Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

Rescue of Jewish Children. The Kinder Transports

2009-07-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

A Jewish child resting enroot from Nazi Germany

The history of the Kindertransports is a poignant tale of rescue, separation, loss and integration following the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi Reich and countries annexed by the Germans during the latter part of 1938.

Following the Kristallnacht outrage against the Jews on the 9 November 1938 as a response to what was happening to the Jews in the Reich a debate was held in the House of Commons as a direct result of an appeal by the British Jewish Refugee Committee.

The British Government had just refused to allow 10,000 Jewish children to enter Palestine, but with the atrocities in Germany, there was a change of heart, best expressed by the words of British Foreign Minister Samuel Hoare, “Here is a chance of taking the young generation of a great people, here is a chance of mitigating to some extend the terrible suffering of their parents and their friends.”

The British Government agreed to permit an unspecified number of children under the age of 17 to enter the United Kingdom. The children were allowed to enter the British Isles on temporary travel documents, with the belief that the children would re-join their parents at a later date, when things returned to normal.

Two Austrian Jewish girls on thier way to Great Britain

However it was private citizens or organizations had to guarantee to pay for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return for this guarantee, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. It was understood at the time that when the “crisis was over,” the children would return to their families.

Parents or guardians could not accompany the children. The few infants included in the program were tended by other children on their transport. A £50 Sterling bond had to be posted for each child, “to assure their ultimate resettlement.”

A number of people and organisations rose to the immense challenge of organising the transports, Jews, Christians and Quakers worked together to get the children out of Germany and the annexed territories.

Lola Hahn with Chaim Weitzmann

The framework for the refugee operation was formed by Lola Hahn – Warburg several years earlier, Lord Baldwin, Rebecca Sieff, Sir Wyndham Deeds, Viscount Samuel, Rabbi Solomon Schoenfeld, who saved approximately 1,000 Orthodox children.

In addition Nicholas Winton rescued nearly 700 Jewish children in Prague, Professor Bentwich organiser of the Dutch escape routes and the Quaker leaders Bertha Bracey and Jean Hoare (cousin of Sir Samuel Hoare) who herself led a planeload of children out of Prague.

According to a scrapbook Winton kept, 664 children came to Great Britain on transports that he organized. In the research compiled for the documentary “The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton,” aired on Czech television in 2002, researchers identified five additional persons who entered Britain on a Winton-financed transport, bringing the official number to 669 children. The available information indicates that some children who were rescued have not yet been identified.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/kindertransport.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Nazi horror at Ottwock Sanitorium

2009-07-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Otwock & the Zofiowka Sanatorium

A Refuge from Hell

The Sanitorium in Otwock

Adam Czerniakow the Chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat wrote in his diary, about his stays in the Jewish sanatoriums in Otwock, as a refuge from the hell, that the ghetto had become. .

Otwock is located 27 kilometres East South East from Warsaw and a Jewish community was established in 1880 when a rabbi from Warka, Kalisz called Simcha Bunem established a study house on land rented from two Jews – Blass and Reindorf.

Otwock grew with the opening of the Vistula Railway and when the spa at nearby Naleczow closed it gates for Jews, the spa conditions at Otwock made it a fashionable haven for Jews who needed treatment.

Aleksandra Street was at the heart of the Jewish district – the first synagogue was built there. The majority of Jews lived in wooden houses with verandas and porches. From 1910, a second house of prayer with a ritual bath was situated in Gorna Street.

In 1895 the first sanatorium for Jews, established by Jozef Przygoda, a medical assistant started to function and this was continued by his son Wladyslaw. Therapeutic resorts in Otwock were run by Jewish associations Marpe from 1907 and Brijus from 1911, Zofiowka on Kochanowskiego Street was founded in 1908 by the Association for Mentally and Neurotically ill Jews. By 1935 Zofiowka had 275 beds and its first chairman was Samuel Goldflam.

In 1911 the Jewish Association against Tuberculosis bought 32 morgues of forest on the slopes of the Meran Dune, Brijus sanatorium was built there and a second Brijus sanatorium for young people suffering from tuberculosis.

Samuel Goldflam

By 1939 Otwock’s population numbered more than 19,000 citizens of which approximately 14,000 were Jews, but then the Germans occupied Poland, and the Jewish population was destined for destruction.

Extracts from the Diary of Adam Czerniakow

July 20 1940

Today at 7 in the morning I gave myself a 24 hour holiday after all these months – I am leaving for Otwock. We are having beautiful weather; at 5am it is 61 degrees F.

An inspection of the Brijus TB Sanatorium and later of Zofiowka

I notice in Zofiowka the woman troublemaker who cost us 100,000 zlotys, adult lunatics and children. One child in a straightjacket to prevent self-injury, the face covered with flies.

Another one is scratching wounds on his head. A female singer in bed executes some operatic arias: she used to perform in Italy. Other women by the piano were playing and singing. I joined them.

Zofiowka Sanitarium in Otwock

Somebody built himself a tombstone in a cemetery with his name carved on it. It is to this address that he would direct his creditors.

August 4 1940

At 1.30 I left for Otwock for a few hours. At the Brijus sanatorium I met for the first time in my life a female veterinarian, Miss Neufeld. A lunatic who fled from Zofiowka was run over by a train and the police have brought in the corpse. By 8 o’clock I am back in Warsaw, a half –hour by car

August 17 1940

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

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Conclusion to the Action Reinhard

2009-06-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

The Conclusion to Aktion Reinhard

Panorama of Belzec after the camp was dismantled (circa 1944)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full article about the Aktion Reinhard Conclusion here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/arconclusion.html

Death March from Auschwitz!

2009-06-24T11:47:00.001-07:00

The Auschwitz – Birkenau and Sub-Camps

Evacuation and the Death Marches – January 1945

The Red Army advances towards Germany

17 January 1945

Units of the Red Army advance on the outlying areas of Krakow from the north and the northwest and surprise the German positions, which do not expect an attack from this flank.

The last official meeting of the General Governor Hans Frank takes place at 12.0 o’clock, barely two hours later Hans Frank leaves Krakow in the direction of Silesia.

On this day 178 female prisoners and two boys were transferred from the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow to the women’s camp in Birkenau.

The male and female prisoners fall in for their last roll call. The number of prisoners incarcerated in the main camps and sub-camps are as follows:

Camp	Number of Prisoners	Male or Female
Babitz	159	Male
Budy	313	Male
Plawny	138	Male
Birkenau Production Area	204	Male
Auschwitz Men’s Camp	10,030	Male
Birkenau Men’s Camp	4473	Male
Auschwitz Women’s Camp	6196	Female
Birkenau Women’s Camp	10,381	Female

Total	31,894

Wilhelm Boger

In the wake of the decision to remove the prisoners from Auschwitz, Commandant Baer personally chooses the leaders of the evacuation columns from among the members of the guard companies and orders them to liquidate ruthlessly all prisoners who attempt to escape during the evacuation or drag their feet.

