How the Reich Criminalized Poverty, Lifestyle, & Non-Conformity

At a meeting of the German Committee for Public Care and Welfare Law, professors of medicine and law discuss with civil servants from the Ministry of the Interior the possibility of a "law on asocial individuals" that would allow people so defined to be sterilized or committed to concentration camps.

According to later drafts of this law, which was never passed, two physicians and a police officer were to decide on the sterilization and further disposal of these individuals to concentration camps.

By August 1938, the Nazi regime had already enforced the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (passed in 1933), which focused on biological and medical conditions like schizophrenia, blindness, and severe alcoholism. The 1938 discussions aimed to codify the persecution of people deemed "asocial"—those whose lifestyles did not conform to the rigid, productive expectations of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (people's community).

People deemed "work-shy" (arbeitsscheu), Roma and Sinti populations, homeless individuals, beggars, sex workers, and petty criminals, anyone whose behavior was deemed a economic or moral drain on the state, were considered asocial individuals.

While the specific statutory law was drafted multiple times, it was never formally enacted. This was not due to moral objections, but rather due to bureaucratic infighting: The Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and the police preferred immediate, extrajudicial action over formal legal procedures.

Creating tight legal definitions for "asocial" behavior proved difficult for jurists, while the police preferred the flexibility of arbitrary arrests. Even without the formal passage of this law, the exact punishments discussed in the 1938 meeting were carried out routinely through other mechanisms.

In 1938, the Gestapo and criminal police arrested over 10,000 alleged "asocial" individuals and sent them directly to concentration camps (such as Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen) without trial. In the concentration camps, these individuals were forced to wear a black triangle, marking them as "asocials."

The existing 1933 hereditary health courts frequently used "severe alcoholism" or subjective assessments of "feeble-mindedness" to legally sterilize people who fell into the "asocial" category. The Nazi Persecution of “Asocials” | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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“The inverted black triangle (German: schwarzer Winkel) was an identification badge used in Nazi concentration camps to mark prisoners designated "asocial" ("a(nti-)social") and arbeitsscheu ("work-shy").

The Roma and Sinti people were considered asocial and tagged with the black triangle. The Yenish were also counted among the "asocials".

The designation also included disabled individuals, alcoholics, beggars, homeless people, nomads, and prostitutes (though male sex workers were marked with the pink triangle), as well as violators of laws prohibiting sexual relations between Aryans and Jews.

Queer women, transmasculine individuals, and other transgender and queer people assigned female at birth were also deemed to be anti-social, including lesbians and others deemed as nonconformists.” DETAILS---> Black triangle (badge) - Wikipedia

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Plato, Nazism, CRISPR: The long shadow of eugenics - https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bodysphere/long-shadow-of-eugenics/7329050

2: Stolperstein commemorating "asocial and work-shy" individuals, remembering stigmatized and murdered people without fixed residence on Alexanderplatz in Berlin

1: This historical chart illustrates the color-coded badge system used by the SS in Nazi concentration camps (ca. 1938–1942) to classify prisoners and identify the alleged reasons for their incarceration.

Inverted cloth triangles sewn onto uniforms indicated prisoner categories—such as red for political prisoners, green for professional criminals, blue for emigrants/foreign forced laborers, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses (Bible Students), black for ‘asocials’, and pink for homosexual men.

Designated by a yellow triangle placed beneath another colored triangle to form a six-pointed Star of David, or modified with specific bars or letters for repeat offenders or special work details.

Additional symbols indicated repeat offenders, members of penal companies, escape suspects, and specific nationality letters (such as 'P' for Polish or 'T' for Czech prisoners).

Prosecutor Dodd: Mr, President, I would like to be heard very briefly this morning on the application of Dr. Stahmer for permission for the Defendant Göring to take the stand. I made no objections Friday, but I feel that I should make one so that the Tribunal will know what our attitude is.

I do not want it to be understood that I am in any conflict with my distinguished colleague, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, but I do wish to add a few comments on behalf of the United States. I would like to point out to the Tribunal that the reasons given by Dr. Stahmer, as we understand them, are the evidence or the testimony of the witness Sievers and the document which was offered during his examination, wherein there is some indication that the Defendant Göring had authorized or ordered a Dr. Haagen to institute these medical experiments.

Now, it seems to me that the reasons which I called to the Tribunal's attention at the time of the Funk application apply here. Of course, I accept the ruling of the Tribunal with respect to the Funk application with good grace. I do not want to have it appear that I am raising objections against a matter that has been ruled on.

The President: Which application did you say?

Prosecutor Dodd: The Funk application. It seems to me that there is a similarity in these matters, and particularly the Funk experience now would seem to have some bearing on this Göring application. It is my own judgment, which I respectfully offer for the Court's consideration, that Funk did not really add anything pro or contra to the proof in this case by his reappearance on the stand. He only succeeded in taking up a little of the Tribunal's time.

Now I suggested at the time of the Funk application that he had already denied really the heart and soul of the Pohl affidavit and that he could not do much more than reaffirm it on the witness stand, and that is, I respectfully suggest, almost precisely what happened.

I think the same will be true with respect to Göring, and I would like to call to the Court's attention that, long before Göring took the witness stand, the Prosecution had offered its proof concerning these Luftwaffe medical experiments, so that he knew about them; his counsel knew about them, and if his counsel had cared to inquire about them, he could have done so on Göring's direct examination; but he chose not to do so. He did not raise the question at all.

He passed it by and preferred, as was his right, I assume, to rest the matter with Göring's witness Milch and we cross-examined, through our chief counsel, Mr. Justice Jackson, the witness Milch on that question.

If Göring wishes merely to deny that he had any knowledge or participation in these Luftwaffe medical experiments it is a very simple matter, and there is some precedent here for it now in view of the Frank affidavit. I suggest he might file a very brief affidavit that would be no more than a few short sentences saying he did not have knowledge and that he did not participate in these experiments.

The Tribunal allowed Frank to do that. He went pretty far, if I may say so with great respect. His affidavit took 20 minutes. I certainly would not think it would be necessary for Göring to take anywhere near that time.

As an alternative, and I have not had time to talk with my French and Russian colleagues, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and I agree, and I think they will, that the record might show we would quite agree that the record showed-that Göring denies that he had knowledge of or participated in the Luftwaffe experiments.

That would be satisfactory to us. In any event, what we would like to avoid is any kind of a procession to the witness stand by these defendants. They have had such a full hearing. This Tribunal has been so patient that I think it is imposing on the Tribunal if they take the stand for these purposes which can be accomplished in a much more simple manner.

I must say to the Tribunal that I have very grave doubt that Göring really wants to take the stand for this simple purpose. I think he wants to filibuster against judgment here. I think I would be remiss in my duty if I did not so advise the Tribunal this morning.

Therefore, we object very strongly, if I may say so with great respect, and ask that either he submit his denial in the form of an affidavit or that the stipulation in the form we suggested be accepted by the Tribunal, and in any event that he and any other defendant who filed a similar application be refused at this stage of these proceedings the opportunity again to get on this stand and again take up time with matters that really do not go to the heart of the proof.

I would be the last man here to try to cut out of this very important trial anything that I thought was really vital or important. I would not cast any shadow of unfairness, or any suspicion of it, upon this splendid record the Tribunal has compiled in matters of fairness to these defendants.

I do not believe any prejudice will be evidenced if we ask Göring to fill out a brief affidavit or if we ask his counsel to agree to our offer to stipulate. Thus we will save much of the Tribunal's time and we will get on further with these proceedings.”

NOTE: The Tribunal will reject the prosecution's plea to entirely block Göring's return and will permit him to take the stand briefly to give his statement. Göring will use this appearance to issue his denials regarding the Luftwaffe medical experiments.

