Holocaust History

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In Resistance, Halik Kochanski, the author of The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War, provides a history of the disparate actions taken by underground forces throughout Europe and their impact. Stunning in the breadth and depth of its research, analysis and exposition, Resistance is certain to become the authoritative work on this subject.


Kochanski acknowledges that the number of people who actively resisted the Nazis in occupied countries was small. After all, overt acts of resistance had minimal effect on the conduct of German military operations, risked reprisals against large numbers of innocent civilians, and usually lacked popular support.

Jewish fighters from the Vilna Ghetto (credit: Wikimedia Commons)


Resisters, however, did play a pivotal role in supplying information about the location and movement of troops and warships, and possible plans of attack. A clandestine press complemented BBC broadcasts, which reached a far wider audience, countered Nazi propaganda and confirmed the existence of resistance movements.


In many European countries, Kochanski reveals, World War II was fought through “an infinite series of Chinese boxes of one struggle within another.” The resistance against occupying powers often led to two other conflicts, with different tactics and ultimate aims: a war against collaborators or perceived collaborators and a civil war for power once the nation was liberated.

(full article online)

'Resistance': How underground forces sabotaged the Nazis - review

History of disparate actions by underground forces throughout Europe in World War II.

www.jpost.com

 

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At least half a million German women went to Eastern Poland, the former Russian territories under German occupation, and today’s Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, where they became “integral parts” of the operation to destroy the Jews of Europe. They were “zealous administrators, tormentors, and murderers….” [3]

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In Hitler’s Furies, Lower stated that although the SS and police were the primary murderers and controlled these organizations, the legions of 200,000 young secretaries (18-25) enabled the mass murder juggernaut to function. “In government hierarchies, female professionals and spouses attached themselves to men of power and in turn wielded considerable power themselves, including over the lives of the regime’s most vulnerable subjects.” They occupied positions throughout the chain of command, “from the very bottom to the very top,” and had the authority to issue directives to subordinates. [4]


(full article online)

Hitler’s Furies: The Role of Women in the Destruction of European Jewry on the Eastern Front

Over 13 million women were actively involved in the Nazi Party, providing support and enabling the Reich to perpetrate its crimes in addition to those women committing war crimes

www.jewishpress.com

 

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Police officers walk along the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial bearing the names of 64,000 Austrian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust ahead of its opening in Vienna, Austria November 9, 2021. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

An Israeli online genealogy platform has partnered with the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem to publish for the first time online a collection of emigration applications from Jews in Vienna, Austria, seeking to flee Nazi persecution before World War II.

The MyHeritage collection, which is searchable for free, contains 228,250 digitalized records filed by Vienna Jews from 1938 to 1939, immediately leading up to the war, as well as scanned images of the original documents.


VIENNA AT THE TIME WAS HOME TO APPROXIMATELY 200,000 JEWS. FOLLOWING THE ANNEXATION OF AUSTRIA BY NAZI GERMANY IN MARCH 1938, JEWS LIVING IN AUSTRIA WERE FORCED TO REGISTER WITH THE EMIGRATION DEPARTMENT OF THE VIENNA ISRAELITISCHE KULTUSGEMEINDE, THE CITY’S JEWISH COMMUNAL ORGANIZATION IN VIENNA, TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.

EACH HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD HAD TO FILL OUT A DETAILED QUESTIONNAIRE THAT CONTAINED PERSONAL INFORMATION SUCH AS THE NAME OF THE APPLICANT, ADDRESS, DATE OF BIRTH, PLACE OF BIRTH, MARITAL STATUS, NATIONALITY, RESIDENCY STATUS IN VIENNA, AND INFORMATION ABOUT DEPENDENTS AND PARENTS. THE QUESTIONNAIRE ALSO ASKED ABOUT THE APPLICANT’S PROFESSION, LANGUAGE SKILLS, ECONOMIC SITUATION, AND MONTHLY INCOME. THE FORMS WERE OFTEN FILED WITH ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS, INCLUDING LETTERS, AFFIDAVITS, OFFICIAL PAPERS, CORRESPONDENCE AND HAND-WRITTEN NOTES.


