Regular gassings at the camp had begun earlier that month in May 1942. The entire process from arrival to burial typically took only two to three hours. Sobibor was one of three major killing centers (along with Belzec and Treblinka) built for the sole purpose of mass murder.

Between 167,000 and 250,000 people are murdered there during its 18 months of operation. On October 14, 1943, prisoners launched a famous armed uprising; about 300 escaped, though only about 50 survived the war. After the revolt, the Nazis dismantled the camp and planted trees to hide evidence of their crimes.

Sobibor was located near the village of Sobibór in the eastern part of the Lublin district of German-occupied Poland.

"As a prelude to the roundup, the Germans had ordered the Judenrat to employ all able bodied Jews in cleaning attics and cellars. This was intended to hinder Jews from hiding within the ghetto. During the two day roundup, which lasted until the 23rd of May, the Jewish Order Police collected some 3,000 Jews who were to be deported. The Jews were kept under guard in the shtiebel (prayer room) of the Belz Hassidim and the ghetto’s Beit Midrash (study hall), until the arrival of the Gestapo.

One of the Jewish collaborators who aided the Germans in this roundup was known as the “Yiddischer Kommissar” (the Jewish Inspector). Upon entering the ghetto, the Germans charged the Jews with having committed “sabotage”, and according to reports in the Warsaw underground newspaper, murdered some 200 Jews on the spot. The remainder were deported to Sobibor.

During this aktion, some 4,300 Jews were deported to Sobibor, most of them local; others were Jews who had arrived in Chełm from Slovakia in a transport of 2,000 as the roundup was taking place. Even before the deportation to Sobibor, hundreds of the deportees from Slovakia were murdered in the ghetto.

The deportations to Sobibor were undertaken as part of “Operation Reinhard”, the Nazi operation to destroy the Jews of the Generalgouvernement, the area of central Poland governed by the German civil authorities.

The second deportation took place in June 1942, and was carried out by Gestapo members from Sobibor who demanded workers for the death camp. Polish and Ukrainian policemen also took part in this deportation, shooting Jews who tried to hide in houses, or dragging them into the street and murdering them there. A selection was held in the square in front of the sthiebel and 600 Jews who were found fit for labor were deported to Sobibor.

On the 5th of October 1942, another 1,000 Jews from the Chełm ghetto were deported to Sobibor. On the 27th and 28th of October a deportation to Wlodawa took place: some 3,300 Jews from the Chełm ghetto, both local Jews and Jewish refugees were deported in this wave. As before Polish and Ukranian policemen carried out the German commands, helped by the Jewish Order Police.

The deportees were marched to Wlodawa, and most of them were murdered along the way, either beaten to death or shot. The few survivors to reach Wlodawa were subsequently deported to Sobibor. Among those deported in this wave were several Jews from the Wojsławice ghetto who had arrived in Chełm earlier that month.

On the 6th and 7th of November 1942, the SS and Ukrainian Police liquidated what remained of the ghetto in Chełm. At the time, some 7,000 Jews were still living in the ghetto; of them nearly 4,000 were deported to Sobibor, and the remainder were shot on site, in the ghetto. On this day the 150 members of the Jewish Order Police were also shot, not far from the Gestapo headquarters.

Few of the Jews from Chełm remained alive after the liquidation; most of them were young. Some 50 Jewish craftsmen were kept for forced labor until they too were deported to Sobibor a few months later, in January or February 1943.

During the revolt of Jewish prisoners in the Sobibor extermination camp, a number of Jews tried to reach the area of Chełm, but it seems they were unsuccessful. Most of the participants in the uprising were caught and murdered. A minority managed to escape and join up with the partisans. A small handful of Jews from Chełm served in the partisan units of the Polish Left, the Gwardia Ludowa, which mobilized in the forests around Chełm.

In July 1944 Chełm was liberated by the Red Army. A few dozen Jews had survived in hiding in what had been a magnificent Jewish community numbering some 15,000. In addition, the several hundred Jews who fled with the retreating Soviet forces at the beginning of the war were also spared. The survivors tried to resettle in Chełm, but postwar antisemitism made this impossible, and they abandoned the city.

In the 1990s some survivors from Chełm and their descendants initiated a renovation of the cemetery wall in Chełm and the erection of a memorial in honor of the victims.

Before the Second World War nearly half of Chełm’s 30,000 residents had been Jewish. To the best of our knowledge, Chelm’s current population of 70,000 does not include any Jews." https://www.yadvashem.org/communities/chelm/destruction-of-the-community.html

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Holocaust: SS officer's photos reveal Sobibor death camp - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51279900

1: A Sobibor gateway says "SS Sonderkommando" - the name for special death camp units

2: A researcher points to a man believed to be Demjanjuk, among SS death camp auxiliaries

3: SS guards are seen here having fun at Sobibor, not far from the gas chambers

4: Researchers are sure that new photos from Sobibor (bottom row) show Demjanjuk

5: Niemann is seen here posing on horseback at Sobibor

6: Niemann (C) flanked by two fellow Nazi "burners" outside a T4 killing centre in 1940

7: Part of Sobibor camp in early 1943

8: Symcha Goldenzon with his wife Chaja Fajga (nee Tau), Chełm, prewar. Both were murdered in Chełm during the Holocaust.

NOTE: WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE NAZI HISTORIC IMAGES NECCESSARY TO TELL THIS IMPORTANT STORY.

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

This tragedy represents a pivotal early chapter in the Nazi "euthanasia" campaigns that murdered individuals deemed a genetic or financial burden. Hospitalized psychiatric patients from the German province of East Prussia (including facilities such as the Kortau Provincial Mental Sanatorium) are targeted.

The patients are systematically transported to the Soldau Concentration Camp (Działdowo), located in occupied Poland near the East Prussian border. The Sonderkommando Lange murder the victims using an early iteration of a mobile gas van. Patients Are forced into an enclosed vehicle, where they were asphyxiated using bottled carbon monoxide gas.

This specific massacre in East Prussia occurred concurrently with the rollout of Aktion T4, the centralized Nazi institutional program targeting disabled, mentally ill, and elderly individuals. The infrastructure, technology (carbon monoxide gassing), and personnel developed during these 1940 "euthanasia" operations will be directly used to construct the major death camps of the Holocaust.

While the first phase of centralized gassings will officially be paused in August 1941 due to public outcry, the killings will continue covertly through forced starvation and lethal injections until 1945. Historians estimate that the Nazi euthanasia programs claimed the lives of at least 200,000 to 250,000 people.

"On this day in 1940, a "special unit" carries out its mission-and murders more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia.

Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18-day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed "unfit" by its ideology.

After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been "successfully evacuated." https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nazis-kill-unfit-people-in-east-prussia

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VIDEO - Disability Awareness Month: The Nazis’ Nameless Victims - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvrwnJ6hQ9s

1: This image depicts a scene from Aktion T4, a Nazi German program during World War II responsible for the systematic murder of institutionalized individuals with physical and mental disabilities. The specialized bus shown, often operated by the Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH (Gekrat), was used to transport victims from various institutions to designated killing centers.

The program targeted patients deemed "life unworthy of life" by the Nazi regime, including those with severe disabilities, mental illness, or chronic diseases. It is estimated that Aktion T4 claimed the lives of approximately 250,000 people between 1939 and the end of the war.

Although widely known in Germany, the program was conducted under a high degree of secrecy, with functionaries working out of offices at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin, from which the program derived its name.

In the Summer of 1923, Hitler told a story in a large meeting:

>'We have just had a big gymnastic festival in Munich. Three hundred thousand athletes from all over the country assembled here. That must have brought our city lots of business, you think. Now listen to this: There was an old woman who sold picture postcards. She was glad because the festival would bring her plenty of customers. She was beside herself with joy when sales far exceeded her expectations. Business had really been good — or so she thought.

>But now the old woman is sitting in front of an empty shop, crying her eyes out. For with the miserable paper money she took in for her cards, she can't buy a hundredth of her old stock. Her business is ruined, her livelihood absolutely destroyed. She can go begging. And the same despair is seizing the whole people. We are facing a revolution. . . .'

This was the story of the end of the world — seemingly the story of an old woman, but really, in seven or eight phrases, the story of the destruction of German, indeed of European, self-reliance and dignity. The truths which had seemed most certain, the multiplication table and the difference between good and evil, vanished before the eyes of the uncomprehending individual.

First it was the story of the German inflation, which reduced the supposedly eternal value of the German mark from $0.24 to $.000,000,000,024; or, in other words: an object which had previously been worth twenty-four cents, now cost a sum which would formerly have equaled three times the national wealth.

To a lesser degree, it was also the story of the blowing away of money in other countries, Austria, Poland, Hungary, France, Italy, Spain; and later, there were beginnings of the process in England, and even the United States. This was the twilight of the age of progress: the death of money.

On Friday afternoons in 1923, long lines of manual and whitecollar workers waited outside the pay-windows of the big German factories, department stores, banks, offices: dead-tired workingmen in grimy shirts open at the neck; gentlemen in shiny blue suits, saved from before the war, in mended white collars, too big for their shrunken necks; young girls, some of them with the new bobbed heads; young men in puttees and gray jackets, from which the tailor had removed the red seams and regimentals, embittered against the girls who had taken their jobs.

They all stood in lines outside the pay-windows, staring impatiently at the electric wall clock, slowly advancing until at last they reached the window and received a bag full of paper notes. According to the figures inscribed on them, the paper notes amounted to seven hundred thousand or five hundred million, or three hundred and eighty billion, or eighteen trillion marks — the figures rose from month to month, then from week to week, finally from day to day. With their bags the people moved quickly to the doors, all in haste, the younger ones running. They dashed to the nearest food store, where a line had already formed.

Again they moved slowly, oh, how slowly, forward. When you reached the store, a pound of sugar might have been obtainable for two millions; but, by the time you came to the counter, all you could get for two millions was half a pound, and the saleswoman said the dollar had just gone up again.