Also This Day

Defense counsel Robert Servatius closed out the documentary case for the Nazi Party Leadership Corps (Korps der Politischen Leiter). Immediately following, British prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones laid out the sheer magnitude of the Prosecution's target: they sought to have 940,000 political leaders collectively declared criminal. He noted this figure could be scaled down to roughly 600,000 if lower-level, non-essential local staff were excluded from the ruling.

The defense for the Gestapo (Secret State Police), led by counsel Rudolf Merkel, slowed proceedings to a crawl by reading massive quantities of individual sworn statements into the record. The reading grew so tedious that Tribunal President Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence cut Merkel off, stating it was "beyond human ability to carry all these things in our minds."

Despite the interruption, Merkel's final statistical tallies exposed the defense's strategy of total denial. He submitted 785 Gestapo affidavits claiming complete, absolute ignorance of any crimes committed by the organization. Another 195 affidavits specifically denied any knowledge of the atrocities taking place inside the concentration camps.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: The Avalon Project : Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 21 - Two Hundred and Sixth Day

1: This historical photograph from December 20, 1945, shows prosecutor Thomas J. Dodd holding a shrunken human head introduced as evidence of Nazi atrocities at the Nuremberg tribunals.

How Pseudoscience Fueled Territorial Expansion & Genocide

From an official memorandum of the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories by Martin Bormann:

>"The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don't need them, they may die. They should not receive the benefits of the German public health system. We do not care about their fertility. They may practice abortion and use contraceptives; the more the better.

>We don't want them educated; it is enough if they can count up to 100. Such stooges will be the more useful to us. Religion we leave to them as a diversion. As to food, they will not get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters; we come first."

“The Master Race is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology, in which the putative Aryan race is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as master humans (Herrenmenschen [ˈhɛʁənˌmɛnʃn̩]).

The Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg believed that the "Nordic race" was descended from Proto-Indo-Europeans, who he thought had pre-historically dwelt on the North German Plain and it was not impossible that the Nordic race ultimately originated on the lost island of Atlantis.

The Nazis declared that the Aryans were superior to all other races, and believed they were entitled to expand territorially. The actual policy that was implemented by the Nazis resulted in the Aryan certificate.

This document, which was required by law for all citizens of the Reich, was the "Lesser Aryan certificate" (Kleiner Ariernachweis) and could be obtained through an Ahnenpass, which required the owner to trace their lineage through baptism, birth certificates, or certified proof thereof that all grandparents were of "Aryan descent".

The Slavs, Roma, and Jews were defined as being racially inferior and non-Aryan "Untermenschen", and were thus considered a danger to the Aryan or Germanic master race.

According to the Nazi secret Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost, the Slavic population was to be removed from Central Europe through expulsion, enslavement, starvation, and extermination, except for a small percentage who were deemed to be non-Slavic descendants of Germanic settlers, and thus suitable for Germanisation.” MORE--> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_race

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1: “MASTER RACE” by Bernie Krigstein, USA, 1955 - "Master Race" is an eight-page comic book story illustrated by Bernie Krigstein, written by Al Feldstein, and published by Bill Gaines in EC Comics' Impact #1 (March–April 1955).

Widely considered the "Citizen Kane of comic books," it is a monumental milestone in graphic storytelling. It was one of the very first mainstream American media pieces to directly confront the atrocities of the Holocaust at a time when the subject was largely avoided in popular culture.

The story follows a man named Carl Reissman sitting on a tense, claustrophobic New York City subway car. He becomes overwhelmed with terror when a mysterious, gaunt man in a black coat boards the train and sits across from him. Reissman’s internal monologue and agonizing flashbacks reveal his dark history—he was actually a brutal Nazi concentration camp commander.

He assumes the silent stranger is a camp survivor seeking vengeance. Panicking, Reissman flees the train at the next station, slips, and falls to his death directly in front of an oncoming train. In a classic EC Comics twist ending, the final panels reveal that the silent man in black was not a victim seeking revenge, but rather an entirely traumatized survivor who had lost his mind in the camps.

The man merely wanders the city looking for his former tormentor, completely unaware that he had just driven Reissman to his death.

Krigstein defied traditional comic practices to create unprecedented suspense and movement, & famously fought his editors for extra pages.

He took Feldstein's six-page script and stretched it to eight pages, using the space to strictly dictate the visual rhythm rather than relying on dialogue.

To stretch time and amplify panic, Krigstein broke down single actions into multiple, rapidly repeating, wordless panels. The climax utilizes a masterclass technique where a 3-second fall is stretched across 11 distinct, tight panels.

The staccato imagery alternates between the slipping man and the rhythmically approaching train wheels to build an unbearable cinematic tension. The artwork heavily mirrors 1920s German Expressionist cinema and film noir.

It utilizes harsh shadows, jagged panel borders, and distorted angles to project Reissman's internal guilt and paranoia onto the physical environment.

"Master Race" was published just as the restrictive Comics Code Authority (CCA) was established. Because it was published in Impact—a toned-down, code-compliant anthology meant to replace EC's horror lines—its initial reach was limited. However, its artistic brilliance echoed through comic history:

Art Spiegelman has cited "Master Race" as a flawless structural influence that directly paved the way for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel, Maus.

Frank Miller openly credited Krigstein’s staccato time-stretching technique for his iconic three-page sequence of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents in The Dark Knight Returns.

In November 2018, the original 8-page artwork for "Master Race" was sold at Heritage Auctions to a historic European graphic arts foundation for an astonishing $600,000, cementing its status as fine art.” “MASTER RACE” by Bernie Krigstein, USA, 1955

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

How German Bishops Condemned Nazi Killings Without Ever Saying the Word "Jew"

During the annual Fulda Bishops' Conference at the tomb of Saint Boniface, the German Catholic bishops issue a statement to explicitly condemn the killing of innocent people, addressing the ongoing Nazi eugenics program, the execution of hostages, and the mass killings in occupied territories.

While the letter implicitly defends Jews and other persecuted minority groups by referencing "men of foreign races and descent," it deliberately avoids using the explicit terms "Jew" or "non-Aryan" to prevent complete suppression by the Nazi regime or immediate severe retaliation against the local clergy.

“In the final analysis, the bishops failed to find a way out of the conflict emerging from, on the one hand, the divided idea of patriotic obligation in war, the legitimacy of state authority, the resulting obligations to obey, and on the other hand the manifest crimes.

The Christian standards for categorizing war obviously no longer applied. This left the field open for the questions of German soldiers and for the sufferings of others.

The statements of the bishops, with all the nuances that need to be defined in the face of all the respective personalities, failed in the face of the reality of criminal violence.

They continued to strive to bring about the (illusory) change in conduct of the political leadership, to ensure compliance with the legal agreements, as well as to lead to the virtuous performance of duty on the part of those who were led, to a certain degree therefore to a “right life in the wrong one” (Adorno).

They failed to address the diabolic entanglements in the crimes and the resulting hardships. What is more, they share in the guilt for the War, given that the bishops did not say an unambiguous “No,” but that most of them strengthened the will to persevere.” MUCH MORE---> The German Bishops in the World War: Statement on the end of the Second World War 75 years ago

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1: “Polish Catholic artist Marian Kołodziej, who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz, created art that showcases the horrors he and millions of others, including St. Maximilian Kolbe, endured at the hands of the Nazis. His artwork is featured by the Franciscans in Harmeze, Poland; the grounds also include Kołodziej’s statues of St. Maximilian and the Blessed Mother. Franciscan Father Piotr Cuber explains the exhibit to visitors.” Holiness Amid the Holocaust: Franciscans Host Exhibit of Former Auschwitz Prisoner| National Catholic Register

When the Swiss Declared Racial & Religious Persecution Insufficient Grounds for Political Asylum

The Swiss Federal Council Officially Orders strict boundary closures and implemented measures to systematically block Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution from entering Switzerland.