Among the SS guards who were chosen to lead the evacuation columns were the notorious SS- Oberscharfuhrer Wilhelm Boger, who was a feared member of the Politische – Abteilung, SS-Unterscharfuhrer Oswald Kaduk, Rapportfuhrer, who was also considered one of the more brutal members of the SS guards.

In the auxiliary camps that belong to Monowitz, formerly Auschwitz lll, are the following number of male prisoners:

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschdeathmarch.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyight Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Forced deportation of Jews to the Lodz Ghetto

2009-06-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Deportations from the Greater German Reich to the Lodz Ghetto

October – November 1941

Dawid Sierakowiak wrote in his diary on 4 October 1941:

German & Austrian Jews heading for Lodz

“Today Rumkowski met with all the teachers in the ghetto. He said that because 20,000 Jews are arriving from all over Germany, he is extending the school recess now, instead of having it during the winter.

I think it’s the end of schooling in the ghetto, at least for me, since I don’t think I’ll be a lyceum student, after all. “

On 16 October 1941 the first of twenty trains left Greater Germany “for the East.” By 4 November they had all completed their journey, taking 19,837 Jews to the Lodz ghetto.

One of these trains, with 512 Jews, came from Luxembourg. Five trains, with 5,000 Jews in all, came from Vienna, a similar number from Prague, and 4,187, in four trains, from Berlin. Other trains came from Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Dusseldorf.

Shlomo Frank recorded in his diary:

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

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchproject.org

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Joel Brand and the Jewish Blood for Goods controversy

2009-06-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

Joel Brand

"Blood for Goods"

Joel brand

Joel Brand was born in Nasaud Transylvania in 1907, which was under Hungarian rule. Brand embraced Zionism after a spell in the radical leftist movement in Weimar Germany.

He returned to Transylvania after Hitler came to power but eventually settled in Budapest, where together with his wife, Hansi Hartmann- Brand, he operated a medium –sized glove manufacturing plant.

After the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the Brands took an interest in refugee causes, and took an active part organising a variety of rescue and relief ventures.

When the Va’ada was established in January 1943 to aid refugees who had escaped from or were seeking to escape from Slovakia and Poland, Brand was chosen to head its Tiyyul (Trip) section, a border crossing operation, whose function was to smuggle Jews out of these countries.

After the German occupation of Hungary on the 19 March 1944, the Va’ada’s primary concern was the rescuing of Jews within Hungary. Brand was also engaged in the Re-Tiyyul (Return Trip) programme, which enabled a number of Polish and Slovak refugees to return to Slovakia where the situation of the remaining Jews was better, for the moment.

Adolf Eichmann

While the first contact and rescue negotiations with the SS were established through Fulop Freudiger, the Orthodox representative of the Jewish Council Zsido Tanacs, and continued later by Rezso Kastner, it was Brand whom Adolf Eichmann summoned on the 25 April 1944, to offer his “Blood for Goods” proposal.

Brand met Eichmann in the Majestic Hotel in Budapest. Eichmann greeted Brand with the following words:

“Do you know who I am?

I have carried out the Aktionen in the Reich – in Poland – in Czechoslovakia. Now it’s Hungary’s turn. I let you come here to talk business with you. Before that I investigated you – and your people.

Those from the Joint and those from the Agency, and I have come to the conclusion that you still have resources. So I am ready to sell you – a million Jews.

Hermann Krumey

All of them I wouldn’t sell you. That much money and goods you don’t have. But a million – that will go. Goods for blood – blood for goods. You can gather up the million in countries which still have Jews.

You can take it from Hungary, from Poland, from Austria, from Theresienstadt, from Auschwitz, from wherever, you want.

What do you want to save? Virile men? Grown women? Old people? Children? Sit down and talk.”

This proposal which had been approved by Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer SS, was to exchange one million Jews for certain goods, such as 10,000 trucks to be used on the Eastern front, or for civilian purposes.

The Jews could not remain in Hungary, as Himmler had promised to make Hungary Judenfrei (free of Jews), so those covered by this proposal would be permitted to go into any Allied-controlled part of the world, except Palestine, for the Nazis had promised the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al –Husseini, not to allow this.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/brand.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Sobibor Death Camp

2009-06-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Sobibor Death Camp

Sobibor Map as remembered by SS Sergeant Bauer & Survivor Thomas Blatt

The Sobibor death camp was located near the Sobibor village, which was located in the eastern part of the Lublin district of Poland, close to the Chelm – Wlodawa railway line. The camp was 5km away from the Bug River which today forms the border between Poland and the Ukraine.

In 1942 the area around Sobibor was part of the border between the General Government and the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the terrain was swampy, densely wooded and sparsely populated.

Sobibor was the second death camp to be constructed as part of the Aktion Reinhard programme, and was built on similar lines to Belzec, incorporating the lessons learnt from the first death camp to be constructed.

In the early months of 1942 after a reconnaissance visit by a small aircraft that circled over the village, a train arrived at Sobibor, two SS officers disembarked, they were Richard Thomalla, who worked in the SS-Zentralbauleitung Zamosc, and Baurath Moser from Chelm. They walked around the station, took measurements and eventually made their way into the forest opposite the railway station.

In March 1942 a new railroad spur was built, which ended at an earthen ramp, the ramp was opposite the station building. The camp fence with interwoven branches was built in a manner which ensured that the railway spur and the ramp were located inside the camp, thus preventing passengers at the station from observing what happened in the camp.

Outside view of the Sobibor Death Camp

The deportation trains entered the ramp through a gate and disappeared behind the “green wall.” In the station area three larger buildings existed – the station, the forester’s house, and a two-storey post office. There was also a sawmill and several houses for workers.

As construction work progressed, undertaken by 80 Jews from nearby ghettos, such as Wlodawa and Wola Uhruska, the site was inspected by a commission led by SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Neumann, head of the Central Construction Office of the Waffen –SS in Lublin.

Once the Jews had completed the initial construction phase, they were gassed during an experimental gassing. Two or three of them escaped at that time to Wlodawa and informed the Hassidic rabbi there, what was happening in Sobibor.

Rails leading into Sobibor

The rabbi even proclaimed a fasting in memory of the first victims and also as a sign of resistance. Both the escapees and the rabbi were denounced by a Jewish policeman and all of them were executed.

The camp was in the form of a 400 x 600m rectangle, surrounded by a 3m high double barbed-wire fence, partially interwoven with pine branches to prevent observation from the outside. Along the fence and in the corners of the camp were wooden watchtowers.

