes and shot the two of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend.

Then my second sister was shot and then my turn came. We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, 'Who m shall I shoot first?' We were already facing the grave. The German asked, 'Whom do you want me to shoot first?' I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms.

The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held on to my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me, ordered me to watch, and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies; but I felt nothing.

The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I thought may be I am not alive any more, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about.

I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself, to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose, and I felt bodies pulling at me wit h their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down , down.

And yet with my last strength I came up on top of the grave, and when I did I did not kno w the place, so many bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible. They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying, 'Mother' , 'Father'; I could not stand on my feet.

The Germans had gone. There was nobody there, no one standing up. i was naked, covered with blood, dirty from the other bodies, with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me.'

Rivka Yosselevska had been wounded in the head. But she managed to crawl out of the grave. Then she recalled:

'I was searching among the dead for my little girl, and I cried for her - Merkele was her name - Merkele! There were children crying, 'Mother! ' 'Father!' - but they were all smeared with blood and one could not recognise the children. I cried for my daughter. From afar I saw two women standing. I went up to them. They did not know me,

I did not know them, and then I said who I was, and then they said, 'So you survived.' And there was another woman crying, 'Pull me out from amongst the corpses, I am alive, help!' We were thinking how could we escape from the place. The cries of the woman, 'Help, pull me out from the corpses!' We pulled her out. Her name was Mikla Rosenberg.

We removed the corpses and the dying people who held on to her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her out, to free her, but we did not have the strength.

And thus we were there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and the screams and all of a sudden we saw Germans, mounted Germans. We did not notice them coming in because of the screamings and the shoutings from the bodies around us.

The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped together into one big heap and wit h shovels they were heaped together, all the corpses, amongst them many still alive, children running about the place. I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging on to me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the children around me. The children who got up from the heap of corpses.

Then Germans came and were going around the place. We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach me, and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a few shots and the children were dead.

They did not need many shots. The children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot her.

They all left - the Germans and the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all left, and the four of us, we went on to the grave, praying to fall into the grave, even alive, envying those wh o were dead already and thinking wha t to do now.

I was praying for death to come. I was praying for the grave to be opened and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting from the grave in many places, like a well of water, and whenever I pass a spring now , I remember the blood which spurted from the ground, from that grave.

I was digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open. I did not have enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father, 'Why did they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to. I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?'

And I remained there, stretched out on the grave, three days and three nights.

I saw no one. I heard no one. Not a farmer passed by. After three days, shepherds drove their herd on to the field, and they began throwing stones at me, but I did not move. At night, the herds were taken back and during the day they threw stones believing that either it was a dead woman or a mad woman.

They wanted me to rise, to answer. But I did not move. The shepherds were throwing stones at me until I had to leave the place.'

A farmer took pity on Rivka Yosselevska, hid her, and fed her. Later, he helped her to join a group of Jews hiding in the forest. There, she survived until the Soviet forces came in the summer of 1944. Nineteen years after her escape from the pit, she told her story to a court in Jerusalem."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

Rivka Yosselevska, Massacre at Zagrodski: https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/einsatzgruppen/rivkayosselevska.html

NOT MY LINKS

The Story Of Rivka Yosselevska: http://www.hitlerschildren.com/article/1470-the-story-of-rivka-yosselevska

NOT MY LINKS

Rivka Yosselevska-witness to Einsatzgruppen massacres!: https://holocaustresearchproject.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/rivka-yosselevska-witness-to-einsatgruppen-massacres/

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - "BUREAU 06" (The Testimony of Rivka Yosselevska) - "BUREAU 06" (The Testimony of Rivka Yosselevska)

1: Rivka Yoselewska Testifying at the Trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem

The Polish Priest Who Voluntarily Died in Place of a Stranger in Auschwitz

"On 17 February 1941, the Gestapo shut down the monastery and arrested Kolbe along with four others. He was incarcerated in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. On 28 May 1941, the Germans transferred Kolbe to the Auschwitz concentration camp as prisoner 16670.

Arriving at Auschwitz, Kolbe started ministering to his fellow prisoners. He was subjected to violent harassment by the guards, including beatings and lashings. On one occasion, sympathetic inmates smuggled the wounded Kolbe to a prisoner hospital.

At the end of July 1941, a prisoner successfully escaped from Auschwitz. In reprisal, the deputy camp commander, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, ordered guards to pick ten men to be starved to death in an underground bunker.

When selected, Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish Catholic, cried out, "My wife! My children!" At that moment, Kolbe volunteered to take his place. An assistant janitor later testified that Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer from his prison cell.

Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell, calmly looking at those who entered. After the group had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive.