Following the Anschluss earlier that year, a massive wave of desperate Austrian and German Jews attempted to cross into the neutral country. In response, Swiss authorities declared that individuals fleeing solely due to racial or religious persecution would not be recognized as political refugees.

The Swiss border police received instructions to turn back any German or Austrian refugees who did not possess valid entry permits or pre-arranged visas. To prevent Jewish refugees from entering disguised as tourists, the Swiss government aggressively lobbied Nazi Germany to identify them. This directly resulted in the October 1938 German decree mandating a large, red "J" stamp on all Jewish passports.

Local figures like Paul Grüninger, the police commander of the St. Gallen border canton, chose to resist the federal directive. He saved roughly 3,600 Jews by backdating their entry papers before his own government dismissed, convicted, and financially ruined him for official misconduct.

In December 1999, an independent panel of historians known as the Bergier Commission concluded that Swiss officials unnecessarily closed borders and abandoned thousands of refugees to their persecutors, leading the Swiss Federal Council to issue a formal apology.

"Prior to and during the Second World War, Switzerland gave refuge to about 23,000 Jewish refugees although the government decided that Switzerland would serve only as a country of transit.

These Jews were protected during the Holocaust due to Swiss neutrality. The Jewish refugees, however, did not receive the financial support from the government that non-Jewish refugees received.

Many more Jews were prevented from entering, effectively shutting the border. The Swiss government persuaded Germany to stamp "J" on the passport of Jews, making it easier to refuse Jewish refugees. The end of the war had delivered many thousands of Jews into the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.

In 1942, the Swiss police issued a regulation that denied refugee status to "refugees only on racial grounds, e.g., Jews." By the end of the war, less than 25,000 Jews were permitted to take refuge." https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/switzerland-virtual-jewish-history-tour#Holocaus

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“Nazi anti-Jewish policy escalated in 1938. With the annexation of Austria in March 1938 Adolf Eichmann devised a plan for forced emigration. The violent atmosphere, the terrorization of the Jews combined with the loss of their livelihood induced one-half of Austria’s 192,000 Jews to emigrate penniless within half a year.

The Swiss government closed its border to refugees from the German Reich, that now included Austria, and instructed its border police to turn back Jews who had no entry permits.

In October 1938 the Swiss authorities requested that the Germans stamp Jews' passports with the letter "J", so that Jewish refugees could be identified at the border. The situation of the Jews deteriorated enormously.

The violence of Kristallnacht, one month later, in November 1938, only increased the Jews' panic and their attempts to cross the borders and flee Germany intensified.

One of the escape routes ran south of Lake Constance across the Swiss-Austrian border in the St. Margarethen area, where Paul Grueninger was in charge of the Swiss border police.” Switzerland

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The little-known story of Swiss Holocaust victims brought to light in new book - https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/the-little-known-story-of-swiss-holocaust-victims-brought-to-light-in-new-book-2-3-2020

1: Jews queuing in front of a police station hoping to obtain exit permits, Vienna, Austria, 1938

SS Testimonies & Survivor Accounts Detail the Final Days of the Camp's Operations

>"When I came to Treblinka the camp commandant was a doctor named Dr. Eberl. He was very ambitious. It was said that he ordered more transports than could be "processed" in the camp. That meant that trains had to wait outside the camp because the occupants of the previous transport had not yet all been killed.

>At the time it was very hot and as a result of the long wait inside the transport trains in the intense heat many people died. At the time whole mountains of bodies lay on the platform. The Hauptsturmfuehrer Christian Wirth came to Treblinka and kicked up a terrific row.

>And then one day Dr. Eberl was no longer there.

(Willi Mentz quoted in The Good Old Days - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988, p. 245-247) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/testimonies-of-nazi-ss-at-treblinka

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Treblinka - To carry out the mass murder of Europe's Jews, the SS established killing centers devoted exclusively or primarily to the destruction of human beings in gas chambers. Treblinka was among these killing centers. It was one of three killing centers linked to Operation Reinhard, the SS plan to murder almost two million Jews living in the German-administered territory of occupied Poland, called the General Government.--> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/treblinka

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VIDEO - Treblinka's Last Witness Special | 1h 39m 11s Video has Closed Captions| CC Samuel Willenberg, was the last living survivor of the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland at the height of World War II. Samuel gives a first-hand account about his life during the Holocaust and as a Jewish prisoner of the Treblinka death camp. His story is one of survival against staggering odds.--> https://www.pbs.org/video/treblinkas-last-witness-4rbuxq/

1: Memorial at Treblinka II, with 17,000 quarry stones symbolizing gravestones. Inscriptions indicate places of Holocaust train departures, which carried at least 5,000 victims each, and selected ghettos from across Poland.

A Polish Witness Recalls the Final, Relentless March of Rembertow's Jews Toward Treblinka

"The pace of deportations to Treblinka was relentless.

On August 19 it was the turn of more than a thousand Jews, all those in the ghetto at Rembertow, to be ordered to an assembly point just outside the ghetto. A Polish eye-witness later recalled:

>'They were ushered like a herd, driven quicker and quicker. Those who fell behind or tripped or fell down were killed. '

At the assembly point, about three hundred were separated from the main group and ordered eastwards, along the road to Wesola. Whether they expected to be resettled in that town, or put to work there, is not known ; they were murdered less than a mile along the way.

The remaining Jews were marched southwards. Rembertow was now 'free of Jews'. The eye-witness recalled how, on the following day, Poles from the town entered the ghetto 'looking for gold'. They left the ghetto 'loaded with whatever they could carry', furniture, bedding, pots and pans, returning on the following day for a final session of looting.

The deported Jews had been driven past the woods south of Rembertow, where another Polish eye-witness remembered how 'one big lament, weeping and shots, shook the sky.' After they had passed the Catholic cemetery, another witness noted that 'the rutted sand of the path was covered all over with rags, packets, bundles and, among them, corpses.'

That afternoon, the corpses were loaded on horse-carts and taken to ditches nearby. As the deportees passed the village church at Anin, a Jewish woman broke away from the march. She then managed to lose herself among the crowd of Poles who had gathered in front of the church. A German gendarme tried to follow her, but could not push his way through the crowd. Local Poles believe that the Jewess survived the war hidden in Anin .

As the march passed through Anin, reaching the main Warsaw—Otwock railway, other Jews tried to escape. A plaque in Anin records the fate of forty-five Jews, shot while trying to escape. Another eye-witness of their escape bid recalled how, before they could reach the forest, 'all of them were killed by machine-gun fire.'

The deportees were now driven southwards, along the railway line in the direction of Otwock . 'They were weak because of the heat, and the dust choked them,' another eye-witness recalled of this stage of the march, adding that the gendarmes 'repeated again and again, "Schnell! Schnell!" "Quick ! Quick!" and beat them.

A Polish traveler passing by the train recalled after the war, how, every few yards along the railway line he had seen 'the corpses of old men and women' .

After several hours, the Jews from Rembertow reached the outskirts of the ghetto of Falenica. That same day, throughout Falenica itself, the Germans had gathered the Jews near the railway station, searched for Jews in hiding outside the ghetto, and killed those whom they had found in hiding.

Also during August 19, the children of the ghetto were taken out, as if to mark the start of the continuing march and deportation. They were, however, shot in the ghetto itself, and their bodies thrown into a ditch.

The time had come to send the Jews of Rembertow and Falenica to Treblinka. wo Jews, resisting the order to assemble, killed the first German to enter their apartment, striking him down with an axe. Both were shot.