Each of the four camp areas was individually fenced in: the SS administration area (Vorlager), housing and workshops of the Jewish commando (Camp 1), the reception area (Camp II) and the extermination area (Camp III), in 1943 a munitions supply area (Camp IV) was added.

The ‘Vorlager’ included the ramp, with space for 20 railway cars, as well as the living quarters for the SS staff and Trawnikimanner. Also included was the main gate, on top of the main gate was a wooden sign about 0.60 x 2.40m with the words ‘SS- Sonderkommando Sobibor, painted in Gothic letters. Unlike the death camp at Belzec, the SS men lived inside the camp area.

The Jews from the incoming transports were brought to the ‘reception area’ (Camp II), here they had to go through various procedures prior to their death in the gas chambers: division according to sex, the surrender of the suitcases, the confiscation of possessions and valuables, removal of clothing and the cutting of the women’s hair.

Globocnik at Sobibor

On their way to the gas the naked victims passed various buildings, some warehouse barracks, a second former forester’s house, which was used as the camp’s offices and living quarters for some of the SS men, separated by a high wooden fence, a small agricultural area with stables for horses, cattle, swine and geese and about 250m south of the gas chambers a small wooden Catholic chapel, in the shadow of tall pine trees, which was now the ‘Lazarett’ and high observation tower used by the forester, overlooked the entire area.

The most isolated area in the camp was the extermination area (Camp III) was located in the north-western part of the camp. It contained the gas chambers, mass graves and housing for the Jewish prisoners employed there.

A path 3 to 4m wide and 150m long, ‘Die Schlauch (The Tube) cynically known by the SS in the camp as the ‘Himmelfahrtstrasse (Street to Heaven) led from the reception area to the

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Ivan the terrible! John Demjanjuk

2009-06-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk

"Ivan the Terrible"

John Demjanjuk as a young man in the Ukraine

John Demjanjuk, was born Iwan Nikolayevich Demjanjuk on the 3 April 1920 in the Ukrainian village of Dubovi Makharintsi, Kozjatyn Region, Vinnitsa Oblast.

His fathers name was Nikolaj who had lost several fingers during the First World War and his mothers name was Olga, the family were very poor, and they were forced to live with relatives on a collective farm (kolkhoz) near Moscow. The great famine in the Ukraine during 1932-33 had a devastating impact on Iwan Demjanjuk, as he was to recall as he stood trial for his life during 1987.

Food was abundant but there was little work, so the family were forced to return to their village. When he was about seventeen Demjanjuk started work in a local Kolkhoz, he commenced using a plough, and progressed to an assistant to the tractor driver.

Germans guard prisoners in the Rovno camp for Soviet prisoners of war

Two years after joining the Communist Youth Organisation (Komsomol) he was drafted into the Red Army, where his aptitude for driving tractors was recognised. Demjanjuk was taken prisoner by the Germans at the battle of Kerch in the Crimea on the 18 May 1942. He spent a short time, a couple of weeks in a Prisoner of War camp at Rowno, before being sent to another Prisoner of War camp in Chelm in Poland.

At Chelm Demjanjuk was recruited into the SS to serve as a death camp guard, and between July and September 1942 Iwan Demjanjuk was trained to carry out these tasks. During his trial in Israel where he was falsely accused as being the Treblinka SS guard “Ivan the Terrible,” and his Trawniki Dienstausweis, was examined in close detail.

The card read that he was 1 metre 75cm tall, had grey eyes, and dark blond hair and a visible scar on his back. It also showed two postings, “L.G. Okzow on September 22 1942 and to Sobibor on March 27 1943.

The Dienstausweis bore three signatures, Karl Streibel, the Trawniki SS Commandant, Ernst Teufel the camps supply officer, and Demjanjuk’s. It also contained his camp identification number 1393. The training he received at Trawniki was aimed at instilling SS and military type discipline. The “Trawniki-manner” were assigned to platoons of 35 -40 men and companies of 120 men.

Demjanjuk Dienstausweis

(click text to enlarge)

Demjanjuk Dienstausweis (back)

(click text to enlarge)

A guard who had been trained at Trawniki, J.H. Engelhardt later stated that “you were taught there to shoot with a gun, machine gun and sub-machine gun and to throw grenades and all this in the German language.”

From the 22 September 1942 till early January 1943 Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Okzow country estate in the vicinity of Chelm. The estate which also had an alcohol distillery had Jewish workers, which required guarding.

From there he was transferred to the Lublin Concentration Camp ( Majdanek) and he was punished on the 18 January 1943, along with three other Trawniki-manner for leaving the camp without permission to buy onions. A disciplinary report signed by SS – Unterscharfuhrer Hermann Erlinger was found in an archive in Vilnius.

One of the other guards punished was Zaki Tuktarov (1730 – identification number) who admitted after the war he had served in Lublin (Majdanek).

From Lublin Demjanjuk returned to Trawniki and on the 26 March 1943 was despatched to with seventy –nine other guards to the Sobibor death camp.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/demjanjuk.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright
Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

Operation Erntefest - The Sporrenberg report

2009-05-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

Operation Erntefest

(Harvest Festival)

Jakob Sporrenberg SSPF Lublin

Interrogation Report – Extracts

Jakob Sporrenberg

(1902--1952), SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district who organized

“Erntefest"---the operation in which some 43,000 Jews imprisoned in the

camps of Majdanek, Trawniki, and Poniatowa were massacred.

Interrogation Report – Extracts

Part 1

Jakob Sporrenberg

III. Sporrenberg’s Activities as SS &Police Chief Lublin

In the course of the interview described above PW must have been aware of the task facing him. He must have known that he was chosen for this position for quite definite reasons by a man who knew only too well how to select personnel to carry out work to his own satisfaction and conforming with the principles laid down by him.

In spite of this alleges that Himmler informed him at the time that he was not to concern himself with the Jewish question in Lublin as this was in the hands of the infamous Globocnik and his henchmen. Globocnik was PW’s predecessor in Lublin and Sporrenberg was quite aware of the type of work that had been carried on there for some years past under his leadership.

In the course of a long and detailed talk on policy Himmler told PW it would be his task to care for and look after the German settlers in Lublin and that he expected the entire district to be Germanised by the end of 1944.

Sporrenberg asked him where the Poles were to be sent and received the reply that these were to be despatched to the Ukraine as they were on no account to move westwards.

PW suggested that there might be front-line fighting in the Ukraine before very long, whereupon Himmler ordered him to build fortifications along the River Bug and along the 1941 Russo-German border. Himmler also desired that Sporrenberg should establish friendly relations with the Governor Dr Wendler, which up to that time had apparently not been achieved.

Sporrenberg went to Lublin at the end of August 1943 with mixed feelings. It was arranged that he should get to know his duties and then proceed on the compassionate leave still due to him.