With the millions or billions you bought sardines, sausages, sugar, perhaps even a little butter, but as a rule the cheaper margarine — always things that would keep for a week, until next pay-day, until the next stage in the fall of the mark. For money could not keep, the most secure of all values had become the most insecure. The mark wasn't just low, it was slipping steadily downward.

Goods were still available, but there was no money; there was still labor and consumption, but no economy; you could provide for the moment, but you couldn't plan for the future. It was the end of money. It was the end of the old shining hope that everyone would be rich. The secular religion of the nineteenth century was crumbling amid the profanation of holy property.

Germany had financed her war by means of loans. The state had borrowed from its citizens approximately eighty billion marks, about a third of the so-called national wealth, and shot them into the air — without result, for the war had been lost. Every citizen had been forced to lend, even the propertyless out of their meager wages.

Great fortunes and petty savings had been thrown down the gullet of war. And then, suddenly, the mark lost its value. The war loan was worth nothing. Savings of a lifetime were worth nothing.

The great radical cure, ruthless equalization, was going into effect. It was a process which would affect the distant future, but most men failed even to suspect its full significance, for they saw only the beginnings, the first symptoms. The great prophecies of the nineteenth century were beginning to be fulfilled. A man who thought he had a small fortune in the bank might receive a politely couched letter from the directors:

'The bank deeply regrets that it can no longer administer your deposit of sixty-eight thousand marks, since the costs are out of all proportion to the capital. We are therefore taking the liberty of returning your capital. Since we have no bank-notes in small enough denominations at our disposal, we have rounded out the sum to one million marks. Enclosure: one 1,000,000-mark bill.'

A canceled stamp for five million marks adorned the envelope. The state wiped out property, livelihood, personality, squeezed and pared down the individual, destroyed his faith in himself by destroying his property — or worse: his faith and hope in property. Minds were ripe for the great destruction.

The state broke the economic man, beginning with the weakest. From Russia, the explosion of 1917 had resounded throughout the world. Over one seventh of the earth's surface it had made private property questionable, and ultimately, after years of struggle and experiment, destroyed it. Like a sea, receding for a moment, then wildly surging through all dikes, a counter-movement, inspired by fear, had swept across the world.

Anti-Bolshevik propaganda bureaus, clubs, newspapers were launched. Perhaps the strangest monster nurtured by this movement was The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. Nowhere, with the exception of Russia, did the state destroy property as radically as in Germany.

And it was not the workers who did it. Not the Social Democrats, who in 1918 had proclaimed the republic; or the Communists, who reviled the Social Democrats as 'traitors to the working class,' and for years kept disturbing the peace with vain, hopeless attempts at revolt. The workers had no intention at all of destroying property. Plans to this effect stood in the party programs, but nowhere else. For the proletarian is a component of the capitalist economy, and what he wishes is not to abolish exploiting capitalism, but to exploit it himself.

On November 9, 1918, Philipp Scheidemann, the Social Democratic leader, proclaimed the republic in Berlin, saying, 'The German people has been victorious all along the line'; but a week later, the leaders of the German working-class, who had been victorious all along the line, concluded a pact with the leaders of the German employers 'for the maintenance of our economic life.'

And both sides solemnly declared 'that the reconstruction of our national economy requires the pooling of all economic and intellectual forces and the harmonious collaboration of all.'

It could not have been said more clearly: to save capitalism from the crushing vise of war socialism was the aim of the workers as well as the capitalists. At this time Socialist demonstrations were swarming through the capital; as the masses passed through the Tiergarten, the great park in the middle of Berlin, a voice is said to have cried out: 'Comrades, preserve revolutionary discipline! Don't walk on the grass!' A legend, perhaps. But how apt!

Actually the leader of German capitalism after the war, Hugo Stinnes, destroyed far more private property than all the German Socialists. Mammoth industrialist with super-capitalist dreams of domination, he unconsciously sought after super-capitalist forms. Such was the magnitude of the property he amassed, and such the methods by which he amassed it, that the very concept of property burst asunder.

Between 1920 and 1923, Stinnes was the most powerful man in Germany — in so far as we may speak of power in those dissolved, anarchic times. By bold combination of widely ramified interests (mines, electricity, navigation, hotels, newspapers, book publishing) he exerted an influence on the whole country, financed parties and politicians, and in all his activities was guided by the feeling that Fate had called him to rebuild Germany. The first step in this reconstruction was a process of destruction.

At the outset the masses misinterpreted it as nothing more than a scandalous rise in prices; only later, under the name of inflation, the process was correctly comprehended as the downfall of money. While Walter Rathenau was still foreign minister, a group of American bankers visited Germany to study the causes of the German inflation.

In some quarters it had been maintained that Germany hoped the devaluation of her currency would cause her political debts to evaporate. It is doubtful whether anyone ever cherished so naive a hope, and surely it was never realized.

In reality the inflation was largely caused by the efforts of German industry to regain its position in the world market. Rathenau and Stinnes sat down with the Americans, and Stinnes, according to his own report, gave them the following harsh explanation for the German inflation:

'I informed the gentlemen that after the lost war Germany had been obliged to develop regular working habits in the four million men who, in the army, had lost the habit of regular work; for this, I told them, raw materials and employment were necessary.

In order to obtain raw materials and a market for our products, in order to preserve the life of the nation, we had been obliged to sacrifice parts of our capital; there was no other way. For if the masses had remained without employment, Bolshevism would assuredly have seized Germany. ...

I further informed the gentlemen that the weapon of inflation would have to be used further, without regard to the resultant extraordinary losses of capital, because this was the only possibility of providing the population with the ordered regular activity which was necessary to secure the life of the nation.'

The specter of Bolshevism overpowered the holiness of property. That money was obsolete could be no more dismally proved than by this suicide for fear of death. As a defense against Bolshevism, the destroyer of private wealth, private wealth was destroyed. Germany, like all countries, had been bled white by the war, and this real decline in wealth was inevitably followed by a decline in nominal titles to wealth, in the form of currency. Germany's money had been turned to cannon and hand-grenades.

The grenades produced corpses, the cannon fell into the hands of the enemy, the national wealth was turned to dust. Germany had scarcely anything left. But after the war, even the little that remained was flung away, to preserve at least political peace in the land.

While Stinnes, on his royal-industrial throne at Miihlheim on the Ruhr, calmly took it upon himself to destroy private property in Germany, Hitler stamped furiously back and forth on his platform in the ill-lit beer hall and shouted: 'You had no right to make the whole economy, state as well as private enterprises, unprofitable, by overfilling them with workers at a time when the market was stagnant and there was a shortage of raw materials!'

He spoke like a learned doctor of economics, and just this sounded quite incredible in his mouth; but then the beer-hall orator expressed an idea, far surpassing Stinnes in polidcal wisdom: the chaos should have been exploited for a transformation of the German economy.

He censured the government, because, 'when the soldiers streamed back from the front, it did not distribute them among much-needed projects [public works and housing], but sent them back to the places from which they had been called to the colors.' He understood that the old laissez-faire economy could not be restored. He understood that the old liberal Germany could not be rebuilt.

He early realized what his friend Rudolf Hess wrote, many years later: 'For Adolf Hitler the revolt of 1918 was a necessity of Fate, for, despite its criminal leadership, it swept away many survivals of a time that was outlived, survivals that would have created obstacles to the National Socialist revolution.'

He knew how much he owed to the chaos. At the height of the year 1923 it was the chaos which literally fed him and his followers; for the decay of the mark blew small financial contributions, made in substantial foreign currency by friends in Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the United States, up to gigantic sums in marks; a person could live comfortably for a week on a dollar at that time, and for a hundred dollars one could buy a minor revolution.

It was a decisive turn in Hitler's career when his friend and admirer, Ernst Hanfstaengl, scion of an old-established, wealthy printer's family, himself half-American by descent, borrowed for him the fabulous sum of one thousand dollars. This money enabled Hitler to set up, in February, 1923, the Volkischer Beobachter as a daily paper.

He said:

>'The government calmly goes on printing these scraps, because, if it stopped, that would mean the end of the government. Because once the printing presses stopped — and that is the prerequisite for the stabilization of the mark — the swindle would at once be brought to light. For then the worker would realize that he is only making a third of what he made in peacetime, because two thirds of his labor go for tribute to the enemy.'

And just that made inflation a 'necessity of Fate.' It shattered public faith in property, and nothing was more necessary for Hitler than the shattering of this faith. And so he prophesied and described the destruction which was to pave his road to power: 'Believe me, our misery will increase. The scoundrel will get by.

But the decent, solid businessman who doesn't speculate will be utterly crushed; first the little fellow on the bottom, but in the end the big fellow on top too. But the scoundrel and the swindler will remain, top and bottom. The reason: because the state itself has become the biggest swindler and crook. A robbers' state . . .'

The whole demagogical debate was actually a fight between two thieves over the corpse of the national economy. Stinnes flung away the national wealth to banish poverty and with it Bolshevism; but Hitler screamed:

>'And what if even greater misery descended on us I Let us have misery! . . . The greatest misfortune would be so-called prosperity. We would forget all our disgrace. If we were getting along, we would stop hating France!'

He meant it; for he went on to explain: 'In present-day Germany, sad to say, people do not lament over the loss of our world position and world respect, not over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and Upper Silesia, SchleswigHolstein and the other ravished territories — all they complain about is the exorbitant prices.

If today there were a French dictator in Berlin and the physical needs of the German people were secured by him and his officials, we may be convinced that a majority of our fellow countrymen would resign themselves to their fate. This sheds full light on the demoralization into which we have fallen, and concerning which, sad to relate, no one wastes any tears.'

Therefore, let us have misery. Therefore, chaos was a necessity of Fate; therefore, prosperity would have been a misfortune. This was the destructive, and at the same time creative, idea of a brilliant have-not, a good-for-nothing, with nothing to lose. Let us have misery! The economy is dying. Let it die, and no tears shed, for it has only plunged us into misfortune:

'The pure scientists are misled. An economy exists only because a strong national people creates it. An economy without political power is a temptation for foreign conquerors. Hence today we have a slave-economy.' The old bourgeois parties 'are to blame, for they have trained us to be merely an economic people. If economic development had gone on like that, we would have developed an innumerable mass of factory workers, crippled in body and mind'

Richard Wagner in his time had accused Germany's ruling class of letting the German worker degenerate in hunger, vice, and crime. For Hitler, Germany was stifling in the morass of peace: 'Nobody wants to die for business deals. But a man dies gladly for a political ideal!'