THE DETAILED RECORDS MAKE UP ONE OF THE MOST REVEALING COLLECTIONS IN EXISTENCE ON AUSTRIAN JEWISH LIFE FROM THE YEARS 1938–39, ACCORDING TO MYHERITAGE. THE INFORMATION IN THE DOCUMENTS WAS LATER USED BY THE NAZIS TO HELP THEM EXPEL JEWS FROM AUSTRIA.

THE EMIGRATION PAPERS ARE CURRENTLY STORED IN THE VIENNESE JEWISH COMMUNITY’S ARCHIVES, WHERE THE CAHJP MAINTAINS SOME HOLDINGS.

Newly Digitized Archives Detail Efforts of Vienna Jews to Escape Before WWII

Police officers walk along the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial bearing the names of 64,000 Austrian Jews who were killed …

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Vichy France “Chief of State” Philippe Pétain meeting Nazi Germany Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Montoire after he surrendered more than half of France’s territory to The Third Reich. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Three geographic sites in British Columbia will no longer be named after Marshal Philippe Pétain, the notoriously antisemitic leader of France’s wartime collaborationist government created after the Nazi invasion.

The names of Mount Pétain, Pétain Creek, and Pétain Glacier were rescinded on June 29, according to a letter B.C. Provincial Toponymist Trent Thomas sent to B’nai Brith Canada and other advocacy groups.

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“Under his command France became a racist, xenophobic puppet ally of the Nazis,” Rotrand said. “We are delighted to see that all B.C. landmarks named after him have been rescinded.”

Several other groups also supported the decision, including the Regional District of East Kootenay, Columbia Valley Search and Rescue, Avalanche Canada, Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, and BC Mountaineering Club.

(full article online)

British Columbia to Rename Geographical Sites Honoring Nazi Collaborator Pétain - Algemeiner.com

Three geographic sites in British Columbia will no longer be named after Marshal Philippe Pétain, the notoriously antisemitic leader of France's wartime collaborationist government created after the Nazi invasion. The names of Mount Pétain, Pétain Creek, and Pétain Glacier were rescinded on June...

www.algemeiner.com

 

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[Mindful]

Before the Holocaust, the Ponary forest outside Wilno, Poland (today Vilnius, Lithuania) was a popular spot where the city's residents could vacation in the summer months. But when Nazi Germany occupied Wilno in June 1941, the forest became a site of mass killing.
“Hundreds of Jews were rounded up from the streets, rich or poor, young and old ... and were taken to a forest. … They were shot and thrown into the ditches," remembered Sylvia Malcmacher, who was just a teenager when the Nazis invaded. Sylvia recalled that she learned details of the mass shootings from survivors who had dug themselves out of their own graves and returned to town to tell their stories.

Mass killings at Ponary would continue until July 1944 when the Soviets reconquered the city. One day, Wilno's Jewish children were ordered to report to the hospital. Sylvia accompanied her younger sister, Shifra, who was then taken away to an "examination room." Sylvia would never see her sister again. All the children were taken to Ponary and killed.

As many as 75,000 people were murdered at Ponary by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators during the Holocaust.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

 

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The allegation that the Trump administration may have used the Internal Revenue Service against two of the president’s high-profile opponents has sparked much debate. For the American Jewish community, it’s a reminder of a disturbing episode that took place during the Holocaust era.

The Jewish target of U.S. government wrath in the 1940s was the Bergson Group, a political action committee led by Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), a Zionist emissary from Palestine. The group used newspaper advertisements, rallies, and lobbying to press the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from the Nazis.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unhappy—to put it mildly—about those protests. One senior White House aide reported that FDR was “much displeased” when the Bergson Group brought 400 rabbis to Washington to plead for rescue. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt told Bergson himself that the president was “very upset” about one of the group’s newspaper ads, which FDR felt was “hitting below the belt” because it accused him of turning a blind eye to the Nazi massacres.

The State Department, too, was annoyed by Bergson’s campaign for rescue. Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long privately complained that the group’s newspaper ads “made it very difficult for the Department.” Long’s deputy, Robert Alexander, absurdly claimed that the slogan used in one Bergson ad, “Action–Not Pity,” had actually been invented by the Nazis as part of a conspiracy to embarrass the Allies.