His predecessor, SS – Gruppenfuhrer and Generalleutnant der Polizei Odilo Globocnik had not left yet. Globocnik had not been a member of the old “Fuhrer Corps,” but had previously been the notorious Gauleiter of Vienna, where he had to be relieved as a result of a shady business deal.

Sporrenberg had only once before met Globocnik at the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei, but in the meantime had heard a great deal about his character and activities and he expected both co-operation and the handing over of duties to be extremely difficult. He maintains, however, that he under-estimated the difficulties and says that right from the start he came up against a wall of distrust and reservedness.

Globocnik explained that the task he was now handing over to PW was negligible compared with the work he had carried out in his time and again told Sporrenberg that he was to concern himself primarily with the settlement of Germans.

Odilo Globocnik

After PW’s return from leave, a great many outstanding affairs had been settled and some of the business concerns which worked for Globocnik and mostly employed Jewish and slave labour had been wound up.

Sporrenberg felt relieved because he was under the impression that some of these concerns and their subsidiary undertakings were extremely unsavoury and he wanted to have nothing to do with them.

Even after Globocnik himself had left with some members of his staff, one group stayed behind, called the “Globocnik unit,” which was in charge of the remaining concerns (in work camps) and the prisoners employed there.

Sporrenberg must have at least shared the responsibility for anything that happened in the district, including conditions and events in these working camps, and he does in fact, admit that he was very much concerned with these affairs and frequently attempted to visit all working and concentration camps in his area.

Organisation

The chain of command and personalities holding important positions during PW’s tenure of office in Lublin were as follows:

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Nazi Euthanasia -Sonnenstein

2009-05-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre

Sonnenstein in 1941

Located at Pirna near Dresden, above the river Elbe, Schloss Sonnenstein was built on the site of a former medieval castle and had been used as a mental home since 1811. It was the first major state institution in Germany to be explicitly dedicated to treating, rather than just interning, mentally ill patients. In the 19th century, the reform-oriented hospital was one of the most renowned institutions of its kind in Europe. In 1922 as a Heil und Pflegeananstalt (care and cure institution) it had housed 672 psychiatric patients. In 1939, the respected long time director Hermann Paul Nitsche was at the head of the Sonnenstein state hospital.

In October 1939 the mental home was officially closed. A portion of the institution, located behind the main buildings and not included as part of the killing centre, was used first as a military hospital, and then to house ethnic German refugees from Bessarabia. Another portion of the institution, also in the rear of the property, was retained as a regular mental hospital after confiscation and assumed the name Mariaheim. Between early 1940 and June of that year, the part of the castle located in buildings 1-3 at the front of the property was converted into a euthanasia killing centre.

Building 3 served as a reception area for the arriving victims and buildings 1-2 provided office space and staff quarters. Building 2 (numbered C 16) contained the actual killing facility, including the gas chamber and a crematorium with two stationary coke-fired ovens located in the basement.

Building C16 at Sonnenstein

A high brick-wall on two sides of the complex shielded it from outside observation, while a tall hoarding was erected to serve a similar purpose on the other two sides. Sleeping quarters for the stokers (brenners) were provided in the attic of building C 16. The physician-in-charge, Horst Schumann, who transferred from Grafeneck, arrived in late April to supervise the final remodelling, and the killing began in June 1940. Sonnenstein was to differ from most of the other killing centres because it did not occupy the entire hospital, which made complete secrecy impossible.

From the end of June 1940 until September 1942, at least 15,000 persons were killed within the scope of the euthanasia programme and Sonderbehandlung 14f13; a minimum of 13,720 had fallen victim to T4. One nurse testified that during his three week stay in July 1940 about 1,000 people had been gassed, including youngsters aged fifteen and sixteen. Well before gassing experiments had started at Auschwitz in late summer 1941, 575 prisoners from that camp were transferred to Sonnenstein on 28 July 1941. Other prisoners also arrived in 1941 and 1942 from Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald concentration camps. A prisoner working as a physician’s secretary was witness to the fate of 190 Buchenwald prisoners gassed at Sonnenstein in July 1941:

“… A long list of prisoners, identified by their numbers, was ordered over the loudspeakers to report to the camp gate… The next day and the day after that, these prisoners were taken away from the camp. When they left we didn’t know where they were being taken. Some days later the hospital orderly, Wilhelm, came in with some personal effects… false teeth, spectacles, crutches. We knew then for certain the prisoners had been killed… Shortly afterward the SS camp physician appeared… He gave me a list of prisoners who had been transferred and killed and told me to cross them off the hospital register and to remove the file cards. Hoven [the SS doctor] confirmed that the prisoners of both convoys were dead and that I should prepare the official death certificates. I asked what cause of death I should mention. He told me I should go and find something in the medical dictionary…”

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Raoul Wallenberg!

2009-05-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

Raoul Wallenberg

"Righteous Among Nations"

Raoul Wallenberg 1944 Budapest

Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4,1912 in Walpole, Lidingö, Sweden to a member of one of the countries most prominent banking families. His father, Raoul Oscar Wallenberg, was a naval officer and a cousin of Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg, two of Sweden's best-known financiers (often referred to as "the Swedish Rockefellers), and industrialists during the 1920's & 30's

Shortly after his birth, his father passed away and his mother, Maj Wising Wallenberg remarried Fredrick von Darriel in 1918. Wallenberg's grandfather, Gustav Wallenberg, took care of his education while he was growing up, fully intending young Raoul would carry on the tradition of his family as highly respected bankers, diplomats, and politicians. By the age of 20, the young Wallenberg was already proficient in English, French, German and Russian.

In 1930, Raoul Wallenberg graduated with top grades in Russian and drawing. Upon completing army service in 1931 he then traveled to the USA to study architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Wallenberg devoted most of his time to study and he graduated early, completing his curriculum in under the typical four year time frame.

Wallenberg in his University days -->

After graduating from UMICH with top honors and the recipient of a scholastic award bestowed only the individual with the most impressive academic record. Wallenberg wrote his grandfather: "When I now look back upon the last school year, I find I have had a completely wonderful time."

In 1935, he received his bachelor degree of Science in Architecture and returned to Sweden. But the market for architects was small in Sweden, so his grandfather sent him to Cape Town, South Africa, where he practiced at a Swedish firm selling building materials. Shortly after, his grandfather arranged a new job for him at a Dutch banking office located in Haifa.

It was in Palestine he first met Jews that had escaped Hitler's Germany and learned of their plight. He then left Haifa and returned to Sweden in 1936 to resume his interest in European business. Through family connections and associates, Raoul was introduced to Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew and then director of a Swedish based import and export company specializing in food and delicacies.