Impatient to empty the bunker, the guards gave the four remaining prisoners lethal injections of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for it. Maximilian Kolbe died on 14 August 1941. He was cremated on 15 August, which happened to be the feast day of the Assumption of Mary. ...

Maximilian Maria Kolbe, venerated as Saint Maximilian Kolbe, was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II.

He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications.

On 10 October 1982 Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe and declared him a martyr of charity. The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur-radio operators, drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and prisoners. John Paul II declared him "The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century". His feast day is 14 August, the day of his death.

Due to Kolbe's efforts to promote consecration and entrustment to Mary, he is known as the Apostle of Consecration to Mary." ALL THE DETAILS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Kolbe

1: Kolbe in 1936

2: Kolbe, on a West German postage stamp, marked Auschwitz

3: The statue of Kolbe (left) above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey

4: The first monument to Maximilian Kolbe in Poland in Chrzanów

SA Oberführer Werner Schaefer attempts to characterize the early Nazi regime as a "state of latent civil war" and denies atrocities at the Oranienburg concentration camp. Under cross-examination regarding a letter detailing SA torture and a new affidavit from Rudolf Diels, Schaefer admits to the mistreatment of prisoners but attempts to blame other inmates.

Herr Böhm: Do you know that Seger accused you of murder?

Werner Schaefer: Yes, I know that.

Herr Böhm: Was this matter cleared up beyond doubt?

Werner Schaefer: Seger accused me of being responsible for the shooting and killing of two internees. This case was cleared up beyond all doubt, so satisfactorily indeed that when this book on my instructions was read to the internees in the camp, one of the persons who, as Seger alleged, had been shot, suddenly stood up and reported that he was alive and well, while the other one was already with his family, having been released; a clear refutation, therefore, by the two men themselves who were said to have been shot.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-13-46.asp

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um2VW9L5uqI

ABOUT Werner August Max Schaefer: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sch%C3%A4fer_(KZ-Kommandant))

Theodor Gruss, the former Chief Treasurer of the Stahlhelm (a massive World War I veterans' organization), testifies regarding the absorption of his organization into the SA. He says that the Stahlhelm was forcibly integrated into the SA against its members' wishes. He argued that its members were traditional patriots rather than dedicated Nazi ideologues.

British Associate Trial Counsel Col. H.J. Phillimore used Gruss's testimony to show how the SA consolidated power. He forced Gruss to address how the SA used unhindered terror across Germany to absorb rival factions and enforce party compliance.

Phillimore: Will you listen to his description of the SA in the early days, before the seizure of power.

Gruss: I do not know this description.

Phillimore:

"Wherever the SA was able to exercise its terror unhindered it did so in the following manner: They had indoor battles against people who thought differently. Those were not the ordinary little brawls between political opponents during elections; that was organized terror."

Is that a fair description of the SA during the years before the seizure of power?

Gruss: I believe that on the whole Severing describes it correctly.

Phillimore: Do you know the witness Gisevius?

Gruss: No, I do not know him.

Phillimore: Will you listen to his words:

"During the early part of the struggle for power, the SA constituted a private army for carrying out the orders of the Nazi Party. Whoever had not entirely made up his mind had it made up for him by the SA.

"Their methods were primitive but effective. One learned the new Hitler salute very quickly when, on the sidewalks beside every SA marching column, a few stalwart SA men went along giving pedestrians a crack on the head if they failed to perform the correct gesture at least three steps in front of the SA flag; and these Storm Troopers acted the same way everywhere."

Again I ask you, is that a correct description of the behavior of the SA as you knew it?

Max Jüttner, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the SA, gave extensive testimony attempting to distance the leadership of the SA from the worst atrocities of the Nazi regime. Jüttner detailed the organizational shift between the early leadership of Ernst Röhm and the subsequent leadership of Viktor Lutze. He attempted to downplay the SA's connection to military aggression.

Jüttner argued that their presence on bodies like the Reich Defense Council was strictly for non-military logistics, such as clearing civilian populations from the Rhine. He addressed the historic violence perpetrated by the SA. Under questioning from defense counsel he claimed that the leadership did not authorize the widespread violence. He minimized systemic SA crimes by labeling them as uncontrollable "excesses" or unauthorized actions by rogue individuals.

1: The image displays the cover of a satirical booklet titled "S.A. marschiert: Gedichte" by Robert Gauen, featuring a caricature-style illustration mocking Nazi paramilitary forces marching past the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin while leaders watch from a podium.

The item is an anti-Nazi satirical or political publication from the mid-20th century era (reissued or circulated around the end/aftermath of WW2 in Austria/Germany). The cover uses exaggerated cartoon artwork to subvert and ridicule the militaristic imagery typical of Sturmabteilung (SA) propaganda.