Beginning in 1942, the Roosevelt administration sent both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service after Bergson. They were looking for evidence of criminal activity, but their motivation was political. An internal FBI memo that I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act bluntly explained the reason for U.S. government action against Bergson: “This man has been in the hair of [Secretary of State] Cordell Hull.”

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At the same time, the IRS launched a full-scale inquiry into the Bergson Group’s finances, seeking to revoke its tax-exempt status. For nearly a year, IRS agents repeatedly visited the group’s New York City headquarters, once for a stretch where they stayed from morning until night for more than two weeks.

Louis and Jack Yampolsky, a father-and-son accounting team that handled Bergson’s finances pro bono, had to dig out and reconcile every piece of financial information in the group’s records. “There were no photocopy machines in those days, so we had to hand-copy every disbursement and every receipt that was given for every donation,” Jack Yampolsky told me in an interview some years ago. “And because the Bergson Group had enormous grassroots appeal, it received literally thousands of one-dollar or two-dollar donations from people all over the country.”
In the end, the IRS investigators were unable to find evidence of any wrongdoing. In fact, as the IRS team became familiar with the group’s work, they came to sympathize with it, and “when they finished, [they] made a contribution between them–every one of them gave a few dollars,” Bergson later told Prof. David S. Wyman.

The sympathy expressed by the IRS agents contrasted sharply with the sentiments expressed in some of the FBI documents which I obtained. One FBI report about Bergson activist Maurice Rosenblatt derisively referred to the leftwing Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action, in which Rosenblatt was active, as “this Semitic Committee.” The FBI memo complained that Rosenblatt and his colleagues were trying to “smear” Nazi sympathizers in New York City.

“When there is a genuine threat, governments sometimes have to do things like eavesdrop,” Jack Yampolsky conceded. “But in our case, they were doing it for political reasons, and antisemitism also played a role. The fact that we vocally disagreed with U.S. government policy regarding the Holocaust and Jewish statehood was not a valid reason for the Roosevelt administration to enlist the FBI and the IRS in a war against the Bergson group.”

(full article online)

When the IRS Targeted Jewish Activists

The Jewish target of U.S. government wrath in the 1940s was the Bergson Group, a political action committee led by Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), a Zionist emissary from Palestine.

jewishjournal.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

A promotional clip for “Witnesses.” Photo: California Center for the Arts, Escondido.


The California Center for Arts, Escondido (CCAE), will later this month host the world premiere of a musical about five Jewish teenage diarists who were killed in the Holocaust.

In the 90-minute show “Witnesses,” which open on July 15, five songwriting teams will each focus on telling the story of one teen diarist and Holocaust victim, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Tony Award winner Robert L. Freedman incorporated lines from the diaries when writing the show’s script.

One of the young diarists whose story will be told in the musical was 12-year-old David Rabinowitz, who lived in a village near Kielce, Poland. In August 1940, he wrote in his diary: “During the war, I’ve been studying by myself, at home. When I remember that I used to go to school, I feel like crying.” He was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

(full article online)

Musical About Jewish Teen Diarists Who Died in the Holocaust to Premiere at California Center for Arts - Algemeiner.com

The California Center for Arts, Escondido (CCAE), will later this month host the world premiere of a musical about five Jewish teenage diarists who were killed in the Holocaust. In the 90-minute show “Witnesses,” which open on July 15, five songwriting teams will each focus on telling the story...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Mindful]

Siegfried Halbreich survived the Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the help from an old friend from high school, who happened to also be an SS guard.

Siegfried grew up in Tarnowskie Góry, a town that was part of the German Empire but became a part of Poland after World War I. He was raised in a Jewish household but attended a secular school.
In September 1939, when World War II began, Siegfried joined the Polish army. Ten days later, it became clear that they would not be able to hold their position and Siegfried’s formation was dissolved.
In October 1939, Siegfried tried to flee to Palestine, but was caught crossing the border into Yugoslavia. He was jailed, taken to Berlin, and then transported to the nearby Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which opened in July 1936.