The two men became friends and Wallenberg made numerous trips to Hungary, where he visited Lauer's family in Budapest. Over the ensuing years and via constant business related trips throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, Wallenberg quickly learned to navigate the German bureaucratic apparatus. A skill that was to prove invaluable in the years to come.

By 1938 Anti-Semitism was on the rise in Hungary and Wallenberg became increasingly concerned about the plight of the Jewish community. Hungary under the regency of Miklós Horthy passed a series of anti-Jewish measures that restricted their professions, reduced the number of Jews in government jobs, and prohibited intermarriage.

Lauer found it increasingly difficult to travel to Hungary, and Wallenberg became his trusted representative. Wallenberg soon learnt Hungarian, and from 1941 made frequent travels to Budapest Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the international director of the company.

On 17 April 1943, Horthy visited Hitler at Klessheim Castle to discuss the terms on which Hungary would remain in the war. The Hungarian regent was reproached by the Nazis for a racial policy towards the Jews they believed was much to lenient.

Miklós Horthy then responded: " Having deprived the Jews of nearly every means of getting a living, he could not beat them to death”.

At this Joachim von Ribbentrop emphatically declared that they must either be killed off or sent to concentration camps. So began the destruction of the Jews of Hungary.

By July 1944, with the actions against the Jews in full swing, the Hungarians and the Germans had deported nearly 440,000 Jews from Hungary, almost all of them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the SS killed approximately 320,000 of them upon arrival and deployed the rest at forced labour in Auschwitz and other camps.

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The Jews of Zbaszyn and Deportation to the Border Town Camp – 1938

2009-05-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

Zbaszyn

Deportation to the Border Town Camp – 1938

Map showing deportations from Germany to Poland (source: Sir Martin Gilbert)

The town was first mentioned in historical sources from 1231, and it received its city charter before 1311. As a result of the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia and was administered within South Prussia.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the town was within the Grand Duchy of Posen and later the Province of Posen. It became part of the German Empire in 1871. In 1918 it became part of the Second Polish Republic. In 1938 the town’s population stood at 5,400 which included 360 Germans and only fifty two Jews.

On the 27 October 1938 the Nazis began arresting Jews of Polish nationality in Germany with the intention of expelling them to Poland. The Nazis took this decision was the issuing of a decree by the Polish Ministry of the Interior on the 6 October 1938 which called for the passports of Polish citizens residing abroad would have to be checked and revalidated.

Those passports not re-validated by the 29 October 1938 would no longer entitle their holders to return to Poland. According to a report submitted by the Polish consulate in Opole (Oppeln in German) the German police came to the homes of the Jews at night to present them with the expulsion orders, forcing the Jews to get dressed at once and taking them to the Polish border which the Jews had to cross illegally.

Jewish "German" passport 1938

Those expelled in this manner had no time to arrange their affairs or hand over their businesses. When they reached the border the German escorts often fired shots into the air in order to frighten the Jews even more and hasten their crossing over the border.

Expulsions took place all over the Reich, but the actions conducted by the police differed from location to location. Most often only the head of the family was expelled, but sometimes whole families were deported. The deportees were taken by train to the Polish border, usually in the vicinity of Zbaszyn and Beuthen. The Germans estimated that some seventeen thousand Jews were deported, but the precise figure may never be known.

The action by the Germans took the Polish authorities by surprise, and some Polish consulates, such as the one in Frankfurt am Main advised its Jews to comply with the German orders, while other consulates tried to help in various ways.

The Polish consul in Lipsk, Feliks Chiczewski permitted those destined for expulsion to take refuge in the building and garden of his office. In this way the expulsion of about half the Polish Jews in the city was foiled, according to German police estimates.

Jews from Nuremberg prior to deportation to Zbaszyn

Local Polish authorities estimated the number of Jews expelled to the Zbaszyn district on the 28 and 29 October 1938 at 6100. Other estimates put the figure much higher as 12,000. The majority of those expelled from the Reich came by train, but large groups also arrived on foot, sometimes subjected to beatings as they were forced across the border onto Polish soil.

Among the deportees were elderly people, some who died during the journey, there were also cases of suicide and many of those who made it across the border had to be treated in hospital. One of the Jewish families caught up in this “aktion” were the Grynszpan family from Hannover, the father Zindel recalled the deportation:

“On the 27 October 1938 – it was Thursday night at eight o’clock – a policeman came and told us to come to Region II. He said, “You are going to come back immediately, you shouldn’t take anything with you. Take with you passports.”

When I reached the Region, I saw a large number of people, some people were sitting, some standing. People were crying, they were shouting, “Sign, Sign, Sign.” I had to sign, as all of them did. One of us did not, and his name, I believe, was Gershon Silber, and he had to stand in the corner for twenty-four hours.

They took us to the concert hall on the banks of the Leine and there, there were people from all the areas, about six hundred people. There we stayed until Friday night, about twenty-four hours

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2009

The Ghetto at Czestochowa

2009-04-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

Czestochowa Ghetto

Pre-war Postcard of the Synagogue in Czestowchowa

Czestochowa was occupied on 3 September 1939. On the next day the Nazis killed 300 Jews, in an action known as "Bloody Monday". At that time approximately 28-30,000 Jews lived in the town (total population: 130-140,000).

Until 9 April 1941, when the ghetto was established, the Jews suffered from expropriation, humiliation and maltreatment. By June 1942 the ghetto’s population had increased to around 40-50,000; around 15,000 Jews from the surrounding area had been forced to move into the ghetto.

On 16 September 1939 the Judenrat was established, led by Leon Kopinski. Other members were three lawyers (J. Gitler, Z. Rotbart, S. Pohorille), the director of the Jewish Gymnasium (Anisfelt), a famous sportsman (B. Kurland), L. Bromberg and N. Berliner.

On 4 October 1942 all members of the Judenrat were deported to Treblinka (except Kopinski and Kurland), together with members of the Jewish ghetto police and their families. Kopinski was shot after the deportation, Kurland became chief of the Judenrat until 22 July 1943 when he was accused by the Germans of being disloyal. Finally he was shot at the Jewish cemetery.

Location of Czestochowa

Anisfelt was responsible for the organisation of the Jewish ghetto police. Its commander was a man named "Parasol", a former Polish army officer. The ghetto police numbered 250 persons.

In August 1940 about 1,000 young men from Czestochowa between the ages of 18 and 25 were sent to the Forced Labour Camp Cieszanow -in the Lublin District. They were sent to build a highway; almost none survived. One of the survivors was Joseph Sher.

The ghetto remained "open" until 23 August 1941; then it was sealed off. Many Jews from Czestochowa, from other Polish towns and from Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Bohemia were forced to work for Germany's profit, and to support the Nazi war effort.