Then, as one of the Jews to survive the deportation, a young man by the name of Najwer, noted in his diary, 'Latvian auxiliaries sit around and watch. They play. They choose someone from the dense crowd and shoot at that living target. Hit or not? Sometimes someone asks to be killed. But he has to ask again and again. And when he is shot, it is done as an act of grace.' Najwer himself was later murdered.

From the railway station of Falenica, just outside the ghetto limits , a train was waiting. On it, that August 19, the Jews of Rembertow and Falenica were taken to Treblinka, the wagons 'sprinkled', as a Polish eye-witness later recalled, 'with undiluted lime and chlorine'."

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

VIDEO - Survivor Testimony About Treblinka Death Camp - “Holocaust survivor Eliahu Rosenberg was deported to the Treblinka Extermination Camp in September 1942. One of the few chosen for slave labor in the camp, he personally witnessed the murder of thousands of Jews in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Forced to dispose of the bodies, he witnessed every part of the extermination process in Treblinka. Escaping during the revolt in the camp on August 2, 1943, Eliahu Rosenberg gives testimony here about the gas chambers and process of mass murder in Treblinka, a place where over 13 months, approximately 870,000 Jews were murdered.”--> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmBWA9Y7Bk

NOTE: No known photographs exist of the specific August 19, 1943, deportation march from the Rembertow ghetto. Because the liquidations of smaller provincial ghettos and sub-districts around Warsaw were carried out rapidly by Nazi forces, visual documentation relies almost entirely on physical evidence and related imagery rather than live photos of the event:

1: Rembertow Railway Station - German Troops - Rembertow - Holocaust Historical Society

How 4 Chaplains Tried—& Failed—to Prevent the Bila Tserkva Massacre

"The Bila Tserkva massacre was the World War II mass murder of Jews, committed by the Nazi German Einsatzgruppe with the aid of Ukrainian auxiliaries, in Bila Tserkva, Soviet Ukraine, on August 21–22, 1941. When the Jewish adult population of Bila Tserkva was killed, several functionaries complained that some 90 Jewish children were left behind in an abandoned building, and had to be executed separately.

The soldiers reported the matter to four chaplains of the Wehrmacht, who passed along their protests to Field Marshal von Reichenau; it was the only time during World War II that Wehrmacht chaplains tried to prevent an Einsatzgruppen massacre, but Paul Blobel's verbal order was direct and decisive.

Description

In August 1941, General Walther von Reichenau, commander of the 6th Army of Nazi Germany, ordered his men to assist the Einsatzgruppen and their Ukrainian auxiliaries with killing the Jews of Bila Tserkva. Over the course of the following days, virtually the entire adult Jewish population of Bila Tserkva was shot. All that remained were the children and a few of the women, who were dumped off at a school to await execution.

Several soldiers were disturbed by the crying of the children and infants at the school, and asked their chaplains what to do. The two chaplains attached to the 295th Infantry Division, Catholic Father Ernst Tewes and Lutheran Pastor Gerhard Wilczek, visited the school. They were appalled by the condition of the frightened, hungry children.

The chaplains asked the local army commander to free the children, but he refused. Tewes later reported he "turned out to be a convinced anti-Semitic".

Joined by two other chaplains from the 295th Division, a series of protest letters were sent to people in positions of authority asking that the children of Bila Tserkva be spared. The chaplains won over staff officer Lieutenant-Colonel Helmuth Groscurth to their cause. He ordered a postponement of the planned massacre of the children.

In areas near the front, the Einsatzgruppen were under Army command and so when Colonel Groscurth ordered the massacre to be delayed, the local Einsatzkommando leader had no choice but to comply. Ultimately, von Reichenau himself intervened and ordered the executions to go ahead. After receiving a protest letter from two of the chaplains, Reichenau wrote in response:

The conclusion of the report in question contains the following sentence:

>"In the case in question, measures against women and children were undertaken which in no way differ from atrocities carried out by the enemy about which the troops are continually being informed." I have to describe this assessment as incorrect, inappropriate and impertinent in the extreme. Moreover this comment was written in an open communication which passes through many hands. It would have been far better if the report had not been written at all. — Walther von Reichenau

Tewes later recalled, "All those we wanted to save were shot. Because of our initiative it just happened a few days later than planned". One SS man who saw the subsequent murders on 21 August 1941 described them as follows:

>I went to the woods alone. The Wehrmacht had already dug a grave. The children were brought along in a tractor. I had nothing to do with this technical procedure. The Ukrainians were standing around trembling. The children were taken down from the tractor. They were lined up along the top of the grave and shot so that they fell into it. The Ukrainians did not aim at any particular part of the body. They fell into the grave. The wailing was indescribable. I shall never forget the scene throughout my life. I find it very hard to bear. I particulary [sic] remember a small fair-haired girl who took me by the hand. She too was shot later.... The grave was near some woods. It was not near the rifle-range. The execution must have taken place in the afternoon at about 3:30 or 4:00. It took place the day after the discussions at the Feldkommandanten.... Many children were hit four or five times before they died.

The protests at Bila Tserkva were unique as being the only time during the war that Wehrmacht chaplains tried to prevent an Einsatzgruppen massacre. The American historian Doris Bergen wrote that all four chaplains involved in the protest were aware that Jewish adults were being killed and protested only when they learned that children were to be shot.

Bergen further observed the "terrible irony" that a gesture of protest further served the genocidal aims of the regime; the soldiers who were troubled by the crying of the children waiting for their time to die felt that they had "dealt with" the issue by "doing something", namely appealing to Father Tewes and Wilczek, and they had no further role to play in this matter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bila_Tserkva_massacre

NOTE: No photographs of the execution or the children in the school are known to exist. The perpetrators did not photograph this specific event, and any visual record of the final moments of the 90 children comes entirely from the haunting post-war written testimonies of the soldiers, chaplains, and SS officers who were there.

1: Synagogue in Bila Tserkva before the Bolshevik revolution

2-4: This monument was inaugurated in 2019. It commemorate the murder of hundred Jewish children during the Holocaust in the Ukrainian city of Bila Tserkva

a Group of Jews & Soviet POWs Refused to Lose their Humanity

"Since August 18, a third 'Blobel Commando' had been at work at Babi Yar, in the suburbs of Kiev. Blobel himself had visited the site to see the work being done. After the earth on top of the grave had been removed, he later recalled, 'the bodies were covered with inflammable material and ignited.

It took about two days until the grave burnt to the bottom. ' Blobel added: 'I myself observed that the fire had glowed down to the bottom. After that the grave was filled in and the traces practically obliterated.'

More than four hundred Jews and Soviet prisoners-of-war were working at this gruesome task, knowing that when their work was finished they would be killed. They worked with shackles around their ankles, guarded by sixty SS men armed with submachine guns, and accompanied by Alsatian dogs trained to kill.

Within a month, seventy of the prisoners had been killed in random executions, staged each night by the guards for their amusement.

Throughout their work, the SS would address the Jews working in the pits at Babi Yar as Leichen, 'corpses'. But, as the historian Reuben Ainsztein has written, 'in those half-naked men who reeked of putrefying flesh, whose bodies were eaten by scabies and covered with a layer of mud and soot, and of whose physical strength so little remained, there survived a spirit that defied everything that the Nazis '

New Order had done or could do to them. In the men whom the SS men saw only as walking corpses, there matured a determination that at least one of them must survive to tell the world about what they had seen in Babi Yar.'

Plans were made to break out. Among those who coordinated these plans was a Jewish soldier of the Red Army, Vladimir Davydov. Independent of these plans, a non-Jewish Red Army man, Fyodor Zavertanny, managed one day to loosen his shackles, and to escape. In retaliation, the Germans shot twelve of the prisoners.