While at Sachsenhausen, an SS guard recognized Siegfried.
“‘Sig, what are you doing here? You couldn't get away?’ And I turn around, it is a friend from high school. He was a German, and was inducted into the SS.”
The guard began sneaking him bread, which became a crucial part of Siegfried’s survival.
Siegfried remained at Sachsenhausen for two years. He was then deported to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and later to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz, Siegfried used his experience as a pharmacist to try to save sick prisoners. In January 1945, he was forced on a death march before being liberated near Nordhausen, Germany in April 1945.
Siegfried is pictured here (second from left) with his siblings Isidor, Paul, and Katie. Isidor died of typhoid in 1936, and Paul, along with their parents, were killed during the war. Katie survived.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Siegfried Halbreich.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The portraits on display feature former concentration and extermination camp deportees, those who successfully hid as children during the Holocaust, and children of deportees. Each photo bears a corresponding QR code that visitors can scan to learn more about the survivors and their wartime experiences. The portraits will remain on the gates of the gardens until Aug. 7.

The Vel d’Hiv roundup in Paris from July 16-17, 1942, was organized by French authorities and carried out by French policemen, according to Yad Vashem.

Police conducted mass arrests of Jews living in France, including Jewish foreigners originally from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Over 13,000 Jews were detained at the Vel’ d’Hiv (the Winter Stadium, also known as Velodrome d’Hiver), including more than 4,000 children, before being deported to concentration camps in France. Most of the deportees, as well as the children, were then sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp and murdered.

Roughly 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz every two or three days in the following two months after the Vel’ d’Hiv roundups. By the end of September 1942, almost 38,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from France, Yad Vashem noted.

(full article online)

Portraits of Holocaust Survivors Displayed at Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg on Anniversary of Mass Jewish Roundup

The Luxembourg Garden in Paris. Photo: Dmitry Dzhus via Wikimedia Commons. The gates of Paris’ famed Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg …

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[Sixties Fan]

 

[surada]

Hitler ended up not expelling all the Jews from where he conquered because there was an Arab Muslim in Palestine who did not want Jews to come back to their homeland and rebuild their Nation.

Al Husseini did everything he could, riots, incitement in Palestine and Iraq in order to scare the Jews from coming.

It is up to us to teach it here, and the Holocaust Memorials and Museums and supporting all schools and colleges to teach them.

Before Husseini 600,000 European Jews immigrated to Palestine within a 15 year period. That doubled the population.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Before Husseini 600,000 European Jews immigrated to Palestine within a 15 year period. That doubled the population.

[Before Al Husseini, about 100,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine from 1881 to 1923 due to persecution and Zionism. Al Husseini started riots against Jews in 1920 ]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah#Second_Aliyah_(1904–1914)



( I have been curious. Could you answer, please. How old were you when you went to Arabia and how old when you left? Were your parents teachers in an English speaking Christian community ? What led them to move there? Thank you. )

 

[Sixties Fan]

The portraits on display feature former concentration and extermination camp deportees, those who successfully hid as children during the Holocaust and children of deportees. Each photo bears a corresponding QR code that visitors can scan to learn more about the survivors and their wartime experiences. The portraits will remain on the gates of the gardens until Aug. 7.

The Vel d’Hiv roundup in Paris from July 16-17, 1942, was organized by French authorities and carried out by French policemen, according to Yad Vashem.

Police conducted mass arrests of Jews living in France, including Jewish foreigners originally from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Over 13,000 Jews were detained at the Vel’ d’Hiv (the Winter Stadium, also known as Velodrome d’Hiver), including more than 4,000 children, before being deported to concentration camps in France. Most of the deportees, as well as the children, were then sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp and murdered.

Roughly 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz every two or three days in the following two months after the Vel’ d’Hiv roundups. By the end of September 1942, almost 38,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from France, Yad Vashem noted.