Forced labour camps were installed, for example in the armament factories and workshops of HASAG (Hugo Schneider Metallwarenfabrik AG, located in Leipzig): HASAG-Rakow (former ironworks in Rakow suburb, which was converted into an ammunition factory), HASAG-Pelcery (former textile factory near the station, also converted into an ammunition factory), Metalurgia (foundry on Krotka Street) and some more smaller factories or workshops.

Jewish life in Czestochowa

Nobody in the ghetto believed that deportations would occur. Everybody assumed that the ghetto was important for war production. Even when in July / August 1942 many Warsaw Jews escaped to Czestochowa and talked about deportations to the Treblinka death camp, the Jews of Czestochowa did not believe them. Horrible stories, told by Treblinka escapees, were called "the imagination of sick brains".

The ghetto clearing took place between 22 September 1942 and 8 October 1942. On Garibaldi Street some houses were prepared as storage rooms in which the plundered property was stored after the deportation. All entrances to the cellars were painted white so that the Germans could quickly find hidden Jews.

The first “Aktion” was organized on Yom Kippur, 21 - 22 September 1942. In the night SS and Ukrainians from Trawniki surrounded the ghetto and installed lamps on the streets. Then the Jews were thrown out of their flats. They had to gather in front of the Metallurgia factory, where a selection took place. Around 7,000 Jews were forced to march to the railway ramp at Zawodzie. There they had to enter cattle wagons and were deported to Treblinka. 200 other people were killed on the spot, 350 selected for work. A mass grave for the murdered Jews was dug on Kawia Street.

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

The Jewish Ghetto at Radom!

2009-04-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Radom Ghetto

The Ghetto in Radom

Following the German invasion of Poland, the area known as the Generalgouvernement was divided into four administrative districts: Krakow, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw. After the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, a fifth district, Galicia, which had formerly been occupied by the Soviets, was added in August 1941.

A census taken at the beginning of 1940 revealed that there were about 280,000 Jews resident in the Radom district, governed by Dr. Karl Lasch, the SS and Police Fuhrer for Radom was initially SS- Brigadefuhrer Katzmann, later replaced by Oberg and then Bottcher.

The city of Radom was occupied on 8 September 1939.

Around 30,000 Jews (one third of Radom's population) fell into German hands. During the next months the Jewish community increased as several thousand Jews were sent to Radom, having been expelled from Poznan and Lodz provinces. In turn, 1,840 Radom Jews were deported to small towns in the environs.

At the IMT trial in Nuremburg, a Jewish resident of Radom, David Wajnapel, provided graphic testimony concerning conditions in the city following the German invasion:

“A few weeks after the entry of the German troops into Radom, police and SS authorities arrived. Conditions became immediately worse. The house in the Zeromski St. where their headquarters were became a menace to the entire population.

People who were walking in this street were dragged into the gateway and ill-treated by merciless beatings and by the staging of sadistic games. All SS officers, as well as the men, took part in this. Being a physician, I often had the opportunity to give medical help to seriously injured victims of the SS.”

Radom refugees

In December 1939 a Judenrat, headed by Josef Diamant, was established, and from 1 April 1941, a Jewish Order service created, headed by Joachim Geiger, who had previously been in charge of the provision of Jewish forced labour in the city.

The Radom Judenrat also served as the main Judenrat (Oberjudenrat) for the entire Radom district. On 1 July 1940, all property of the Jews in the region was transferred to the German administrative office (Treuhandstelle), headed by Felix Weinopfel.

Beginning in August 1940, around 2,000 Jews were deported to work camps in the Lublin district, where they were engaged in the construction of the "Otto Line", a series of anti-tank ditches and fortifications on the frontier between German and Soviet occupied Poland.

Virtually all of these deportees perished. Hundreds more were sent to forced labour camps near Radom, in places such as Kruszyna, Jedlinsk, Lesiow, Dabrowa Kozlowska and Wolanow. Jews taken from Radom to the labour camp at Cieszanow would bitterly sing in Yiddish:

Work, brothers, work fast. If you don't, they'll lash your hide.
Not many of us will manage to last – Before long we'll all have died.

1,500 Radom Jews were deported to the small town of Busko in December 1940, to be followed by a further 1,000 in February 1941. As a result, the apartment density in the Jewish quarter of Busko rose to 20 per room and a typhus epidemic broke out. Following the various deportations to and from the city, in the spring of 1941, shortly before the establishment of the ghettos, there were approximately 32,000 Jews in Radom.

Between March and April 1941, the Germans established two ghettos: The large ghetto in the centre of Radom contained 27,000 people and the small ghetto in the Glinice suburb about 5,000.

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

The conclusion to the Genocide called Action Reinhard

2009-04-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Conclusion to Aktion Reinhard

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Panorama of Belzec after the camp was dismantled (circa 1944)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cremation surface could take about 200 corpses. First, a wood fire was kindled under the iron grate. During the course of the cremation operation the corpses later served as the only fuel.

From time to time the badly twisted rails had to be replaced by new ones.”

<-Gisela Gdula, On the right Michael Tregenza, Belzec investigator (circa 2002)

Gisela Gdula a Belzec villager interviewed in 2004 said:

“We used to take round loaves to the camp from our bakery, we saw pyres like a volcano - the villagers had to scrape human fat off the windows.”

Another of the Belzec SS garrison SS-Scharfuhrer Werner Dubois testified:

“The transports to Belzec and consequently the gassing operations, stopped quite suddenly. As staff members of the Belzec camp, we were informed that the place would be rebuilt completely.

A working group of Jews whose size I don’t remember was in charge of the demolition work. It is worth mention that at the time (March – April 1943) the cremation of the corpses was terminated and the graves levelled.

The camp was emptied entirely and levelled accordingly. I heard that some planting was done there. The Jewish work commando, after accomplishing this work, was taken to Sobibor.

I remained in Belzec for two more days, together with some of my colleagues and guards, to carry out the last clearing and loading. Some time later when I was in Sobibor, I heard that during the transport of the Jewish work commando from Belzec to Sobibor some mutiny and shooting took place which led to some deaths.”

After the camp buildings were dismantled and the German and Ukrainian staff had left people from the neighbouring villages and townships started digging in the area of the camp, searching for gold and valuables. A Pole Edward Luczynski, who lived in Belzec, testified:

“After levelling and cleaning the area of the extermination camp, the Germans planted the area with small pines and left. At that moment, the whole area was plucked to pieces by the neighbouring population, who were searching for gold and valuables.

That’s why the whole surface of the camp was covered with human bones, hair ashes from cremated corpses, dentures, pots and other objects.”

In order to safeguard the site from the above kind of activity, the Aktion Reinhard organisers decided to build a farm on the former death camp site. A farm was built for a Ukrainian guard who would live there with his family.