They also shot the SS man in charge of the guards who had been watching Zavertanny's group.

The scale of the reprisal seemed to rule out individual escapes, and make a mass break-out the only possible course. The method was to search for any keys that remained among the thousands of rotting corpses and decaying garments, in the hope that one of these keys might fit the padlock of the bunker in which the prisoners were locked at night."

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

NOTE: No photographic evidence exists showing the actual exhumation or burning of bodies during the August 1943 Sonderkommando 1005 operation at Babi Yar. Because the primary goal of Sonderaktion 1005 was to destroy evidence of Nazi crimes, the SS enforced absolute secrecy. Taking photographs of the body disposal process was strictly forbidden.

1: Survivors of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit stand next to a mill used to crush bones at the Janowska concentration camp following its liberation in 1944. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderaktion_1005

2: Burning of bodies at Auschwitz-Birkenau by Sonderkommando prisoners in 1944 (secret photo by prisoner Alberto Errera)

How the SS Turned Genocide Into a 9-to-5 Job

“SS Private Johann Antoni and SS man Hans Kartusch from the 3rd Guard Company of Auschwitz II receive eight days’ special leave in the S.S. recreation center of Solahütte as recognition for the successful use of their weapons during the escape of four prisoners, in spite of darkness. Solahütte lay just beyond the camp’s border. It was a long, lodgelike building above the Sola River, which flowed past Auschwitz I; it is now a tavern.” Picturing Auschwitz | The New Yorker

This historical account from The New Yorker serves as a stark reminder of how totalitarian regimes normalize unspeakable evil by turning mass murder into a bureaucratic job with employee perks.

The rewarding of SS guards for murdering escaping prisoners highlights the complete moral bankruptcy and cruelty of the German Nazis. These people treated the systematic execution of human beings as routine, commendable employment, just another day.

These guards were given a vacation at the Solahütte resort as a direct reward for shooting people trying to flee a death camp. In a civilized society, preventing escape from wrongful imprisonment through lethal force is a crime. In Auschwitz, it was an achievement celebrated with special leave.

The proximity of a peaceful, rustic recreation lodge to the horrors of Auschwitz II-Birkenau shows how SS guards could completely detach themselves from the atrocities they committed daily.

1: Nazi officers and auxiliaries having fun at Solahütte.

2: General view of the Solahütte guest-house of the Nazi German personnel and administration of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex during the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Photograph from the Höcker Album

The Grim Fate of Kovno’s Professionals

The German Nazi occupiers order the Jewish Council in the Kovno Ghetto to round up 500 educated individuals, under the false pretense of sending them to organize and work in the city's archives.

Lured by the promise of continuous labor, 534 Jewish men (the "intelligentsia" consisting of teachers, professors, and professionals) reported to the ghetto gates.

But it's a trap; there was no archival work. Instead, the men are marched directly to the Fourth Fort (IV Fort)—part of a nineteenth-century fortress complex on the edge of the city—and murdered by firing squads.

This "Intellectuals Aktion" was designed to break the morale of the ghetto community by eliminating its potential leaders. Today, a granite memorial standing at the Kaunas Fourth Fort honors these specific victims.

>“The Führer must emphasize once again that for Poles there can be only one master, and that is the German; two masters side by side are not possible … therefore all representatives of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed. This sounds harsh, but such is the law of life.” – Martin Bormann, 1940

“The Intelligenzaktion was a series of mass murders committed against the Polish intelligentsia (teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society) during the early years of the Second World War (1939–45) by Nazi Germany.

The Germans conducted the operations in accordance with their plan to Germanize the western regions of occupied Poland, before their territorial annexation to the German Reich.

The mass murder operations of the Intelligenzaktion resulted in the killing of 100,000 Polish people; by way of forced disappearance, the Germans imprisoned and killed select members of Polish society, identified as enemies of the Reich before the war; they were buried in mass graves in remote places.

To facilitate the depopulation of occupied Poland, the Germans terrorized the general populace by carrying out public, summary executions of select intellectuals and community leaders, before they expelled the general population from occupied Poland.

The executioners of the Einsatzgruppen death squads and members of the local Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, the German-minority militia, justified their actions by falsely stating that the purpose of their police-work was to remove politically dangerous people from Polish society.

The Intelligenzaktion was a major step towards the implementation of Sonderaktion Tannenberg (Special Operation Tannenberg), the installation of Nazi policemen and functionaries—from the SiPo (composed of Kripo and Gestapo members), and members of the SD—to manage the occupation and facilitate the realization of Generalplan Ost, the German colonization of Poland.

Among the 100,000 people who were killed in the Intelligenzaktion operations, approximately 61,000 of them were members of the Polish intelligenzia, people who the Germans considered political targets according to the Special Prosecution Book – Poland, a book which was compiled before the war began in September 1939.

The Intelligenzaktion occurred soon after the German invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), and lasted from the autumn of 1939 until the spring of 1940; the mass murder of the Polish intellectuals continued with the operations of the AB-Aktion.” MORE--> Nazi Germany’s War on Polish Intellectuals | Poland at War Tours

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Nazi Germany’s War on Polish Intellectuals: Intelligenzaktion and AB-Aktion--->

Nazi Germany’s War on Polish Intellectuals | Poland at War Tours

1: In occupied Poland, on 9 September 1939, the Germans publicly executed twenty-five prominent citizens, in front of the Municipal Museum, in the Market Square of Bydgoszcz, as part of the mass shootings of Polish intelligentsia. To terrorize the townsfolk, the Germans displayed the bodies for six hours.

2: Poles arrested at Gdynia

3: The execution of prisoners at Rudzki Bridge

4: Hans Frank, architect of AB-Aktion, who would later be hanged following his trial at Nuremberg

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: Eighth-grade student Raina Kim from Brea Junior High School in the Brea Olinda Unified School District earned second place for her artwork titled “Will to Survive.” Weekly roundup: Annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest recognizes 12 local students, OC spelling bee champ heads to Scripps, and more – OCDE Newsroom

Inside the Clandestine Mass Movement to Smuggle 250,000 Jewish Refugees Out of Europe

"“Beriha” was a postwar movement of 250,000 survivors whose aim was to reach the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts, so that they could set off for Eretz Israel. By August, about 15,000 survivors had arrived in Italy.

Once in Italy, survivors were taken south to wait for boats to Eretz Israel. Some ships evaded the British blockade and arrived safely in Eretz Israel, while others were sent to detention camps in Cyprus. After the State of Israel was established, “Beriha” was dismantled." https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/august/1945.html

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“Bricha, also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors settle in British Mandate for Palestine in violation of the White Paper of 1939. It ended when Israel declared independence and annulled the White Paper.

After American, British and Soviet armed forces liberated the camps, survivors suffered from disease, severe malnutrition and depression. Many were displaced persons who were unable to return to their homes from before the war.

In some areas, the survivors continued to face antisemitic violence; during the 1946 Kielce pogrom in Poland 42 survivors were killed when their communal home was attacked by a mob. For many of the survivors, Europe had become "a vast cemetery of the Jewish people" and "they wanted to start life over and build a new national Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael".

The movement of Jewish refugees from the Displaced Persons camp in which they were held (one million persons classified as "not repatriable" remained in Germany and Austria) to Palestine was illegal on both sides, as Jews were not officially allowed to leave the countries of Central and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and its allies, nor were they permitted to settle in Palestine by the British.

In late 1944 and early 1945, Jewish members of the Polish resistance met up with Warsaw Ghetto fighters in Lublin to form Bricha as a way of escaping the antisemitism of Europe, where they were convinced that another Holocaust would occur.