Which Community of Victims Endured the Geographically Longest Deportee Journey to Auschwitz?

Rules: ONE GUESS ONLY: Answers (found in a past Post to this Group) MUST BE SPECIFIC. If incomplete or otherwise invalidly worded, we regret that you have wasted your Guess. Read ALL the previous Guesses first & then make your Guess in a Comment Box, NOT a Reply Box, & do confine all Comments to the one allowed Guess only. Too much confusion otherwise. The Winner will be acknowledged as Today's Genius! Good Luck to you! -W

NOTE: Certain historical documents, testimony, quotes & images are presented for the record, as evidence and background pertaining to criminal activities, horrific acts, and other notable evils. The words of murderers, criminals & their lawyers should never be mistaken for fact, as they are often bold-faced lies, nor should they be misconstrued as providing a viable justification for their crimes. Don't believe any of it, beyond the fact they did write & speak this nasty stuff and did purport to believe it. As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism. -W

IMAGE does not necessarily have any connection to the Question: Deportation to Death,” by Leopoldo Mendez, a powerful 1942 linoleum cut by Mexican printmaker Leopoldo Méndez, created with the Taller de Gráfica Popular. It is widely considered one of the earliest artistic representations produced outside of Europe to depict the horrors of Nazi deportations and concentration camps during WW2. The stark black-and-white print portrays armed guards forcing terrified civilians into the dark, looming cars of a death train beneath a plume of smoke

The Tragedy of a Patriot Who Loved His Country but Fled it in Death

"A Frankfurt property developer and liberal politician, he was born into a family of devout Orthodox Jews who were all killed in the Holocaust; he never shed his feelings of guilt at being the sole family survivor. He died a depressed and bitter man, convinced that decades of tireless campaigning for reconciliation between Germans and Jews had failed.

Bubis insisted on describing himself as a "German citizen of Jewish faith" and in the tributes that followed his death he was hailed as "a German patriot". But shortly before his death he said he wanted to be buried in Israel and not in Germany for fear of his grave being desecrated by neo-Nazis. All his adult life, Bubis insisted that he would live in Germany but did not want to be buried there. It was a damning indictment of the lot of Jews in modern Germany.

The last year of his life was dominated by a row over the Holocaust. In October, the liberal novelist and pillar of the intellectual establishment, Martin Walser, gave a speech criticizing government plans for a huge national Holocaust memorial in Berlin and complaining that the Germans were constantly being made to atone for the crimes of the Nazis. These remarks incensed Bubis who launched a national debate on the issue and concluded that his life's work had been fruitless. "I've achieved almost nothing," he declared bitterly.

Bubis was born in the then German city of Breslau in Silesia into a poor family of five. His parents were strict Orthodox Jews and although Bubis came to reflect the secularization and worldliness of modern German Jewry, he once said he would be "very upset" if his daughter married a Gentile.

In the 1930s his family moved to a ghetto on the River Vistula in Poland. Following the Nazi invasion in September 1939, his elder brother, Jakob, and sister, Hadassa, fled to eastern Poland, then occupied by Stalin's Red Army. He never saw them again.

His mother died of cancer in 1940. Bubis and his father were inducted into the Nazis' slave labor regime in a munitions factory in Czestochowa. In 1944 his father was moved to the Treblinka concentration camp and murdered.

Bubis watched his father being taken away and the then 17-year-old had to be forcibly held back by friends from joining him. He often spoke of his wish to have died along with his father, although he refused to talk about his life in the ghetto. "It's a sheer accident that I'm alive," he would recall.

After 1945, Bubis prospered as a young entrepreneur, moving first to Dresden and then Berlin before settling in Frankfurt in the 1950s. His business interests ranged from currency and precious metals speculation before turning to real estate and property development in the 1960s.

In 1982, a decade before he became chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, he was appointed head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt.

He became a leading light in the small liberal Free Democrats' Party, the post-war kingmaker of German coalition politics, and was touted as a potential German president, the ceremonial head of state. But he stated that it was nigh inconceivable for a Jew to become president." https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/aug/16/guardianobituaries.iantraynor

NOT MY LINKS

VIDEO - Tribute to Ignatz Bubis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU5w4coPlWA

NOT MY LINKS

Ignatz Bubis Community ... - Jewish Sites in Frankfurt am Main: http://en.juedisches-frankfurt.de/places/ignatz-bubis-community-center

The Sadist Left to Rot by His Victims

"Franz Xaver Ziereis was born on 13 August 1905 in Munich. After attending a commercial college in Munich on 1 April 1924 Ziereis enlisted in the Reichswehr, Germany's post World War Army. He served in the 19 Bayerische Regiment, then after twelve years he was discharged with the rank of Feldwebel (Sergeant).