This precautionary measure was later adopted also in Treblinka and Sobibor. Globocnik wrote about this to Himmler:

Russian photo from Treblinka (circa 1944) ->

“For reasons of surveillance, in each camp a small farm was created which is occupied by a guard. An income must regularly be paid to him so that he can maintain a small farm.”

The next camp to be liquidated was Treblinka. The last transports came from the Bialystok designated Pj 207 and Pj 208 (Pj – Polish Jews) which arrived in Treblinka death camp on 18 and 19 August respectively.

Due to the revolt and the partially destroyed facilities, only ten freight cars loaded with Jews could be unloaded on the ramp, a fifty percent reduction compared with the pre-revolt situation.

After the completion of this extermination action, in recognition of Globocnik’s work, Globocnik was appointed to the post of Higher SS and Police Leader for the Trieste area in north eastern Italy.

Globocnik left Lublin in September 1943 and took with him to Italy over the next few months a group of SS men and Ukrainians who had been under his command in Aktion Reinhard, including key personalities such as Wirth, Stangl, Reichleitner, Hering and Franz.

Read more here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/arconclusion.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Copyright Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 H.E.A.R.T

The Gerstein Report - Belzec

2009-04-03T02:20:00.000-07:00

The Kurt Gerstein Report

Tübingen (Württemberg), garden route 24, the 4. May 1945 at present Rottweil (Translated from German)

Kurt Gerstein

Personal History:
Kurt Gerstein, retired mining civil servant, graduate engineer, on 27 September 1936 released from the Höheren Preußischen Bergdienst because of subversive activity.
Born on 11 August 1905 in Münster (Westfalen), associate of the engineering works De Limon Fluhme & Co. in Düsseldorf, Industriestraße 1 - 17. Special factory for automatic grease systems for engines, Knorr- and Westinghouse brakes.

Personnel record: 1905-1910 in Münster (Westfalen). 1910-1919 Saarbrücken. 1919 until 1921 Halberstadt. 1921-1925 Neuruppin near Berlin. There in 1925 school-leaving examination at the humanistic grammar school. Studies: University Marburg a. Lahn 1925-1927. Berlin 1927-1931, college of technology Aachen 1927. Graduate engineer examination 1931 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Since 1925 active member of the organized Protestant Youth (CVJM-YMCA) and the bible circles at secondary schools.

Political activity: Active follower of Brüning and Stresemann. - Since June 1933 persecuted by the Gestapo because of Christian activity against the Nazi State. On 2 May 1933 joined the NSDAP, on 2 October 1936 expulsion from the NSDAP because of subversive (religious) activity for the denominational church. At the same time expulsion as official from the civil service because of disturbing a party solemnity ceremony at the state theatre in Hagen (Westfalen) on 30 January 1935 - a performance of the drama "Wittekind" - thrashed in public and injured.

On 27 November 1935 mining service examination at the economics ministry in Berlin, all examinations passed with distinction. Until arrest on 27 September 1936 civil servant at the Saarland mines administration in Saarbrücken. This first arrest happened because of sending 8,500 subversive (re the Nazis) pamphlets to all heads of ministerial departments and high judicial officers in Germany. In accordance with a life-long wish I then studied medicine in Tübingen at the Deutsches Institut für Ärztliche Mission. This was possible because of my economic independence. As an associate of the De Limon Fluhme & Co. in Düsseldorf I earned an average income of 10,000 Reichsmark yearly. I used to spend approximately one third of this income for my religious ideals. In particular, I had 230,000 religious and anti-Nazi pamphlets printed and distributed at my own cost.

On 14 July 1938 my second arrest occured, and I was committed to the Konzentrationslager Welzheim because of subversive activity. Before that I was frequently warned and interrogated by the Gestapo, and received a ban on speaking throughout the whole Reich area.

When I heard about the beginning of the killing of mentally ill persons at Grafeneck and Hadamar and other sites, I decided to make every effort to look into the matter of these ovens and chambers in order to learn what happened there. This was all the more relevant as a sister-in-law by marriage - Bertha Ebeling - was compulsorily killed in Hadamar. With two references from Gestapo officers who had worked on my case, I easily succeeded in joining the SS. The gentlemen took the view that my idealism, which they probably admired, must be of advantage to the Nazi cause. On 10 March 1941 I joined the SS. I received my basic training in Hamburg-Langenhorn, in Arnhem (Holland), and in Oranienburg. In Holland I immediately contacted the Dutch resistance movement (graduate engineer Ubbink, Doesburg) [See our page "Gerstein’s report in the Netherlands"].

Because of my dual studies I was soon taken over by the technical-medical service and allotted to the SS-Führungshauptamt, Amtsgruppe D, Sanitätswesen der Waffen-SS Abteilung Hygiene. I completed the training in a course together with 40 physicians. At the Hygienedienst I could determine my activities for myself. I constructed mobile and stationary disinfection facilities for the troops, for prisoner-of-war camps, and concentration camps. With this I had great success and was from then on undeservedly considered as a kind of technical genius. Indeed it turned out well at least to some extent, by getting the horrible epidemic typhus wave in 1941 in the camps under control. Because of my successes I soon became Leutnant and then Oberleutnant.

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The Fate of the Danish Jews during the Holocaust

2009-03-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

The Fate of the Jews of Denmark

Hitler invades Denmark

The Germans invaded Denmark on 9 April 1940, in a combined attack against Norway, a few hours later the Danish Government accepted the German ultimatum and surrendered.

At the beginning of 1942 Himmler and Heydrich enlisted the zealous aid of the Foreign Office to get the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws applied to all Western countries under military occupation.

In Holland, a totally occupied country this pressure could not be resisted, in France a half-occupied country, it was half-resisted. In the case of Denmark a nation which retained its neutrality under German occupation, with a monarchy and constitution both unimpaired.

Here the pressure of Ribbentrop and Himmler was resisted with ninety-five per cent success – almost the only bright spark in a truly dark and depressing tale of murder and misery.

In January 1942 it was reported in the American press that the King of Denmark had threatened to abdicate if the German demand for Nuremberg legislation was pressed.

As a consequence, Rademacher the SS watch-dog over the Diplomatic Corps, advised Cecil von Renthe- Fink, the Reich plenipotentiary in Copenhagen, “to find occasions to point out that it would be prudent for Denmark to prepare in good time for the Final Solution.”

Cecil von Renthe-Fink

But Denmark was not prudent, and in June 1942, when the Germans were pressing for a Danish “Jewish badge” decree, similar to which had been in force in the Reich since September 1941, King Christian was reported to have said that he would be the first Danish citizen to wear the badge.

Himmler now tried to proceed against the Jews in Denmark in the guise of security measures. On 24 September 1942 he ordered Heinrich Muller, the head of the Gestapo, to insert the names of Jews in a list of Danish Communist and resistance leaders whom he proposed to arrest.