After the liberation of Rivne, Eliezer and Abraham Lidovsky, and Pasha (Isaac) Rajchmann, concluded that there was no future for Jews in Poland. They formed an artisan guild to cover their covert activities, and they sent a group to Cernăuţi, Romania to seek out escape routes.

It was only after Abba Kovner, and his group from Vilna joined, along with Yitzhak Zuckerman, who had headed the Jewish Combat Organization of the Polish uprising of August 1944, in January 1945, that the organization took shape. They soon joined up with a similar effort led by the Jewish Brigade and eventually the Haganah (the Jewish clandestine army in Palestine).

Officers of the Jewish Brigade of the British army assumed control of the operation, along with operatives from the Haganah who hoped to smuggle as many displaced persons as possible into Palestine through Italy. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee funded the operation.

Almost immediately, the explicitly Zionist Berihah became the main conduit for Jews coming to Palestine, especially from the displaced person camps, and it initially had to turn people away due to too much demand.

After the Kielce pogrom of 1946, the flight of Jews accelerated, with 100,000 Jews leaving Eastern Europe in three months. Operating in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia through 1948, Berihah transferred approximately 250,000 survivors into Austria, Germany, and Italy through elaborate smuggling networks.

Using ships supplied at great cost [citation needed] by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, then the immigration arm of the Yishuv, these refugees were then smuggled through the British cordon around Palestine. Bricha was part of the larger operation known as Aliyah Bet, and ended with the establishment of Israel, after which immigration to the Jewish state was legal, although emigration was still sometimes prohibited, as happened in both the Eastern Bloc and Arab countries (see for example refusenik).” Bricha - Wikipedia

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Jewish Survivors on Trucks of the Bericha Movement to Eretz Israel

1: Refugees in the “Beriha” movement in Komo, Italy

2: The Palmach, Immigration to Israel

3: July 15, 1945. Buchenwald survivors arrive in Haifa to be arrested by the British.

4: After Liberation, Jewish Survivors Boarding Trucks of the Bericha Movement, on Their Way to Israel

How a Discovered Tunnel Led to the Execution of an Entire Corpse-Burning Squad

“Polish and Israeli archaeologists discovered traces of an underground tunnel at the site of the former death camp in Sobibor. The tunnel, whose discovery was announced on Wednesday, ran from a barracks to outside the camp fence.

It may have been dug by the prisoners of the Sonderkommando who worked in the camp burning the corpses of murdered Jews. The archeology work at Sobibor is directed by Wojciech Mazurek of Chelm, Poland, and Yoram Haimi of Israel.

Though the tunnel would have helped the prisoners to escape, Mazurek does not believe it was used.

“The Germans found the tunnel and therefore shot and then burned the entire crew of the Sonderkommando,” Mazurek told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. At Sobibor, Nazis murdered about 250,000 Jews mostly from Poland, the Netherlands and Slovakia.

The camp was closed following an uprising on Oct. 14, 1943; about half the remaining prisoners escaped during the uprising.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/underground-tunnel-discovered-at-sobibor/

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Discovery of an Escape Tunnel in Sobibor

1: View of the Sobibor killing center and the German personnel living quarters, taken from a watchtower in the early summer of 1943. A Jewish forced laborer can be seen standing next to the barrack on the left side of the images, as well as in the foreground between the stacks of firewood.

On the right, in the passageway between the camp fences, two Trawniki men patrol. The light roof of the railway building is visible between the fence lines. This photo comes from a collection donated by the descendants of Sobibor deputy camp commandant Johann Niemann.

The images in the collection provide never-before-seen views of the killing center, including photos of barracks buildings, workshops, and SS and Ukrainian guards. The album complements and re-enforces the testimonies of the few Jewish survivors of this notorious camp. Niemann was killed during the Sobibor prisoner revolt on October 14, 1943, after which the camp was closed and demolished. Sobibor Uprising | Holocaust Encyclopedia

2: Archaeologist Yoram Haimi talking to young people from the Dror School in Israel about his findings at the site of the former German Nazi death camp of Sobibor, in eastern Poland, on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012

About seventy men were not sent to Treblinka, but kept in prison in Bialystok. Some were locksmiths, some carpenters.

'When we came to the gaol,' Abraham Karasick recalled, 'the Germans told us that we should take off the badge "because the Jews in Europe are no more", and we were marked with a cross on the back.

Each morning, the seventy Jews were taken from prison to work for the Germans. For several months they saw how the Germans continued to round up Jews who had managed to hide during the action of August 16, and deport them. 'At the beginning,' Karasick recalled, 'they were liquidating every three or four days.'

The last Jews to reach Treblinka, on August 18, had been Jews from Bialystok. All were gassed. Four days later, a wagon laden with the clothing of the dead left Treblinka for Germany. The camp was ready to be closed down. Parts of demolished huts, large numbers of wooden planks, and quantities of chlorinated lime were taken away, followed by the excavator.

The Jews who were made to dismantle the camp realized that once their work was done they too would be killed. But within the camp, they were always outnumbered by the armed guards."

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

"According to the terms of the German-Soviet Pact of 1939, Bialystok, a city in northeastern Poland, was assigned to the Soviet zone of occupation. Soviet forces entered Bialystok in September 1939, and held it until the German army occupied the city in June 1941 following the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

In the early days of the German occupation, Einsatzgruppe detachments and Order Police battalions rounded up and killed thousands of Jews in Bialystok.

In August 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Bialystok. About 50,000 Jews from the city and the surrounding region were confined in a small area of Bialystok city.

The ghetto had two sections, divided by the Biala River. Most Jews in the Bialystok ghetto worked in forced-labor projects, primarily in large textile factories located within the ghetto boundaries. The Germans also sometimes used Jews in forced-labor projects outside the ghetto.

Deportations from Bialystok to Treblinka

In February 1943, approximately 10,000 Bialystok Jews were deported to the Treblinka killing center. During the deportations, hundreds of Jews, mainly those deemed too weak or sick to travel, were killed.

In August 1943, the Germans mounted an operation to destroy the Bialystok ghetto. German forces and local police auxiliaries surrounded the ghetto and began to round up Jews systematically for deportation to the Treblinka killing center.

Approximately 7,600 Jews were held in a central transit camp View This Term in the Glossary in the city before deportation to Treblinka. Those deemed fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp. In Majdanek, after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the Poniatowa, Blizyn, or Auschwitz camps. Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek.

More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed." more: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bialystok

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1: Deportation of the Jews from Bialystok, Poland - 50,000 Jews lived in Bialystok prior to WWII, representing more than half of the city’s population. Most of the Jews in Bialystok were deported in August 1943 to Treblinka, Majdanek, Poniatowa, Blizyn and Auschwitz. https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/august/1943.html

Due to protests, Hitler orders a temporary halt (to take effect on Aug 24) in Nazi Germany's systematic euthanasia murder of mentally ill and handicapped.

>"Between December 1939 and August 1941, about 50,000 to 60,000 German children and adults were secretly killed by lethal injections or in gassing installations designed to look like shower stalls. It was a foretaste of Auschwitz." (Never to Forget, New York: HarperCollins, 1976:131.)

“Up to this date, German health care professionals murdered approximately 70,000 people at “euthanasia” facilities. The killing operations continued, however, involving both adults and children with physical and intellectual disabilities. Among the methods used were starvation, lethal injection, and deliberate failure to treat serious disease.

Hitler's call for a halt to the T4 action did not mean an end to the "euthanasia" killing operation. The child "euthanasia" program continued as before. Moreover, in August 1942, German medical professionals and healthcare workers resumed the killings, albeit in a more carefully concealed manner than before.