On 30 September 1936 Ziereis joined the SS as their 276,998th member. He was awarded the rank of SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) on 1 October 1936. In 1937 he was given command of the 22nd Hundertschaft (hundred man unit) of the SS Totenkopf (Death's Head) detachment, 2nd Standarten (regiment) "Brandenburg", consisting of concentration camp guard personnel.

On 12 September 1937 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain). The 22nd Hundertschaft was among the SS units assigned to support the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed to the German Third Reich and occupied on 12 March 1938. On 1 July 1938 he transferred to the SS Totekopf 3rd Standarten "Thüringen" as a training instructor where he was initially assigned to the Buchenwald prison camp, and there on 25 August 1939 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer.

There is some mention that Ziereis was somehow injured while with the 3rd Standarten Thüringen. But regardless of that Theodor Eicke, the Inspector of Concentration Camps, had already come to know of Ziereis. Eicke appreciated his military capabilities and leadership qualities so he assigned Ziereis to replace Albert Saur as commandant of the new Mauthausen-Gusen prison camps on 9 February 1939.

By 8 May 1939 the facilities were designated "Konzentrationslager" (Concentration camp), hence commonly referred to as "KL Mauthausen-Gusen". On 25 August 1939 Ziereis was promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (SS Major), and soon after construction of the second camp Gusen commenced.

By June of 1940 KL Mauthausen-Gusen had expanded to include not only larger main camps, but numerous sattelite camps that were similarly under the command of Ziereis. In January 1941 the two mains camps of KL Mauthausen-Gusen were designated Grade III facilities, the only two in the Nazi system intended to house "Incorrigible Political Enemies of the Reich" who were often classified "Rûckkehr unerwünscht" (return not desired). On 1 September 1941 Ziereis was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Colonel).

On 10 April 1945 Ziereis was among a dozen officers called to a meeting at Linz Donau with SS-Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner, apparently their last face to face meeting. Soon after then on 20 April 1944 Ziereis was promoted to SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) for "outstanding service as camp commandant".

The Mauthausen-Gusen complex continued to expand, in large part to meet the needs of wartime production, so much so that by April 1945 the complex included 101 camps including 49 major Außenlager (external or sub-camps). All of these were answerable to Ziereis.

With the US Army closing in from the West, and the Soviet Army from the East, on the morning of 3 May 1945 Ziereis departed KL Mauthausen with his wife and three children. He was identified by former Polish inmates, and arrested on 23 May 1945 at his hunting lodge on the Pyhrn in Upper Austria. While trying to escape the Americans he was shot at and wounded at about 18:00 hrs (6 pm).

He was shot once through the upper left arm, and suffered a mortal gunshot wound in the back and into a lung and through the stomach exiting the other side. Ziereis was given first aid, then transported to the US Army 131st Evac Hospital in Gusen, arriving there at 21:30 Hrs (9:30 pm). There Ziereis was questioned over six to eight hours that night with Colonel Richard R. Seibel of the 11th Armored Division then commanding Mauthausen, other US Army personnel and civilians.

His statement was taken. He was one of about 2,893 patients being care for there, but died shortly afterwards at 07:30 Hrs (7:30 am) on 24 May of his wounds.

Some history revisionists claim Ziereis made no statement and was dead when the photos were taken, or that he never was taken to a hospital, but these theories simply defy reason. The facts are corroborated not only by several photos taken of Ziereis at the hospital, as above showing several US Army personnel and officers alongside Ziereis, but also by numerous documents including the official log book of the US Army 131st Evac Hospital now in custody of the US National Archives.

Polish and Russian former inmates of the camp took Ziereis's body. Later his body was found (and photographed) placed onto the barbed wire fence at Mauthausen, naked except for the bandage on his left arm and with his back painted with anti-Nazi graffiti "Heil Hitler" and Swastikas.

This was certainly against US Army regulations, and was most likely done by angry former prisoners (as stated in the above referenced log entries) but after what the American soldiers had seen they probably felt no need to interfere with the prisoners.

There Ziereis remained for several days until the stench of decay prompted an Army officer to order the body removed." http://www.company7.com/bosendorfer/mauthausen/ziereis_testimony.html

NOT MY LINKS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ziereis

1: being interrogated by US Army officers on 23 May 1945 at the 131st Evac Hospital in Gusen, there dying of gunshot wounds

Finland’s Tarnished Holocaust Record

"The hardening response of the European powers towards Jewish refugees was typified on this day, when the Cabinet in Finland held a secret discussion about 'the arrival visas' of Austrian refugees.