This lost world war did Germany some good by casting it into an abyss, from which, in Hitler's opinion, it could not save itself by mere economic means: 'To liberation belongs more than economic policy; more than sweat. To make us free, we need pride, will, defiance, hate, hate, and again hate!'

And so, let us have misery! Let the people despair of the economy. Let them cease to believe in their own labor. There stood these men, pressed tightly between the tables of an overfilled beer hall. Their cheeks were sunken, their gray suits — remade uniforms — were shabby and threadbare; under their arms some held a bundle of food, arduously and illicitly acquired.

The speaker fixed his eyes on one of these poverty-stricken figures and said: soon you will starve completely unless you blindly follow me, wherever I lead you. Citizens reckoning in billions, said Hitler, will die of hunger, because the farmer will stop selling his grain or butter for the worthless billions, 'with which he can paper his outhouse on the manure heap. And don't go complaining: how mean of the farmer! Will one of you step forward and say he is willing to give away his work of many months for nothing?' The money you offer the farmer 'is no longer a note on work done, it is a note on a swindling regime. And that means hunger!'

On this Hitler set his great hope, on the 'revolt of starving billionaires.' The revolt against the parliamentary regime in Germany was inevitable, and hunger would bend the masses under dictatorship:

>'If the horrified people notice that they can starve on billions, they must arrive at this conclusion: we will no longer submit to a state which is built on the swindling idea of the majority, we want dictatorship!'

To repeat the same in the words of the Wise Men of Zion:

>'By envy and hatred, by struggle and warfare, even by spreading hunger, destitution, and plagues, we shall bring the people to such a pass that their only escape will lie in total submission to our domination.'

Adolf Hitler is a true child of the old German self-contempt. At all events, the German people was one of the first to witness the decay of those material values which a whole century had taken as the highest of all values.

The German nation was one of the first to experience the death of the unlimited free property which had lent such a royal pride to modern humanity. Money had lost its value — what, then, could have any value?

From 'Der Führer – Hitler's Rise to Power", by Konrad Heiden

Published in 1944, "Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power" is considered the first definitive biography of Adolf Hitler.

It was written by Konrad Heiden, a German-American journalist who witnessed Hitler's early speeches in Munich during the 1920s. Covers Hitler's life from his unpromising youth through his rise as a demagogue, ending with the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.

Analyzes the psychological factors and social chaos (inflation, unemployment) that allowed a "failed revolutionary" to become a dictator. Heiden suggests Hitler was a "mirror of his time," exploiting the despair of the masses through political ingenuity and violence. Includes rare contemporary accounts of Hitler’s personal life, including his relationship with his niece, Geli Raubal.

It is one of the few accounts written by someone who personally tracked the Nazi movement from its infancy. Heiden was a prominent anti-Nazi who fled Germany in 1933; his books were among those burned by the Nazis. While later research has corrected some factual inaccuracies, it remains essential for understanding how contemporaries viewed Hitler's psychological grip on Germany.

Konrad Heiden is often credited with popularizing the derogatory term "Nazi" as a shorthand for the National Socialist party.

1: Der Führer – Hitler's Rise to Power, by Konrad Heiden

2: This photograph depicts the extreme hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, specifically showing stacks of worthless German marks reaching from floor to ceiling in a Berlin bank. By 1923, the value of the currency had plummeted to such a degree that one American dollar was worth approximately 800 million German marks. The German government printed vast quantities of money to pay for debts incurred during World War I and to meet subsequent reparation payments. This economic collapse impoverished millions of people on fixed incomes and decimated the savings of the middle class.

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

Allied prosecutors press Raeder on naval documents indicating his awareness of Germany's aggressive intentions, including the naval buildup aimed at Britain and the planning behind the invasion of Norway. Represented by his defense counsel Dr. Walter Siemers, Raeder argues that the military actions were merely preventive measures rather than aggressive conspiracies, and that he was just following Hitler's directives.

He faces charges for Conspiracy, Crimes Against Peace, & War Crimes & he'll be found Guilty on all three Counts & Sentenced to Life Imprisonment.

Colonel Pokrovsky: You will be shown where they can be found on the original, and you can say whether it was correctly read into the record and whether you acknowledge and confirm it.

>"My Attitude Towards Adolf Hitler and the Party. Disastrous influence on the fate of the German State . . . "

[Note: This is a document written by Raeder in Moscow. Pokrovsky reads what Raeder wrote on Goering]:

>"Unimaginable vanity and immeasurable ambition were his main peculiarities; running after popularity and showing off, untruthfulness, vagueness, and selfishness, which were not restrained for the sake of State or People. He was outstanding in his greed, wastefulness, and effeminate unsoldierly manner."

Then, a little further on:

>"It is my conviction that Hitler very soon realized his character, but made use of him where it suited his purpose, and burdened him perpetually with new tasks in order to avoid his becoming dangerous to himself."

On Page 24 of your document you give another characteristic;

>"The Fuehrer continued to attach importance to the fact that from the outside his relations to me seemed normal and good. He knew I was well thought of in all the really respectable circles of the German people, and that in general everybody had great faith in me. This cannot be said of Goering, von Ribbentrop, Dr. Goebbels, Himmler and Dr. Ley."

Raeder: But there is something missing. "In the same way, as for instance, Baron von Neurath, Count Schwerin van Krosigk, Schacht, Dorpmueller and others," who were on the other side.

Colonel Pokrovsky: Evidently it was not correctly translated to you. I will read this passage into the record. Now, on Page 27, this place is underlined in red pencil:

>"Doenitz' strong political inclination to the Party..."

The President: [Interposing.] I think the Tribunal could read this themselves if the defendant says that it is true that he wrote it. Probably Dr. Siemers could check it over and see that there are no inaccuracies.

Colonel Pokrovsky: Very well, My Lord. Then I shall have the opportunity to put a very brief question. [Turning to the defendant.] I will ask you to take a look at a place on Page 29, which is marked with pencil, where the paragraph deals with Field Marshal Keitel and General Jodl. Will you confirm that?

Raeder: What am I supposed to do? Yes, well...

Colonel Pokrovsky: I am asking you with regard to everything that I read into the record and what you say just now in this paragraph. I would like to have an answer from you. Do you confirm all that?

Dr Siemers: Mr. President, I quite agree with the suggestion by the Tribunal. However, I should like to ask that the entire document be submitted. I have only short excerpts before me, and I would be grateful if I could see the entire document. I assume that Colonel Pokrovsky agrees to that.

The President: Certainly, Dr. Siemers, one part of the document having been put in evidence, you can refer to the remainder of the document. You can put the remainder of the document in, if you want to.

Raeder: I said that at the time I tried to find an explanation for the cause of our collapse.

Colonel Pokrovsky: First, I ask you to give the answer, yes or no.

Raeder: Yes. On the whole, I agree entirely with this judgment. But I should like to add that I wrote those things under entirely different conditions. I do not wish to go into details, and I never expected that that would ever become public. These were notes for myself to help me form my judgment later on.

I also want to ask especially that what I said about Generaloberst Jodl should also be read into the record, or where it belongs, that is, right after the statement about Field Marshal Keitel. With regard to Field Marshal Keitel, I should like to emphasize that I intended to convey that it was his manner towards the Fuehrer which made it possible for him to get along with him for a long time, because if anybody else had been in that position, who had a quarrel with the Fuehrer every day or every other day, then the work of the whole of the Armed Forces would have been impossible. That is the reason and the explanation of what I wanted to express by that statement.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05-21-46.asp

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Detailed Raeder Bio: https://ldfb.tripod.com/r01.html

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VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ybkyzdVGo

NOTE: As always, these excerpts from defendant's testimony should not necessarily be mistaken for fact. It should be kept in mind that they are the sometimes-desperate statements of hard-pressed defendants seeking to avoid culpability and shift responsibility from charges that—should they be found guilty—could possibly be punishable by death. -W

"During his interrogation in Moscow, Raeder had unburdened himself of some of his feelings about his fellow leaders in the Wehrmacht; and his opinions were now read in court.

'Speer flattered Doenitz's vanity, and vice versa,' Raeder declared.

>'Doenitz's strong political party inclination brought him difficulties as head of the navy. His last speech to the Hitler Youth, which was ridiculed in all circles, gave him in the navy the nickname of 'Hitlerbube Doenitz' (Hitlerboy Doenitz).'

'Keitel,' Raeder said, was 'a man of unimaginable weakness, who owes his long stay in his position to this characteristic. The Fuehrer could treat him as badly as he wished—he stood for it.'

'Goering,' Raeder asserted, 'had a disastrous effect on the fate of the German Reich. His main peculiarities were unimaginable vanity and unmeasurable ambition, running after popularity and showing off, untruthfulness, impracticality, and selfishness. He was outstanding in his greed, wastefulness, and soft unsoldierly manner.'

Doenitz, who had to sit brushing shoulders with Raeder for another three months, exploded:

>'A pissed-off jealous old man!' Keitel could not understand how Raeder could have dissembled respect and friendship for him through the years they had worked together, and was devastated by Raeder's statement.

'My defense has entered a new phase under wholly altered circumstances,' he (Raeder) enigmatically told his counsel, Otto Nelte, unrealistically failing to accept the fact that his defense had, for all practical purposes, been concluded. More than anything, these revelations, coming one by one, shattered the remnants of trust among the defendants—even those who maintained a semblance of unity wondered what each truly thought about the others.

From Justice at Nuremberg by Robert E. Conot:

Behind The Scenes of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder's Defense:

MORNING SESSION: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe brought out in cross-examination that the Geiman-British Naval Pact of 1935 was intended to curb German submarine production, but that the Nazis were most flagrant in their violation of this aspect of the pact.