(full article online)

Portraits of Holocaust Survivors Displayed at Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg on Anniversary of Mass Jewish Roundup

The Luxembourg Garden in Paris. Photo: Dmitry Dzhus via Wikimedia Commons. The gates of Paris’ famed Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg …

www.algemeiner.com

 

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Robert Clary, as Corporal Louis LeBeau, and Cynthia Lynn, as Helga, star in 'Hogan's Heroes,' 1965CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES

A week after Patton’s Third Army liberated Buchenwald, on April 19, 1945, the inmates gave a concert for the soldiers who had freed them. Fourteen Czech, German, Dutch, Belgian, and French musicians made up the band. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has the fading typed program on exhibit: There were sax, brass, and rhythm sections, and a sole vocalist—a Frenchman, Robert Widerman, who sang “In the Mood,” “A Tisket, A Tasket,” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” He also performed both roles in a Mickey and Minnie Mouse skit of his own creation, which had been a hit with the Nazis and kapos.
“We performed on the stage, in our striped uniforms, exhilarated by our new freedom, and gave the greatest show of our lives which hundreds of GIs and inmates applauded and shouted,” he noted in his memoirs. They closed the set with a “walloping version of ‘Tiger Rag.’”

A few weeks later, back home in Paris, the boyish but indefatigable Widerman, age 19, opened at the legendary Olympia on the Boulevard des Capucines, then one of the many Parisian venues requisitioned for American soldiers’ entertainment. He was the fourth on the bill, in an unenviable slot right after a performing dog act that always thrilled audiences. His first number was “Flat Foot Floogie,” followed by “Daisy Venez Avec Moi.” The audience wasn’t buying it. He was distraught at the perfunctory applause. “I had two more numbers to do, and I was having flop-sweat. I didn’t understand—they loved me in Buchenwald!”

The singer, who had changed his surname to Clary, took gigs all over Paris, working full time, dancing with socialites and prostitutes (“I remember one in particular. She was tall and looked like Joan Crawford … a very good jitterbugger. We had a ball on the dance floor.”) He performed in blackface. He made friends with Charles Aznavour. He relocated to the south of France and worked around the clock.

(full article online)

They Loved Me in Buchenwald

A tribute to Robert Clary, the French American actor who survived the Holocaust to take Hollywood by storm

www.tabletmag.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Born René Guttmann in 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia, René was only 3 years old when he and his twin sister Irene were deported to Theresienstadt with their mother, Ita, in 1941. (Their father Herbert was taken to Auschwitz in 1940 and died there.) Two years later, they were moved to Auschwitz, where their mother was killed and the twins were separated and subjected to medical abuse by the infamous Nazi physician Josef Mengele.

Ita Guttmann and her twins, Rene and Irene (then Renate) were photographed for Nazi propaganda while they were imprisoned at Theresienstadt. (Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via Irene Guttmann Slotkin Hizme.)


After the camps were liberated, René was repatriated to Czechoslovakia and lived with two families. Irene, who had initially been placed with a Christian family in Oświęcim, Poland (the town where Auschwitz is located) was eventually found by the Joint Distribution Committee, who wanted to return her to a Jewish family. Irene and another survivor became the “poster children” for the Rescue Children Inc. initiative and were taken to New York City, where they were photographed for LIFE Magazine. Shortly thereafter, Irene was adopted by the Slotkin family in Long Island.


(full article online)

René Slotkin, one of the few surviving ‘Mengele twins,’ dies at 84

After the war René and his sister Irene were adopted by an NYC family, and spent most of their lives there; in his later years he taught children about the Holocaust

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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A symbolic grave outside the town of Działdowo, Poland, where a mass grave of about 8,000 Geman Nazi victims from the nearby Soldau concentration camp was unearthed at the beginning of July 2022.

The burnt remains of approximately 8,000 victims of the Nazis were unearthed in a mass grave outside the town of Działdowo, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance announced on Wednesday.


It is believed that the victims were killed in 1939, and most were likely members of the Polish political elite, according to IPN head investigator Tomasz Jankowski.


During the spring of 1944, in an attempt to hide the extent of their crimes, Nazis ordered Jewish prisoners of the Soldau concentration camp, where Jews and non-Jewish Poles were imprisoned, to dig up and burn the bodies.

(full article online)

Ashes of around 8,000 Nazi victims found in mass grave in Poland

It is believed that the victims were killed in 1939, and most were likely members of the Polish political elite.

www.jpost.com