More decentralized than the initial gassing phase, the renewed effort relied closely upon regional exigencies, with local authorities determining the pace of the killing.” https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1939-1941/euthanasia-killings-continue

The Holocaust did not start with large-scale death camps; it began with this ‘medical program’. This program targeted disabled children and adults, people with psychiatric conditions, and the elderly. The state labeled these vulnerable individuals "lives unworthy of life."

Medical professionals carried out the killings using lethal injections and, crucially, proto-type gas chambers. This program created the literal and structural infrastructure for the Holocaust. When public protests forced Hitler to officially halt Aktion T4 on this day, the machinery did not stop.

Instead, the Nazi regime transferred the experienced administrators, the medical technicians, and the specialized gassing technology directly to Poland. These individuals used their refined techniques to build and operate the extermination camps that murdered millions of Jews.

The Nazis simply shifted its focus from purging the genetically "imperfect" to wiping out the racially "undesirable." They practiced on their own citizens so they could perfect the murder of humanity. Hitler suspends euthanasia program | August 24, 1941 | HISTORY

1: Hartheim Castle with smoke coming out of the crematorium’s chimney (1941).

How the Head of the Country's Dominant Church Actively Fostered the Holocaust

Romanian Orthodox Church Patriarch Miron Cristea Calls on All Romanians to "Fight the Jewish Parasites"

>"The duty of a Christian is to love himself first and to see that his needs are satisfied. Only then can he help his neighbor. . . . Why should we not get rid of these parasites [Jews] who suck Romanian Christian blood? It is logical and holy to react against them."

The leadership of the country's dominant church thus actively fosters the ideological groundwork for the Holocaust in Romania. Patriarch Miron Cristea is attempting to curb the growing influence of the fascist, ultranationalist Iron Guard over lower-ranked clergy. To retain authority, he co-opts their extreme xenophobic and antisemitic rhetoric.

In his official statement, Cristea claims that the "marrow" of the Romanian people is being "sucked out by the Jews" and accuses them of spreading "epidemics of corruption". He declares that "to defend ourselves is a national and patriotic duty".

He openly advocates for the systematic revocation of Romanian citizenship for all Jewish people, followed by their total deportation from the country.

Less than a year later, in February 1938, King Carol II will appoint Patriarch Miron Cristea as the Prime Minister of Romania, officially merging religious leadership with authoritarian state power. Patriarch Miron of Romania - Wikipedia

“During WWII, Romania fought on the German side, and took an active part in exterminating Jews. Romanian forces killed more than 300,000 Jews during the war. They also gained some notoriety for the zest they displayed in carrying out their task in Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia and Transnistria.

The official state institutions masterminded and put into practice the killing of half of the country’s Jewish population, while the other half was denied the most elementary civil rights. The Orthodox Church was an important part of the establishment. That’s why the issue of Christian responsibility during the Holocaust cannot be left aside when it comes to Romania.

In the Middle Ages, anti-Semitism was not enforced as state policy, and this made possible the development of relationships between Christians and Jews. However, in some religious documents the contrary can be found, for instance in the 17th century’s Church Code of Law from Govora, which goes as follows: “He. the parson or person who might talk with the Jews and call them ’brothers’, let him be anathema,” which would mean his exclusion from the Church and community.

The situation changed by the beginning of the 19th century when anti-Semitism grew due to economic reasons and the Church also became less tolerant of Jews. The new situation was reflected in the media, academia, cultural and political circles, long before anti-Semitism became a state policy.

Given the religious structure of Romanian society, it is not surprising that the Romanian fascist movements tried to assimilate Orthodox Christianity into their programs The most relevant Romanian fascist groups were the League of National Christian Defense, and the Iron Guard. Their founders always emphasized the importance of Christian education.

The League of National Christian Defense was founded in 1923 by Professor A. C. Cuza. His theories proclaimed a typically fascist violent anticommunism and anti-Semitism.

This party’s program called for, among other things, the introduction of anti-Semitism as state policy and the pre-eminence of the Church in the life of the state. In fact, Cuza’s entire political philosophy was built around a single issue, resting on a set of anti-Semitic convictions that he pursued throughout his career.

He used religious anti-Semitism as a reliable tool, which would provide him a wide audience, mainly in the rural areas of the country. Here is a quotation from the Christian Brotherhood newspaper denying the anti-Jewish attitude of this organization: “The word antiSemite is a Talmudic made-up notion, a product of the kike’s mentality. But to us, the followers of our Savior’s teaching, there is not and there will never be any anti-Semitism, there will only be nationalism”.

But the League of National Christian Defense carried on a fierce anti-Semitic campaign with a religious background, even among the young people. At the beginning of the school year of 1926, the League distributed in schools the following manifesto:

>“Every Christian student should know that those who have crucified Jesus, the guilty ones, are not only those who actually did it, but their descendants as well. You have these accomplices as your schoolmates. Beware of Satan; don’t talk to them, for you have enough Christian mates.”

Such language could be found in hundreds of manifestos, booklets, speeches, etc., and was not amended by any of the priests who got involved with the League’s activity. In fact, those priests probably found themselves in a very odd situation when the League distributed a booklet titled “Jesus’ Teachings”. The booklet accused Romanian priests and theologians of altering the Christian religion under the influence of Judaism. The Church was also accused of not having repudiated the Old Testament, thus allowing “Satan’s power embodied by the Kikes.”

The religious sects, such as Adventists – were also incriminated as having been invented by the Jews and financed with “American Kikes’ money, to the ruin of Christianity.” This sentence appeared in the Christian Solidarity newspaper. That journal had as its motto the following phrase by a Romanian philosopher: “If we won’t fight against the kike element, we are going to perish as a nation.” VERY MUCH MORE: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1385&context=ree

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https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution-beginning/romania.html

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“Romania's central bank has denied anti-Semitism after minting a coin depicting the prime minister who stripped Jews of their citizenship in 1939....”--> Romania bank to review 'anti-Semitic' Cristea coin - BBC News

1: This historical photograph shows Jewish people gathered on the west bank of the Dniester River on June 10, 1942, awaiting forced deportation into the Transnistria region under the Romanian regime during the Holocaust.

The deportation staged victims from Romanian-controlled areas across the Dniester River into camps and ghettos in German-occupied Soviet territory. More than 400,000 Jews sent to Transnistria perished due to systematic mass executions, starvation, extreme cold, and epidemic diseases.

The image is preserved in the Yad Vashem Photo Archives as documentation of the atrocities committed by the wartime Romanian government alongside Nazi forces.

Hitler's Last Living Henchman

"Hess died on 17 August 1987, aged 93, in a summer house that had been set up in the prison garden as a reading room. He took an extension cord from one of the lamps, strung it over a window latch, and hanged himself.

A short note to his family was found in his pocket, thanking them for all that they had done. The Four Powers released a statement on 17 September ruling the death a suicide. He was initially buried at a secret location to avoid media attention or demonstrations by Nazi sympathizers, but his body was re-interred in a family plot at Wunsiedel on 17 March 1988; his wife was buried beside him in 1995.

Hess's lawyer Alfred Seidl felt that he was too old and frail to have managed to kill himself. Wolf Rüdiger Hess repeatedly claimed that his father had been murdered by the British Secret Intelligence Service to prevent him from revealing information about British misconduct during the war.

Abdallah Melaouhi served as Hess's medical orderly from 1982 to 1987; he was dismissed from his position at his local district parliament's Immigration and Integration Advisory Council after he wrote a self-published book on a similar theme. According to an investigation by the British government in 1989, the available evidence did not back up the claim that Hess was murdered, and Solicitor General Sir Nicholas Lyell saw no grounds for further investigation.