Raeder was somewhat embarrassed by having the statement which he made to the Russians about Goering read to him for confirmation. He had stated that Goering used the marriage scandal of von Blomberg and the homosexual frame-up against von Fritsch to get rid of his rivals for Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht. This was a confirmation of Gisevius' testimony from an unexpected source.

Raeder hemmed and hawed but had to admit that that was what he thought at the time. Sir David pointed out the more ominous aspect of the frame-ups; namely that the two Commanders in Chief who might have protested against aggressive war were thus eliminated.

Sir David then reminded him of the various occasions at which Raeder must have recognized Hitler's aggressive intentions. Hitler's Hoszbach speech of November 5, 1937, had already been dismissed by Raeder as something not to be taken seriously. Hitler's expressed intention of smashing Czechoslovakia merely brought forth Raeder's comment,

>"Well , he wanted to smash lots of things."

Hitler's speech of May 23, 1939 (Schmundt speech) was only an "academic" discussion full of "exaggeration." And how about the order to march against Poland on the 27th of August, 1939, the prosecutor wanted to know. Raeder shifted uneasily in his seat, looked at the clock as though hoping to be "saved by the bell," and stammered something about Hitler's skill in avoiding war, and how he still did not believe that there was going to be war when Hitler gave the order to attack Poland.

[Raeder came back to the dock a little unnerved. Keitel and Ribbentrop made perfunctory comments of encouragement. Doenitz sat immobile. "Well , that's just the way it was," Raeder said nervously. "—I am sorry I had to show up Goering, but that's true too."]

LUNCH HOUR : Schacht laughed at Raeder's unwillingness to confirm what he had said about Goering's instigation of the General von Fritsch frame-up.

"Why are people so afraid to stick to what they know is true? I came right out and told them what I thought about Goering. He is a crooked character!"

Von Neurath was most interested in Raeder's version of the Hoszbach speech. "I had an entirely different view of that Hoszbach speech," he said. "It was not so 'academic' as Raeder pretends."

Von Papen showed what bothered him most about the question of aggression.

>"That Russian Non-Aggression Pact was the real betrayal! They called it a Non-Aggression Pact and at the same time had that secret clause partitioning Poland in advance!"

Down in the dock Sauckel was overheard trying to defend Raeder for being blamed for his presence at Hitler's Hoszbach speech. He mentioned to Keitel, Ribbentrop, and von Schirach that they all had been present at a Gauleiter meeting, (Keitel remembered that it was on May 31), at which Hitler discussed the extermination of the Jews. Ribbentrop remembered it and said,

>"Yes, if we had objected to it we would have been treated worse than the Jews."

AFTERNOON SESSION: Sir David forced Raeder into admitting that he had considered an attack on neutral ships, while he was flying false flags, as permissible in war, though it was considered piracy in maritime law. Raeder had also suggested an attack against Soviet submarines even six days before the attack on Russia.

He had also advocated unrestricted submarine warfare against British shipping, and all neutral shipping, and following international law only as long as it was expedient. Raeder sought to Justify all this as perfectly understandable measures in conducting a war.

The Russian prosecutor, Colonel Pokrovsky, then took Raeder's petty differences with Hitler as a point of departure. Raeder had testified that he had offered his resignation rather than consent to the marriage of one of his officers to a woman below his station.

The Russian prosecutor wanted to know whether the planned war against Russia, which Raeder claimed to have disapproved of, was not more serious cause for threatening to resign. Raeder apparently did not think so, because the former issue was a matter of 34 ° principle. The question of aggression against Russia, however, was not for him to decide.

A statement made by Raeder while in captivity in Moscow was read in part, denouncing Goering in scathing terms and pointing accusing fingers at various other people, including Doenitz and Keitel. Raeder's counsel objected to the reading of the statement, the court took the objection under advisement.

EVENING IN JAIL Doenitz' Cell: Doenitz was annoyed at the day's testimony and worried about what Raeder had said about him in his Moscow statement. Anyway, all he cared about was the statement that was forthcoming from Admiral Nimitz. His attitude seemed to be that the others will hang anyway, so why should he worry what they say about him.

Raeder's Cell: Raeder was somewhat overstimulated by the cross-examination, but relieved to have it over. He therefore opened up to me for the first time in six months. He explained that when he had signed that statement in Moscow, he was under the impression that he would not be tried as a war criminal. He thought that the Russians were very fine people, but they could lie like hell for political reasons.

He made the statements freely enough, he said, but before signing it asked whether he would have to confront the other's as a war criminal and was assured that he would not. However, what was said was true and it is just too bad if it embarrasses some people.

In any case, it really was madness to attack Russia, and he felt there was not the slightest doubt that they could have kept the peace with Russia. The Russians are actually very friendly people. Naturally, they now want hegemony in Europe after sacrificing so much, but that means that they will have to control the Mediterranean, and they do not know enough about seamanship for that.

(It occurred to me why Goering had mentioned to me slyly that the Russians would not let Raeder be executed, and hinted that the Russians had better use for Raeder. Doenitz had apparently decided that his trump card was to show the Americans that they had better use for him. Thus, the game of playing the East against the West continues behind the scenes, with the admirals already choosing up sides for the next war, before the peace treaty has even been signed for this one.)

Raeder was already reconciled to the death sentence, however.

>"I have no illusions about this trial.—Naturally, I will be hanged or shot.—I flatter myself to think that I will be shot; at least I will request it. I have no desire to serve a prison sentence at my age."

From “Nuremberg Diary”, by Gustave Gilbert (Formerly Prison Psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi War Criminals)

1: "I first saw Laura Knight’s Nuremberg Trial on the cover of a book, one published many years ago. It was a finely written account of the trial, by Ann and John Tusa. It has become a classic, we became neighbors.

The painting portrays the dock of Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice. We see 20 senior Nazis, seated in various modes of inattentiveness.

They are all German, and all men: no woman appears in the eye of this female painter, and the only women in the trial – stenographers, journalists, witnesses – are not apparent.

The painting evoked then, and still today, a sense of how the courtroom must have felt, an image that buried itself into my consciousness. Perhaps this is because most of the images of the trial are in black and white, and here we have colours both vivid and dull. They offset the excitement of a trial that was unique in human history – this was the first time ever that the leaders of any country found themselves before an international court of justice – with the daily mundanity of criminal procedure.

There is here too a powerful sense of structure. In the midst of the dullness, the white helmets of the military guards stand out, offering a sense of order against a backdrop of ruin and explosive mayhem. The white pages being studied by the defendants offer a tantalising possibility of detail, but one that will not be available to us. We can but imagine what it is that these men grapple with.

Over the years I have come to know the details of the trial. Immediately behind the guards is a sliding wooden door, through which each defendant will pass to enter Courtroom 600, disgorged from the elevator that has conveyed them from their place of incarceration to this space of public shaming. Only if you know it to be there can you see it. The judges too are out of the frame, sitting opposite these defendants, eight men who have become the holders of power in the shift that has occurred in this courtroom.

Finally, the arrangement of the defendants is puzzling. At the end of the front row one can see the oversized figure of Hermann Goering, in his white suit, sitting where he actually sat throughout the trial. Yet many of the others defendants have been shifted around by the artist, for reasons that cannot be known. Hans Frank, the defendant I have come to know best, who was Adolf Hitler’s personal lawyer and later Governor General of occupied Poland, on whose territory were constructed many of the most notorious death camps, actually sat in the front row, six along from Goering. Yet Knight has moved him to the end of the second row, far from Goering. His right hand bears the scars of a failed suicide attempt, and the artist has removed the glove he wore each day in the trial.

What prompted the changes? The question in no way diminishes from the great power of the work, an image of once powerful men reduced to fearful spectators of their own imminent demise." -Philippe Sands, QC

• 1. As far as accommodation facilities on board permit, captains and chief engineers of sunken ships are to be brought in. The enemy tries to thwart this intention and has issued the following order: (a) masters are not allowed to identify themselves when questioned, but should if possible use sailors selected especially for this purpose; (b) crew has to state that masters and chief engineers remained on board. If in spite of energetic questioning it is not possible to find the masters or the chief engineers, then other ships' officers should be taken aboard.
• 2. Masters and officers of neutral ships, which, according to Standing Order Number 101, can be sunk (for instance, Swedish ships outside Goteborg traffic), are not to be brought in because internment of these officers would violate international law.
• 3. In case ship officers cannot be taken prisoner, other white members of the crew should be taken along as far as accommodation facilities and further operations of the craft permit, for the purpose of interrogation for military and propaganda purposes.
• 4. In case of the sinking of a single cruising destroyer, corvette, or escort vessel, try at all costs to take prisoners, if that can be done without endangering the boat. Interrogation of the prisoners at transit camps . . . can produce valuable hints as to antisubmarine tactics, devices, and weapons used by the enemy; the same applies to air crews of shot-down planes.

From Doenitz's interview by the US SBS Team:

>From April 1943 onward, we had very severe losses, and the numbers had again dropped. It came down again to probably 60. After April 1943, losses were much higher, and the new construction could not keep up. For instance in May 1943, we lost 42 submarines. Our total then was 22 loss, because only 20 were built. 1943 marked a decrease in our submarines and fewer successes.

>Toward the end of 1943 and (the) beginning of 1944, there were thirty to forty submarines in the combat zone. I had then decided to build a new type submarine, which did not need to surface, because I knew I was beaten by the aircraft as long as I stayed on the surface. When I started this production, the number of U-boats in the operation zone suffered through that again, and came down to 20 or 25.

>I let the old submarines run out of production gradually, and started building more and more of the new types. The drawings for the new submarines were made in the summer of 1943, and completed in December, 1943. The boats were then built in 1944. They included two types. A large one of 1500 tons and a small one of about 300 tons. At the time of capitulation, we had about five of the small ones—Type XXIII—in the combat zone, and of the large ones—Type XXI—only one boat went to sea, and it did not reach the combat zone. ...