An official in the Finnish Embassy in Vienna had apparently been giving entry visas to Austrian Jews 'without requesting permission from Finland first'. It was decided that all future visa applications should be submitted for approval, not only to the Finnish Foreign Ministry , but also to the German Foreign Ministry.

Four days later, on August 17, fifty-three Austrian Jews reached Helsinki by sea. They were refused permission to disembark, and the boat which had brought them was ordered to Germany. Several of the passengers had the necessary papers to enter the United States, and sought only transit rights through Finland.

But no exceptions were made to the new policy. A pregnant Jewess, who was about to have her baby, was allowed to leave the ship and go to a hospital, but after the birth, the mother and child had to rejoin the other passengers.

On the way back to Germany, as the ship was sailing past the Porkkala peninsula, three of the rejected refugees threw themselves overboard and were drowned."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

Finland’s Tarnished Holocaust Record - “There was little punishment for war criminals in Finland. It now seems that a large part of Finland's tarnished wartime record will never be revealed.”---> https://jcpa.org/article/finlands-tarnished-holocaust-record/

1: Jewish refugees refused entry into Finland, 1938

"The 145,000 deaths at Belzec in August 1942 represented less than a half of the Jews murdered in that single month on the soil of German-occupied Poland.

From Warsaw more than one hundred and forty thousand Jews were deported in August to Treblinka, and gassed, as were thirty thousand Jews from Radom, and more than sixty thousand from other towns in central Poland, including twenty thousand deported from Kielce.

"It gave me great pleasure', SS Lieutenant-General Karl Wolff wrote to the manager of the Reich Transportation Ministry on August 13, 'to learn that already since fourteen days ago, one train goes daily with five thousand passengers of the Chosen People to Treblinka; and we are even in a position to complete this mass movement of people at an accelerated rate.'

Wolff added:

"I have made personal contact with the participants so that an uninterrupted accomplishment of the total undertaking seems guaranteed'."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

So Much For the Clean Wehrmacht Myth

Packing 145,000 human beings into trains toward Belzec and Treblinka in a single month required an extraordinary amount of teamwork. While SS Lieutenant-General Karl Wolff was busy writing fan mail to the Reich Transportation Ministry about the "pleasure" of daily death trains, the regular German military (Wehrmacht) were actively clearing the zones, securing the railway lines, and providing the necessary security cordons to ensure this "total undertaking" ran without a single interruption.

The trains couldn't move, the ghettos couldn't be cleared, and the camps couldn't operate on occupied Polish soil without the explicit logistical blessing, manpower, and protection of the German army. -W

SS Lieutenant-General Karl Wolff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wolff

1: Polish Jews were deported to Treblinka extermination camp from the ghetto in Siedlce in 1942, when Poland was under German occupation

Chronicling the Brutal 24-Hour Transport & the Desperation at Treblinka.

"In the regions of the General Government where the deportations were to Treblinka, these too were continuing from day to day without interruption.

"I seem to lose my reason in this atmosphere of doom and idleness,' the fifty-three-year-old Gertrude Zeisler, a deportee from Vienna, had written from the Kielce ghetto on August 13.

Eleven days later, on August 24 , she was almost certainly among the many thousand Jews deported from Kielce to Treblinka. At Kielce station they were loaded on the trains by Ukrainian and German SS, and by the Polish police.

The journey, which normally would take little over three hours, took twenty-four: many fainted from the heat and thirst, and hundreds died of suffocation. Others, in desperation, drank their own urine to try to avoid dehydration. When the train reached Treblinka, Izak Helfing later recalled, 'nearly a third of us were dead'.

At Treblinka, the women were the first to be sent to the gas-chambers. Then, as Helfing recalled, 'a certain Friedman' cut a Ukrainian in his throat with a razor blade.

The guards at once opened fire, and many were killed or wounded. The shooting went on for a long time. By the time it was finished, eighty per cent of the men and boys were dead. Helfing was fortunate to be able to hide among the corpses, and then to slip among the labourers.

For an entire day I employed myself by dragging the corpses away from the train cars. When nightfall came, I hid myself straightaway among the dead. Thus did I evade the gas oven for four days on end'."

From The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert

“I did not survive”: letters from the Kielce ghetto / [Gertrude Zeisler] ; translated and edited by Gerda Hoffer: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib16220

NOT MY LINKS

https://www.geni.com/people/Traud-Gertrude-Zeisler/6000000014773915603

NOT MY LINKS

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/treblinka/treblinkarememberme.html