The autopsy results supported the conclusion that Hess had killed himself. A report released in 2012 led to questions again being asked as to whether Hess had been murdered. Historian Peter Padfield wrote that the suicide note found on the body appeared to have been written when Hess was hospitalized in 1969.

Wunsiedel became a destination for pilgrimages and neo-Nazi demonstrations every August on the date of Hess's death. To put a stop to neo-Nazi pilgrimages, the parish council decided not to allow an extension on the grave site's lease when it expired in 2011.

With the eventual consent of his family, Hess's grave was re-opened on 20 July 2011. The remains were cremated and the ashes scattered at sea by family members. The gravestone, which bore the epitaph "Ich hab's gewagt" ("I have dared"), was destroyed. Spandau Prison was demolished in 1987 to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

A myth that the Spandau prisoner was not actually Hess was disproved in 2019, when a study of DNA testing undertaken by Sherman McCall, formerly of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and Jan Cemper-Kiesslich of the University of Salzburg demonstrated a 99.99 per cent match between the prisoner's y chromosome DNA markers and those of a living male Hess relative." MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess

FULL Rudolf Hess BIO: https://4rs.neocities.org/nur01.html

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VIDEO - Rudolf Hess: The Last Prisoner of Spandau - “Rudolf Hess, the last prisoner in Spandau, Berlin, died in 1987. He had been confined inside since 1947 with six other Nuremberg defendants, but by 1966 he was the last one left in a prison designed for 600. Find out how he ended up in Spandau, how he was guarded by the armed forces of four nations, how he lived and his ultimate fate, along with the fate of the building itself.”---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9lM-aaCHJU

The British Decision that Sealed Slovakian Jewish History

"Shortly before a meeting of the British Cabinet on August 4, the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, who was responsible for policy towards Jewish immigration to Palestine, had asked that the question of 'illegal' immigration be put on the agenda.

Then he reported that the High Commissioner in Palestine had been authorized to announce that 'no immigration quota would be issued for the next six-monthly period October 1939 -Marc h 1940'.

The second step to stop illegal traffic was the Foreign Office's 'strong representations' to certain governments 'against their laxity' in the 'discouragement of this traffic'. MacDonald added:

>"Very strong representations had been made in particular to Rumania, Poland and Greece, and the first results of this action had been good. Rumania and Greece had taken action which should secure much stricter surveillance, and while the good effect of our representations might not last, since the power of Jewish money was great, for the present at any rate the results were good."

MacDonald' s reference to what he called 'the power of Jewish money' was ill-chosen; in reality, the funds of the Jewish charitable institutions were nearly exhausted.

Two weeks later, on August 17, news of just how desperate the Jewish situation was in Europe reached the Foreign Office from Slovakia. The report, on the fate of the eighty-five thousand Jews of Slovakia, was distressing.

Non -Jews, encouraged by the Germans, 'do all they can to rob and plunder Jewish property and persecute the Jewish people'. Other Slovaks, 'unable to show their hatred of the Germans, so vent their wrath instead upon the Jews'.

'Jew-baiting' had become a frequent occurrence. All but a small proportion of Jews had been excluded since the previous March from the professions and the universities. Many Jewish shops and businesses had been forced to close. Many Slovak Jews were joining the 'illegal' movement to Palestine.

'Their nerves can stand no more,' the report explained. 'Fear of the unknown in other countries is more pleasant to them than present persecution and feeling that they are trapped.'

Several thousand had already fled, and some had even succeeded in reaching Palestine. 'This made the others more reckless,' the reported added, 'especially as conditions in Slovakia grew worse'."

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

The Holocaust in Slovakia - “Though nominally independent, Slovakia was highly dependent on Nazi Germany after the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. In November 1940, Slovakia joined the Axis when its leaders signed the Tripartite Pact.

In fulfillment of the requirements of the Axis partnership, Slovakia participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and declared war on Britain and the United States in December 1941. Slovakia was also the first Axis partner to consent to the deportation of its Jewish residents in the framework of the "Final Solution."

According to a census of December 15, 1940, there were about 88,951 Jews in Slovakia. In March 1942, Slovakia signed an agreement with Germany that permitted the deportation of the Slovak Jews.” MORE--> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-slovakia

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Malcolm MacDonald had already severely restricted Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine through his authorship of the controversial British White Paper of May 23, 1939. Serving as the British Colonial Secretary, MacDonald had shifted British policy away from supporting a Jewish majority state. Instead, he prioritized appeasing Arab factions to secure regional stability for Britain ahead of WW2.

The 1939 White Paper limited Jewish immigration to a total of 75,000 people spread over a five-year period. MacDonald's policy dictated that after the initial five-year period ended, further Jewish immigration would strictly depend on Arab acquiescence.

This effectively doomed the Jewish population to a permanent one-third minority status.

In response to a surge of Jewish refugees attempting to flee Nazi persecution, MacDonald announced that all official Jewish immigration would be frozen for six months starting October 1939. He justified this by deducting the numbers of "illegal" clandestine arrivals from the official quotas.

MacDonald abandoned the historical policy established by the 1922 Churchill White Paper, which tied immigration levels exclusively to the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine.

MacDonald's policies provoked intense outrage from Zionists and Jewish leadership worldwide, who viewed the restrictions as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration. The Jewish Agency officially condemned the immigration halts as devoid of moral justification given the compounding crisis in Europe.

Protesters in Palestine publicly labeled his decrees "MacDonald's Nuremberg Laws". While declassified files indicate that MacDonald privately harbored ethical concerns and unsuccessfully explored resettlement alternatives for Jewish refugees in alternative territories like Northern Rhodesia, his name remains historically synonymous with the blockade that prevented thousands of European Jews from finding refuge in Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust. Malcolm MacDonald - Wikipedia

1: Jewish inmates at forced labor in the Vyhne concentration camp in Slovakia, 1941–44.

2: Entrance to the Novaky labor camp in Slovakia, 1942–44.

3: View of buildings in the Sered concentration camp in Slovakia, 1941–44.

4: Slovakia, 1942

5: Partition of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1939

The Decree Forcing Jews to Adopt Nazi-Mandated Names

"On this day, the Law Regarding Changes of Family Names and Given Names was issued, providing that as of January 1, 1939, all male Jews must assume the given name of Israel and all female Jews the name of Sarah.

Furthermore, Jews were forbidden to take as given names any other than specifically designated "Jewish" given names, as listed in an appendix to the decree.

(More than a hundred years before, the Prussian government prohibited Jews from using "Christian" given names. Leopold Zunz, the founder of Wissenschaft des Judentums, then wrote a scholarly paper, Die Namen der Juden, showing that Christian and Jewish given names had a common source in the Bible. His scholarship was so persuasive that the Prussian government revised its restrictions to apply only to names associated with traditions of the New Testament.)"

From The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, by Lucy S. Dawidowicz.

“Twice in the course of German history, Jews were forced to change their names: the first time through the introduction of (often stigmatizing) family names during the Emancipation, the second time through the introduction of compulsory first names: “Sara” for Jewish women and “Israel” for Jewish men (August 17, 1938).

Thus, Jews were singled out and made to stand apart from the rest of society. If the given name appeared on an officially approved list of Jewish names issued by the Nazis, no additional name was required. The regime also saw to it that Jews who had changed their family names in order to blend in and avoid discrimination had to return to their previous names.” -> https://www.lbi.org/1938projekt/detail/sara-for-women-israel-for-men/

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https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/law-on-alteration-of-family-and-personal-names

1: Identity card (Deutsches Reich Kennkarte) issued to Marianne Wolff displaying the imposed middle name of "Sara" and stamped with the letter J for "Jude" (Jew).