>There were about 15 or 20 of the old type, and these were modified by the addition of the 'Schnorchel.' That was a sort of air mast which enabled the submarine to stay under water ... Just about all (of the U-boats) that went to the combat zone (were fitted with Schnorchels). That would make about 120 altogether."

NOTE: As always, these excerpts from defendant's testimony should not necessarily be mistaken for fact. It should be kept in mind that they are the sometimes-desperate statements of hard-pressed defendants seeking to avoid culpability and shift responsibility from charges that—should they be found guilty—could possibly be punishable by death.

CONTEXT: https://propagander2.tripod.com/d02.html#075

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"Black May refers to May 1943 in the Battle of the Atlantic campaign during World War II, when the Kriegsmarine U-boat arm (U-Bootwaffe) suffered high casualties with fewer Allied ships sunk; it is considered a watershed in the Battle of the Atlantic."----> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_May_(1943)

1: The Royal Navy during the Second World War Depth charges exploding after being dropped by the destroyer HMS VANOC over the spot indicated by the submarine detecting apparatus, which reported a contact during an Atlantic Convoy. Some crew members can be seen at the stern watching the explosion.

2: This historic photograph depicts the final moments of the German Type XB submarine U-118 during WW2. On June 12, 1943, U-118 was attacked in the Atlantic by aircraft operating from the U.S. Navy escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE-9). The image captures depth charges exploding around the surfaced submarine, released by Lieutenant Junior Grade Fryatt. The submarine was sunk during this engagement, resulting in the deaths of 43 crew members.

3: This image captures a pivotal moment in the Battle of the Atlantic during WW2: The ship is the SS Pennsylvania Sun, an American motor tanker. The vessel is shown burning after being torpedoed amidships by the German submarine U-571. The attack occurred on July 15, 1942, approximately 125 miles west of Key West, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite severe damage from the torpedo strike and fire, the tanker was repaired and returned to service in 1943.

Its purpose, as Ringelblum described it in his letter of this day, was to gather "materials and documents relating to the martyrology of the Jews in Poland."

A large staff worked systematically to this end, stimulating the production of diaries, chronicles, all sorts of descriptive and analytic writings on every phase of Jewish life under German occupation—political, religious, economic, cultural.

Photographs, posters, announcements, official reports, ghetto wit and humor, statistics—all became valuable documentation for Oneg Shabbat.

[FN: Much of the assembled material was buried in crates in the ghetto and uncovered after the war. Originals of the exhumed materials are in the Zydowski Instytut Historyczny in Warsaw; Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has copies of a great deal. Some material is also at the YIVO Archives in New York.]

In Lodz, Vilna, and Bialystok, too, groups of writers, intellectuals, and communal leaders gathered and prepared materials to document the Jewish experience under German rule. The idea of preserving a record for history and posterity inspired hundreds, perhaps thousands of Jews in the ghettos of Eastern Europe to keep diaries or accounts of their beleaguered existence.

The diary became an expression of the will to live the vehicle through which posthumousness, a modest form of immortality, would be conferred on them.

In his essay on the ghetto, Kalmanovich referred to the ghetto's social, educational, and cultural institutions as "the clear victory of spirit over matter."

For the time that the ghetto Jews managed to cling to familiar cultural terrain, they triumphed over the Germans. The strategy of the communal leadership in the functional welfare, religious, educational, and cultural groupings was to hold back the tide of barbarism and create islands of civilization, normality, and decency.

Operating under terror, amid hunger and disease, they succeeded in helping those they reached to retain and enrich their humanity."

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

Emanuel Ringelblum and the Creation of the Oneg Shabbat Archive - Key Facts

1 - Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-1944) was a Warsaw-based historian, political activist, and social welfare worker prominent in Jewish self-aid efforts.

2 - In the Warsaw ghetto, he founded a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events taking place in German-occupied Poland while the ghetto existed. This archive came to be known as the “Oneg Shabbat” (literally “Joy of the Sabbath,” also known as the Ringelblum Archive).

3 - Only partly recovered after the war, the Ringelblum Archive remains an invaluable source about life in the ghetto and German policy toward the Jews of Poland. - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/emanuel-ringelblum-and-the-creation-of-the-oneg-shabbat-archive

1: Emanuel Ringelblum (1900–1944), a noted Polish-Jewish historian and community leader, and his only son, Uri (also known as Uriel). They were murdered together by the Nazis in March 1944.

2: Researchers from the Jewish Historical Institute classifying the Ringelblum archive. Warsaw, Poland, December 1950

3: Metal boxes and milk cannisters in which parts of the Oneg Shabbat Archive were hidden, Warsaw, Poland

4: Unearthing of the hidden "Oneg Shabbat" archives after the war. Warsaw, Poland

At the young age of thirteen, she witnessed terrible acts of destruction aimed at her community. Soon after the occupation began, two thousand people, mostly intellectuals, were murdered. A ghetto was established for the remaining Jewish population.

A NEW DREAM

Tamara was a highly intelligent girl with a deep passion for knowledge. It must have been very difficult for her to see how little education and intelligence mattered in the ghetto. She wondered how she would be able to continue to learn and to prepare herself for a useful life under the restrictions and deprivations of Nazi rule. She felt lost when she could not read and study. When she was able to engage in productive activities, she felt better.

On May 20th, 1943, she wrote with satisfaction that she had reached a decision about her future. She had managed to find a goal worth fighting for.

>“I am very pleased with myself. It seemed to me that I had strayed and have been wandering about aimlessly. And now at long last, I have found an aim in life. I am no longer forlorn – an individual without a homeland and a people. No! I have found an aim: to struggle, to study, to devote my strength to advance the well-being of my people and my homeland.”

Tamara found inspiration in her commitment to seek her future in Eretz, Israel. Even though she was trapped in Nazi occupied Europe and faced death every day, she had a goal in mind. This gave her strength to struggle to survive. She was able to avoid the twin pitfalls that snared some of the other young people in the ghetto; licentiousness and despair.

Tamara still had many trials and losses ahead of her, but she survived the Holocaust. Like all survivors, she needed a great deal of strength and also a bit of luck. Eventually she realized her dream of a new life in Israel.

You may read excerpts from Tamara’s diary in Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries by Laurel Holliday." (holocaustedu)

"Between 1920 and 1939, Kovno (Kaunas), located in central Lithuania was the country's capital and largest city. The city had a Jewish population of 35,000-40,000, about one-fourth of the city's total population. Jews were concentrated in the city's commercial, artisan, and professional sectors.

Kovno was also a center of Jewish learning. The yeshiva in Slobodka, an impoverished district of the city, was one of Europe's most prestigious institutions of higher Jewish learning. Kovno had a rich and varied Jewish culture. The city had almost 100 Jewish organizations, 40 synagogues, many Yiddish schools, 4 Hebrew high schools, a Jewish hospital, and scores of Jewish-owned businesses. It was also an important Zionist center.

Kovno's Jewish life was disrupted when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940. The occupation was accompanied by arrests, confiscations, and the elimination of all free institutions. Jewish communal organizations disappeared almost overnight." DETAILS---> https://jewishmag.com/154mag/kovno_ghetto/kovno_ghetto.htm

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VIDEO - Oral history interview with Tamar Lazerson - https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511034

>"Dear Wolff (In German: Liebes Wolffchen)

>In reference to your telegram of 12 May, our sanitary inspector reports to me that the altitude experiments carried out by the SS and Air Force at Dachau have been finished. Any continuation of these experiments seems not to be necessary.

>However, the carrying out of experiments of some other kind, in regard to perils on the high seas, would be important. These have been prepared in immediate agreement with the proper offices; Major Weltz (Medical Corps) will be charged with the execution and Captain Rascher (Medical Corps) will be made available until further orders, in addition to his duties within the Medical Corps of the Air Corps.

>A change of these measures does not appear necessary, and an enlargement of the task is not considered pressing at this time. The low-pressure chamber would not be needed for these low-temperature experiments. It is urgently needed at another place and therefore can no longer remain in Dachau.

>I convey the special thanks from the Supreme Commander of the Air Corps to the SS for their extensive cooperation. I remain with best wishes for you in good comradeship and with Heil Hitler!

>Always yours, E. Milch."

Generalfieldmarschall Erhard Milch sent this secret letter (Nuremberg Document PS-343) to SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the chief of Heinrich Himmler’s personal staff. In this correspondence, Milch confirmed that the high-altitude experiments at Dachau had concluded but expressed a critical need to begin freezing (hypothermia) experiments to aid the Luftwaffe.

Milch noted that high-altitude research at Dachau, conducted by Sigmund Rascher, was finished and saw no further reason to continue that specific work. He emphasized the importance of starting new experiments concerning "perils on the high seas"—specifically how pilots might survive immersion in cold water after being shot down.

Milch requested that Dr. Rascher remain available for these tasks under the command of Oberstabsarzt Weltz, though Rascher would technically remain attached to the Air Force. This letter served as a formal link between the Luftwaffe leadership and the SS, facilitating the transition from pressure chamber torture to the lethal freezing experiments that began in August 1942.

The letter was used during the Nuremberg Trials (specifically the Milch Case) to prove that high-ranking military leaders were not only aware of but actively requested these medical crimes. These experiments involved submerged victims in ice water for hours to record death rates and test "rewarming" methods, often involving forced sexual contact or boiling water.

Erhard Milch was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg, largely due to his role in the slave labor program and his administrative facilitation of these experiments. Erhard Milch was the Secretary of State for Aviation and second-in-command of the Luftwaffe under Hermann Göring.

Dachau: High Altitude Experiments - https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/high-altitude-experiments

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

"During World War II, Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments on concentration-camp inmates. They performed these studies without the consent of the victims, who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in many cases death as a result. At the Nuremberg "doctor's trial," which brought 23 German doctors to trial immediately after the war, prosecutors found 15 defendants guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity; seven were hung. Here are some of the most notorious experiments-------> https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiside.html

1: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, by Robert Jay Lifton - This is a seminal psychiatric study of how German physicians transitioned from healers to killers during the Holocaust. Based on a decade of research and interviews with former Nazi doctors and survivors, Lifton explores the "biomedical vision" that framed genocide as a necessary medical procedure to "heal" the Aryan race.

Lifton’s primary theory suggests doctors created a "second self" to function in death camps like Auschwitz while maintaining a "normal" domestic self. This dissociation allowed them to participate in atrocities without losing their sense of being "good" people.

The Nazi ideology viewed the Jewish population as a "cancer" or "infection" in the Germanic "body politic". Doctors justified mass murder as a form of "surgical" intervention required for racial purification. The belief that the state is a biological organism and the physician's role is to ensure its health by eliminating "unfit" or "poisonous" elements.

Josef Mengele was the archetypal fanatic who viewed himself as a "biological revolutionary" and internalized Nazi ideology most completely. Eduard Wirths, the chief doctor at Auschwitz, described by some as "decent" or "kind," who nonetheless organized the camp's entire death machinery

This move marks a critical shift from the previous Nazi policy of forced emigration toward the systematic genocide later known as the "Final Solution". Thus ends the phase where Nazis encouraged Jewish emigration to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews).

The timing of this circular is tied to the preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In March 1941, Hitler addressed his generals, stating the upcoming war would be a "war of annihilation". He declared that the war in the East would not follow "normal rules" of military conduct. This ideological shift paves the way for the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) to begin mass murders shortly after the invasion began in June 1941.

March 1941: Hitler briefs generals on the unconventional nature of the Eastern war.

May 20, 1941: Schellenberg's circular bans emigration from Western Europe.

July 31, 1941: Hermann Göring officially commissions Heydrich to prepare a "total solution" plan.

October 23, 1941: A general ban on all Jewish emigration from the Reich is issued.

January 20, 1942: The Wannsee Conference coordinates the logistical execution of the Holocaust across Europe.

"Walter Schellenberg, acting for Heydrich, notified the departments of the Security Police by circular that "in view of the undoubtedly imminent Final Solution of the Jewish question," the emigration of Jews from France and Belgium was to be forbidden.

This decree was issued two months after Hitler had addressed the assembled generals and disclosed his views on the conduct of the war in the East that "deviated from the normal rules."

From Hitler and the Final Solution, by Gerald Fleming

"Walter Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming one of the highest ranking men in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and eventually assumed the position as head of foreign intelligence for Nazi Germany following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944." ALL THE DETAILS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Schellenberg

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Several factors determined the ebb and flow of emigration of Jews from Germany.---> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-jewish-refugees-1933-1939

IMAGE: Jewish refugee children look out of the train window as they leave Berlin. They were on a Kindertransport from Germany. Schlesischen train station, Berlin, Germany, November 29-30, 1938.

>“‘Out, out, out, out!’ We were shocked, we didn’t know what was going on, where we are, we saw only SS with dogs and we saw in the distance symmetric lights–thousands of lights. Out we came from these wagons and we had to line up, and there were people with striped uniforms. … I asked one of them, ‘Where are we?’ Without looking at me he said, ‘Auschwitz.’ … ‘What is Auschwitz?’” -Ruth Elias, Auschwitz survivor

"On May 20, 1940, the first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz. The transport consisted of some 30 German inmates, categorized as "professional criminals." The SS had selected them from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside of Berlin. Less than a month later, on June 14, German authorities in occupied Poland deported 728 Polish prisoners from a prison in Tarnow to Auschwitz. This was the first of many transports of Poles to the Auschwitz camp.

Like most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed for three purposes:

To incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time

To provide a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned construction-related enterprises (and, later, armaments and other war-related production)

To serve as a site to kill small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany.

Like some concentration camps, Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium. Initially, SS engineers constructed an improvised gas chamber in the basement of the prison block, Block 11. Later a larger, permanent gas chamber was constructed as part of the original crematorium in a separate building outside the prisoner compound.

At Auschwitz I, SS physicians carried out medical experiments in the hospital, Barrack (Block) 10. They conducted pseudoscientific research on infants, twins, and dwarfs, and performed forced sterilizations and castrations of adults. The best-known of these physicians was SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele..." SO MUCH MORE, SADLY—> https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz

1: Arrival of a transport of prisoners from the Carpathians at the main ramp at Auschwitz.

Served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) & worked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

He famously opposed the mass internment of Japanese Americans, though he was ultimately overruled by FDR. Managed the prosecution of Nazi saboteurs captured on U.S. soil (the Quirin case). Advocated for a fair, judicial process for Nazi war criminals rather than summary execution. A staunch defender of the New Deal and executive power during wartime.

Born into a prominent family; he was a descendant of Edmund Randolph, the first U.S. Attorney General. Graduated from Harvard Law School. Authored several books, including his memoirs In Brief Authority and a biography of Justice Holmes.

Biddle is often remembered as the "conscience" of the Roosevelt administration for his internal resistance to Executive Order 9066 (Japanese internment).

"Jackson then took occasion to admonish his fellow prosecutors on the importance of having their government s appoint distinguished jurists to the Tribunal, and disclosed that he planned to discuss the subject with President Truman..

If Jackson had hoped to influence the selection he was disappointed for when he met with Truman on September 5, the President told him that he wished to appoint Francis Biddle, the former Attorney General, who had resigned at Truman's request about six weeks after Roosevelt's death.

The President candidly admitted that he wante d to make amends to Biddle for this abrupt dismissal, and Jackson had little choice but to assent. Truman then revealed that Secretary of State Byrnes , a South Carolinian, wanted to appoint a judge from that state as the alternate member of the Tribunal.

Jackson countered by suggesting John J. Parker, a North Carolinian, presiding judge of the federal court of appeals for the Fourth Circuit and a jurist of considerable distinction." Truman approved this proposal.

Despite his friendly personal relations with Biddle, Jackson was disappointed by the selection. Biddle had served for a few months as a federal circuit court judge, but had made no secret of his distaste for the bench, and when Jackson became Attorney General, Biddle had happily left the court to take Jackson's place as Solicitor General.

When Jackson was appointed to the Supreme Court, Biddle took his place as Attorn y General. Thus, although in age Biddle was six years Jackson's senior, professionally Jackson regarded him as a junior.

Biddle was in fact an able lawyer and a charming man, but was not generally regarded as a great jurist. He was not the prestigious judicial figure Jackson had been hoping to attract.

Biddle probably owed his selection to Byrnes, with whom he had established close relations during the war and who telephoned Biddle to offer the appointment. Biddle, who was chafing in inactivity, accepted with alacrity, on condition that his wife be allowed to accompany him.

At that time Americans serving in occupied Germany and Austria were not allowed to bring in their families, but Truman gave Biddle a letter of authorization, which did not, however, prove immediately effective and which ultimately led to friction between Biddle and Jackson.

Parker, on the other hand, accepted only reluctantly; he was troubled about "leaving home and his comfortable, well-defined life " and felt that "as an alternate he would be a voteless cipher."

Biddle assured him that "except for voting, his status would be identical with mine," and on that basis Parker agreed to go."

From The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir, by Telford Taylor**<—Recommended Reading!**

FULL BIO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Biddle

IMAGE: Francis Biddle (far right) with other judges at the Nuremberg trials (from left) Iona Nikitchenko (Soviet Union), Norman Birkett and Geoffrey Lawrence (United Kingdom).

This session primarily scrutinizes Raeder's early efforts to rebuild the German Navy in secret & his role in planning aggressive wars. Pokrovsky confronts Raeder with evidence of clandestine naval expansion before 1935, a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Raeder argues that these measures were "purely defensive" and authorized by the Reich Government. The prosecution emphasizes Raeder's personal influence on Hitler to launch Operation Weserübung (the invasion of Norway & Denmark), asserting it was a pre-meditated act of aggression rather than a "preventive" strike.

Similar to the case against Karl Dönitz, Raeder is questioned on the sinking of neutral merchant ships and the failure to rescue survivors, which violated the London Naval Protocol.

Raeder admitted to passing down Hitler's 1942 order to execute Allied commandos, though he claims it was handled by the Naval War Staff and not the SD.

Raeder will eventually be found Guilty on three Counts: Conspiracy, Crimes Against Peace, & War Crimes.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: Defendant, I am going to pass to another subject, and I want to put quite shortly and bluntly, as you will appreciate, the point the Prosecution puts to you, that for 20 years, from 1918 to 1938, you and the German Navy had been involved in a course of complete, cold and deliberate deception of your treaty obligations. That is what I am putting to you. Do you understand? After these documents, do you deny that that is so?

Raeder: Of course. It was not a cold-blooded affair. All our evasions of the Versailles Treaty were due to our desire to be able to defend our country more efficiently than we had been allowed to. I have proved here that in the Versailles regulations the only points restricted were those unfavorable to the defense of our country and favoring aggression from without.

As regards the ships, I may add that we could never complete any very great number of ships, and consequently we were interested in increasing as far as possible the power of resistance, that is, their seagoing security, et cetera. At no time did we increase the offensive power above the strength which was permitted.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: Defendant, I want you to understand what my next series of questions is directed to. I don't want there to be any misapprehension. I am now going to suggest to you that these breaches of treaty and your naval plans were directed toward the possibility, and then the probability of war. I would just like you to take the same document that I have been dealing with, C-23. We will use that to pass from one to the other.

Would you turn to Page 5 of Document Book 10, and there you will see that there is a memorandum, I think of the Planning Committee to the Flottenchef, Admiral Carls. We have heard your view of Admiral Carls, that you thought he was a very good officer, and in fact he was your first choice for your successor.

Now, that is in September 1938, and it is a top secret opinion on the strategic study of naval warfare against England, and you see "A" says:

>"There is full agreement with the main theme of the study."

Now, look at Paragraph 1:

>"If, according to the Fuehrer's decision, Germany is to acquire a position as a world power, she needs not only sufficient colonial possessions, but also secure naval communications and secure access to the oceans."

Do you agree with that, Defendant?

Raeder: Yes, that is correct. I know the whole document.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: Now, look at 2:

>"Both these requirements can only be fulfilled in opposition to Anglo-French interests, and would limit their position as world powers. It is unlikely that this can be achieved by peaceful means. The decision to make Germany a world power, therefore, forces upon us the necessity of -making corresponding preparations for war."

Do you agree with that?

Raeder: Yes, that is all quite correct.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: Now, let's take 3:

>"War against England means at the same time war against the Empire, against France, probably against Russia as well, and a large number of countries overseas-in fact, against half to two-thirds of the whole world."

I needn't ask you about that, because the facts have shown it.

Now, look at the next: "It can only be justified...."

Raeder: Yes, but I must be allowed to comment on that document.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: Oh certainly, I'm sorry. We got on so quickly I thought we were not going to have any explanation.

Raeder: In 1938, as has been stated here quite often, the Fuehrer's attitude towards Great Britain became more difficult in spite of all the efforts of General Von Blomberg and myself to tell him that it was not so on England's side, and that it was possible to live in peace with England. In spite of that the Fuehrer ordered us to prepare for possible opposition by England to his plans.

He for his part never contemplated a war of aggression against Great Britain; and we in the Navy still much less; in fact, I have proved that I did nothing but try to dissuade him from that. In 1938 he ordered us to make a study similar to those we had already made in the case of other possibilities of war-which it was the duty of the Wehrmacht Command to do-but dealing with the course which a war against England might take and what we would require for it.

This study was prepared, and I reported to the Fuehrer that we could never increase our fighting forces to such an extent that we could undertake a war against England with any prospect of success-- it would have been madness for me to say such a thing. I told him-that has repeatedly been mentioned- that by 1944 or 1945 we might build up a small naval force with which we could start an economic war against England or seize her commercial shipping routes, but that we would never really be in a position to defeat England with that force. I sent this study, which was compiled under my guidance in the Naval Operations Staff, to Generaladmiral Carls who was very clear-sighted in all such questions.

He thought it his duty to explain in this introduction of his reply, which agreed with our opinion, the consequences which such a war against Great Britain would have for ourselves, namely, that it would bring about a new world war, which neither he nor we in the Navy nor anyone in the Armed Forces wanted- in my opinion, not even Hitler himself, as I proved the other day-hence this statement.

He said that if we must have war with England, it was essential that we should first of all have access to the ocean and, secondly, that we should attack English trade on the sea route of the Atlantic. Not that he proposed that we, on our part, should embark on such a venture. He was only thinking of the case of such a war breaking out very much against our will. It was our duty to go thoroughly into the matter.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe: He says that, "The war against it"-that is the war against England-"can only be justified and have a chance of success if it is prepared economically as well as politically and militarily." Then you go on to say "waged with the aim of conquering for Germany an outlet to the ocean."

Now, I just want to see how you prepared.

Raeder: Yes, that is quite clear and quite correct.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05-20-46.asp

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VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlp1x23g_es

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Detailed Raeder Bio: https://ldfb.tripod.com/r01.html

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

1: This image is a satirical cartoon from a Soviet newspaper titled "At the Nuremberg Trials: Their Portraits". The illustration was drawn by Kukryniksy, a famous collective of three Soviet artists known for their political caricatures. The cartoon portrays Nazi war criminals, specifically Karl Dönitz & Erich Raeder, who were commanders of the German Navy during WW2. It was published around December 1945 during the Nuremberg Trials, where these leaders were prosecuted for war crimes.

Helena Płotnicka (1902–1944) was a heroic member of the Polish resistance who risked her life to provide aid to prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Living in the nearby village of Przecieszyn, she became a vital link between the camp's underground and the outside world.

She secretly brought food, medicine, and clothing into the camp. Płotnicka carried illegal messages and reports out of the camp, including those from Witold Pilecki. She reportedly baked bread at home and carried it 10 miles to the camp zone each night.

She was an active soldier in the underground Bataliony Chłopskie (Peasants' Battalions). The Gestapo arrested her on May 19, 1943, for her resistance activities She was registered as prisoner number 65492 and eventually transferred to the Birkenau women's camp.

Helena died of typhus in the camp on March 17, 1944, at the age of 41. She is remembered as one of the approximately 1,200 to 1,500 local Poles who risked execution to aid Auschwitz prisoners. Her story and mementoes are honored at the Remembrance Museum of Land of Oświęcim Residents.

1: Władysława Kożusznik (left) and Helena Płotnicka. Both were actively involved in helping KL Auschwitz prisoners. After her arrest for her resistance activities, Helena Płotnicka was taken to KL Auschwitz. She died in the camp hospital in March 1944. Photo: from the archives of the Remembrance Museum of Land of Oświęcim Residents. https://www.muzeumpamieci.pl/womans-face-of-aid/?lang=en

"The Celestynów Action (19–20 May 1943) was an action to free prisoners transported by rail from Warsaw to Auschwitz-Birkenau at the railway station in Celestynów.

The operation was entrusted to the Kedyw dispatch unit of the Home Army Headquarters "Motor 30". Captain Mieczysław Kurkowski "Mietek" was appointed commander, and cadet Tadeusz Zawadzki a.k.a. "Zośka" was appointed his deputy. The observer on behalf of the command was Captain Adam Borys "Pług".

The action was carried out on the night of 19 to 20 May 1943. The railway station was taken over, telephone communication was cut off, and when the train entered the platform, another patrol terrorized the steam locomotive operator. The main group of scouts from the Assault Groups attacked the Gestapo men protecting the prisoner attached to the train. The result of these actions was the release of 49 prisoners, who were safely evacuated. Four Gestapo men guarding them were killed.

At the end of the action, shots were unexpectedly fired from the side of the train, which mortally wounded two of its participants: Lieutenant Stanisław Kotorowicz "Kron" and Lieutenant Włodzimierz Stysło "Jan II". These were the only losses on the Polish side, apart from the slightly wounded Wacław Dunin-Karwicki a.k.a. "Luty", who died on 21 November 1944 as a result of wounds sustained during the Warsaw Uprising.

The action was successful and confirmed the command skills of "Zośka"." https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akcja_w_Celestynowie

1: This image features members of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the primary underground resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during WW2. The Home Army was one of the largest armed resistance movements in Europe, boasting an estimated 400,000 members by 1944. Following the war, many of these soldiers became known as "Cursed Soldiers," continuing their fight against the Sovietization of Poland and the communist regime. Soldiers engaged in sabotage, intelligence gathering, and armed combat against occupying forces, often operating from forest bases.

This horrific milestone follows years of escalating persecution & systemic violence aimed at the complete removal of the Jewish population from German soil. By 1943, the "Final Solution" is in full effect across occupied Europe. Between 1941 and 1943, tens of thousands of German Jews were deported to ghettos and death camps in the East, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In February 1943, a massive roundup targeted the remaining Jewish laborers working in Berlin's armament factories. Despite the Nazi claim, an estimated 7,000 Jews remain in hiding within Berlin alone. These individuals, known as "U-Boats," survived in the underground through the help of resistance networks and brave non-Jewish citizens.

Only about 1,500 of those in hiding in Berlin will survive until the end of the war in 1945.

The declaration is used by Goebbels to signal the "purity" of the Reich to the German public. It marks the transition from a Germany with a persecuted minority to a state that had officially "erased" a specific demographic.

While the Nazis declare victory in their campaign of expulsion, the declaration is a lie designed for propaganda; thousands continue to resist and hide in the heart of the Reich until liberation.

"Judenfrei (German: [ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʁaɪ], "free of Jews") and judenrein (German: [ˈjuːdn̩ˌʁaɪn], "clean of Jews") are terms of Nazi origin to designate an area that has been "cleansed" of Jews during the Holocaust.

While judenfrei refers merely to "freeing" an area of all of its Jewish inhabitants, the term judenrein (literally "clean of Jews") has the even stronger connotation that any trace of Jewish blood had been removed as an alleged impurity in the minds of Nazis.

These terms of racial discrimination and racial abuse are intrinsic to Nazi antisemitism and were used by the Nazis in Germany before World War II and in occupied countries such as Poland in 1939.

Judenfrei describes the local Jewish population having been removed from a town, region, or country by forced evacuation during the Holocaust, though many Jews were hidden by local people. Removal methods included forced re-housing in Nazi ghettos especially in eastern Europe, and forced removal or resettlement to the East by German troops, often to their deaths. Most Jews were identified from late 1941 by the yellow badge as a result of pressure from Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler.

Following the defeat of Germany in 1945, some attempts have been made to attract Jewish people back to Germany, as well as reconstruct synagogues destroyed during and after Kristallnacht." ALL THE DETAILS---> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenfrei

NOTE: We apologize for the historic Antisemitic images used to illustrate this important story.

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

1: "Whoever wears this sign is an enemy of our people" – Parole der Woche, 1 July 1942 showing a yellow badge used by the Nazis to identify Jews

2: Synagogue in German-occupied Bydgoszcz, Poland, September 1939. The inscription in German reads: "This city is free of Jews!"

3: German map showing the number of Jewish executions carried out by Einsatzgruppe A in: Estonia (declared judenfrei), Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia

4: Advertisement for a café in Tübingen, describing itself as judenfrei

5: Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944

The aim of the Klosterprozesse (Monastery Trials) is to destroy the Church's authority & justify the seizure of its property, marking a strategic shift toward public defamation and a clear breach of the 1933 Concordat.

"Though Hitler felt a particular urgency and hatred when dealing with Jews and Communists, he viewed the Catholic Church as a pernicious opponent, a deeply-entrenched threat that must be controlled and eventually uprooted from German life in order to establish his promised Thousand-Year-Reich. . . . .

The 'Immorality' trials sought to destroy the reputation of Catholic religious, aimed in particular at those working in primary and secondary schools. Priests, monks, lay-brothers and nuns were accused of "perverted and immoral" lifestyles — euphemisms for homosexuality and pedophilia. The Gestapo set numerous traps in order to furnish bogus evidence.

The New York Times carried a report in May 1936 describing priests who had been summoned to hotel rooms after desperate messages to administer the last sacraments were received. When the priest entered, the 'caller' would turn out to be a prostitute, planted by government agents. Photos would be later produced in court as irrefutable evidence of corruption.

One notorious trial in 1936 concerned the Franciscans of the Rhineland town of Waldbreitbach. This was widely publicised and parents were warned in sanctimoniously penned editorials not to allow their children to enter Catholic schools if they wished to avoid corruption of the innocent. Even children themselves were encouraged to read the lurid accounts.

In several cities, newspaper stands were purposely lowered so youngsters could read salacious and pornographic stories accompanied by cartoons in the pages of Der Stuermer (the newspaper controlled by Julius Streicher, notorious anti-Semite and anti-Catholic). Witness statements from children were produced in court by secret police whose testimony was not challengeable. Threats, bribes, brutal night-time interrogations and nervous breakdowns of the accused were reported in various newspapers outside Germany.

In the USA, protest meetings and marches were organised as news of the trials spread. In June 1936, a petition was signed by 48 clergymen. "We lodge a solemn protest against the almost unique brutality of the attacks launched by the German government charging Catholic clergy with gross immorality," they wrote. "The good name of the Catholic priesthood is to be defamed, in the hope that the ultimate suppression of all Jewish and Christian beliefs by the totalitarian state can be effected."

This protest was signed by Rabbis Samuel Abrams of Boston, Philip Bernstein of Rochester and Philip Bookstaber of Harrisburg, along with 18 other Rabbis and 27 Protestant clergymen. The New York Times reported that Christmas 1937 would see "more than a hundred Protestant pastors and several thousand Catholic clergymen in prison." MUCH MORE—> https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/history/nazi-policy-and-the-catholic-church.html

1: This photograph captures a significant moment in Nazi Germany's attempt to control religious institutions: The man in the center wearing the clerical gown and cross is Ludwig Müller, a high-ranking Nazi who was appointed as the "Reich Bishop". This scene is from his inauguration ceremony at the Berlin Cathedral on September 23, 1934.

Müller was a leader of the "German Christian" movement, which aimed to align Protestantism with Nazi ideology, including race-based doctrines. Despite his title, Müller's actual power faded over time as the Nazi government took direct control over church affairs through other authorities.

>“I have written several times about a question that has been bothering me for some time; namely, what will I be when I am on my own, which I imagine will be in about five or six years.”

Moshe was a deeply religious young man who wrote with great feeling and insight about the persecution he faced living in German-occupied Belgium. His diary began in November, 1942 when he was sixteen, and continued until September 1943. Eight months later, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz. He did not survive.

Moshe’s diary is about much more than the daily hardships he faced under Nazi tyranny. He wrote about his religious ideals, his philosophy of life, and his struggle to discern the meaning of the events that engulfed him.

Though he struggled with despair, the act of writing showed that he was still concerned with the future and that he had not given up hope. In the end, his diary is testimony to the strength of his spirit in the face of oppression." (holocaustedu)

“What is to Become of Me?” - Diary Entry of Moshe Flinker, a Young Jewish Refugee in Belgium - December 8, 1942: https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202250.pdf

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ABOUT Young Moshe's Diary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Moshe%27s_Diary

"In the early months of its rule the Nazi Party had to resort to numerous temporary measures, among them the use of regular state policemen to guard the protective custody prisoners in Dachau.

During the first weeks of the camp's operation, the prisoners were not humiliated or mistreated, their heads were not shaved, they were not identified by numbers, and they were not forced to work.

However, in early April Himmler gained authority over the "auxiliary political police," a branch of the state police that was actually part of the SS. He named the rough-and-ready SS officer Hilmar Wackerle "commandant" and replaced the Dachau camp's regular police guards with his own SS men.

On Himmler's orders Wackerle devised a system of "special rules" for the treatment of prisoners. Already by May 1933 violence and terror were institutionalized as part of life in the camp.18 By the end of the month twelve men had been tortured to death or murdered outright.19 Jews were already being singled out for the most brutal treatment.

One example was the Jewish legal intern Wilhelm Aron from Bamberg, who arrived at the camp on 15 May. The tall, red-haired 26-year-old attracted the attention of the SS guards right away, and they beat him so severely that bones protruded from his buttocks.

Each morning for the next three days the delirious young man was torn from his infirmary bed and whipped across his infected wounds. Only his death on 19 May spared him further agony."

From "Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001", by Harold Marcuse : http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/publications/legdach/bookintro.99v.htm <—Highly Recommended Reading.

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https://www.willy-aron-gesellschaft.de/WillyAron.html

>"...I wasn’t alone in all this, you know,”

Dr. Strobos told the Westchester County Journal News in 2009.

One day, a carpenter from the resistance showed up on her doorstep and offered his services. In the attic, he fashioned a wall that closed off a gable and created a hideaway for up to four people. The gable’s window provided an escape route.

The wall was so skillfully made, Dr. Strobos’s son said, that when he and his family returned to the Amsterdam house in the 1970s, they could not find the entrance to the hideaway without their mother’s help.

Dr. Strobos said that she was arrested nine times and that her house was searched eight times.

“I never believed in God,” she once said, “but I believed in the sacredness of life.”

Tineke Buchter was born May 19, 1920, in Amsterdam. An only child, she grew up mostly with her mother after her parents divorced. Her grandmother had been involved with the labor movement of the late 1800s, and her mother, a socialist atheist, had housed refugees during World War I.

Dr. Strobos received a medical degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1946. Later, she studied in London under the direction of Anna Freud, the daughter of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, whose family had fled Austria to England during the Nazis’ rise to power.

Dr. Strobos immigrated to the United States in 1951, became a U.S. citizen and practiced psychiatry in New York until she was 89. Many of her clients, her son said, were indigent and handicapped.

Her first marriage, to Robert Strobos, a neurologist, ended in divorce. Her second husband, Walter A. Chudson, an economist, died in 2002 after 35 years of marriage.

Survivors include three children from her first marriage, Semon Strobos of New Braunfels, Tex., Jur Strobos of Washington and Carolyn Strobos of Newport-on-Tay, Scotland; two stepchildren, Lucy Chudson of New York City and Paul Chudson of Mamaroneck, N.Y.; and nine grandchildren.

For years, Dr. Strobos once told an interviewer, she had forgotten many of the events that took place in her attic during the war.

“I’m sure it was because I didn’t want to remember all those things,” she said.

>“So you just close the whole attic of your memory.”

SO MUCH MORE: https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-history/media_oi.php?MediaId=2961&th=rescue

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INTERVIEW: https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-history/media_oi.php?MediaId=2961&th=rescue

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Tina Strobos Tribute Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WeQE1YhkeI

1: This photo features Tina Strobos, a Dutch medical student who courageously rescued over 100 Jews during WW2. Strobos was recognized as a "Righteous Gentile" by Yad Vashem for her bravery in hiding Jewish people in her Amsterdam home and attic. The man pictured with her is Abraham Pais, a Jewish physicist who was her fiancé at the time and whom she saved before he became a renowned biographer of Albert Einstein. Strobos later became a physician and child psychiatrist, continuing her lifelong commitment to helping others.

2: Tina Strobos

"Philipp Bouhler was born in Munich on 11 September 1899, the son of a retired colonel. Bouhler rose to become Chief of the Fuhrer's Chancellery and head of the infamous euthanasia program, code named T-4 after its address of 4-Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin, which murdered physically handicapped and mentally-ill people in the Reich.

After four years in the Royal Bavarian Cadet Corps and service in the First World War, during which he was seriously wounded, Philip Bouhler was an apprentice with various publishers. In 1922, he abandoned the University of Munich philosophy school to help edit the Volkische Beobachter.

From 1925, to 1934, he was the Business Manager of the Nazi Party. In 1933, he became a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party and was elected member of the Reichstag for the district of Westphalia.

During 1934, he was appointed Police President of Munich and became Chief of Hitler's Chancery, responsible for the preparation of decrees that were never officially published. At the same time Bouhler was also Chief of the Party's Censorship Committee for the Protection of National Socialist Literature and of the Study Group for German History Books and Educational Material.

In 1942, he published Napoleon, the Comet-Path of a Genius, which was avidly read by Hitler at bedtime. Bouhler was soft-faced, bespectacled, mildly-spoken, who looked more like an American college-boy, than a Gruppenfuhrer of the SS. Bouhler was one of the shadiest figures in the National Socialist elite.

His office was responsible for the euthanasia institutes which used gas chambers filled with carbon monoxide gas to get rid of the mentally -ill and physically-disabled. This method was later used in the Aktion Reinhardt death camps in Poland. On 16 August 1941, Bouhler was ordered by Adolf Hitler to halt the euthanasia program as a result of public protests.

At the end of the war, Bouhler increasingly sought Hermann Goering's protection and along with his wife went to Goering's headquarters. They were both arrested by American forces at Schloss Fischhorn in Bruck, near Zell-am-See on 10 May 1945. Both committed suicide: Helene jumped from a window at Schloss Fischhorn.

On 19 May Philipp Bouhler took a cyanide capsule whilst in a US internment camp at Zell-am-See." https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/germanbiographies/philippbouhler.html

1: Portrait of Chef der Kanzlei des Fuehrers Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler - The official Nazi calendar pin-up portrait of Philipp Bouhler shows him in his uniform as Reichsleiter and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer (Chef der Kanzlei des Führers). This image was part of a collection of portraits featured in the 1939 calendar of Nazi officials and the September 1940 calendar.

A standard half-tone, head-and-shoulders portrait common in official Third Reich propaganda materials. The calendar specifically identifies him by his title as Chef der Kanzlei des Führers. Original prints or digital copies are held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Library of Congress.

Philipp Bouhler (1899–1945) was a high-ranking Nazi official who held two primary roles:

Chief of the Chancellery: Managed Hitler's private and party-related correspondence.

Aktion T4 Director: Co-led the forced euthanasia program responsible for the murder of over 250,000 disabled individuals.