No doubt Himmler believed he could rely on the co-operation of Renthe-Fink successor, Karl Werner Best, since Best had once been legal advisor to the Gestapo – but Best who had left the Gestapo to escape the clutches of Heydrich, was now relieved of the worst anxieties of a successful careerist by the death of his enemy.

Moreover, as a Reich plenipotentiary in a quasi-neutral country, Best desired a quiet life above all things, so his report to Ribbentrop on 28 January 1943, was quite daring. Best suggested that, since the proposed measures would certainly create a constitutional crisis in Denmark, the Danes should be asked only to dismiss their Jews from the civil service.

Under Himmler’s prodding Ribbentrop returned to the charge, and on 24 April, Best replied that out of 6,500 Jews in Denmark only 31 were civil servants. Of course, there were the 1,351 refugees from the Reich whom the Danish Government had hitherto protected, but Best suggested that the Danes would not be able to do this any longer if the refugees were given back their German nationality.

Such a step was, however, impossible under the 11th decree supplementing the Reich Law of Citizenship, which could not be retracted in the case of refugees in Denmark without upsetting the whole legal fabric of the deportations from Germany.

Werner Best identification papers

Himmler still insisted on the full application of the Final Solution in Denmark and Ribbentrop as usual, gave way. On 22 May he informed Best that while he could not take instructions from Himmler, the next steps might be discussed with Himmler in the precincts of the Foreign Office, if necessary in Ribbentrop’s presence.

Nothing however was done till August when a disturbance in Denmark gave Himmler the pretext he required. On 5 August 1943, Sweden renounced the 1940 agreement by which German troops stationed in Norway were permitted to use her railway system.

This action inspired the Danish dock workers at Odense to refuse to repair German ships. There were riots and arrests and on 9 August, the Danish Premier Scavenius, threatened to resign if the Danish courts were required to try the arrested men.

As a consequence, the Germans introduced martial law at Odense, and on the 24 August 1943 – the day that Himmler was made Minister of Interior – the Danish resistance movement blew up the German – occupied Forum Hall in Copenhagen, and on the following day all the Danish shipyards were on strike.

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Julius Streicher - Anti-Semitic Monster

2009-03-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Julius Streicher

The Beast of Franconia

Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher was born on 12 February 1885 in the Upper Bavarian village of Fleinhausen. An elementary school teacher by profession, Streicher served in a Bavarian unit during the Great War and despite a warning for bad behaviour was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, and he rose from enlisted man to lieutenant.

In 1919 he co-founded the anti-Semitic Deutsch-Soziale Partei and two years later joined the NSDAP, taking his own Party membership with him. Streicher was an intimate friend of Adolf Hitler and one of the earliest supporters of Nazism in northern Bavaria.

In 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of the NSDAP for Franconia and his headquarters in Nuremberg became a leading centre for violent anti-Semitism in Germany. Streicher’s unbecoming conduct and diatribes against the Weimar Government led to his dismissal from his teaching post in 1928.

A year later he was elected as a Nazi member of the Bavarian legislature. Streicher was a tireless speaker and plebeian rabble-rouser, whose political influence derived largely from the impact of Der Stürmer, which he founded in 1923 and continued to edit until 1945.

Hitler, Hess & Streicher

This weekly newspaper became the world’s best known anti-Semitic publication with its crude cartoons, repellent photographs of Jews, its stories of ritual murder, pornography and its coarse prose style.

Streicher reached millions of Germans, through his newspaper columns, and his endless speaking tours imbuing them, with his own poisonous brew of hatred, sadism and perversity. The impact of Der Stürmer as greatly enhanced by a nationwide system of display cases (Stürmerkasten) put up in parks, public squares, factory canteens, at street corners and bus stops, to attract passers- by.

Their visual impact, their racists slogans and scandal- mongering style drew crowds, Der Stürmer consistently carried large- print slogans such as “Avoid Jewish Doctors and Lawyers” and gave listings of Jewish dentists, shopkeepers, and professional people whom “Aryans” were urged to avoid.

Those who ignored this advice were in danger of having their own names and addresses listed. Letters to the editor denouncing Jews – and Germans who patronised them – became a regular feature of Der Stürmer, which claimed in 1935 that it was receiving 11,000 letters a week.

An issue of Der Stürmer

The “Pillory” column created a climate of fear and intimidation not only in Nuremberg – where Streicher dominated all spheres of life – but throughout the Reich. Through Der Stürmer , Streicher provided a focus for the anti-Jewish measures of Nazi Germany, pressing already in 1933, for the banning of Jews from public baths, places of entertainment, State schools etc.

After Streicher spoke in Magdeburg in 1935, Jews were barred from using public transport, the general campaign which led to the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935 was initiated by his newspaper.

One of Streicher’s most enthusiastic readers was Adolf Hitler, who declared that Der Stürmer was the only paper which he read avidly from first to last page. Undoubtedly the Fuhrer protected Streicher raising him to high office and praising him as the “friend and comrade in arms” who never wavered and would unflinchingly stand behind him in every situation.”

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

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

Treblinka Survivor – Testimony – Selected Extracts

2009-03-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

Sonia Lewkowicz

Treblinka Survivor – Testimony – Selected Extracts

Federenko Trial
Fort Lauderdale, USA 1978

[photos added to enhance the text]

Q: Where were you born?

Sonia Lewkowicz:
I was born in the city of Dombrowa , near Grodno, Poland.

Q: And when were you born?

On the 11^th of March 1922

A country scene in Dombrowa, Poland

Q: And when did you finish school?

It was already during the war in June 1924, correction 1941

Q: In December 1942 were you taken in a transport to Treblinka Camp?

Yes

Q: You were twenty years old when this happened?

That is right

Q: Tell the Court what happened, when the train you were riding in pulled into the Treblinka camp?

When the train stopped, we were chased from the cars to a big square where we were separated, women and children on one side, the men on the other side. We went to the barrack where we had to undress.

Q: And did you undress?

Yes

Q: Who else was in the barrack where you were forced to undress?

There were other women and children, Germans, Ukrainians, and
Jewish prisoners, men, with some kind of a blue band on their sleeves.

Q: Tell us what happened to you?

I wouldn’t undress completely. One of those Jewish prisoners, Jewish men, who suggested that I should say that I am a laundress. Then he ran to the SS –man, told him probably I am a laundress, and pushed me into him, and he said to this officer that I am a qualified laundress, he pulled me aside.

Q: One of the Jewish prisoners with an arm band that said you were to say
you were a laundress?

Yes

Q: Was that in order to save your life?

The station outside of Treblinka

Yes

Q: Were you really a qualified laundress?

Q: So when you made the statement to the SS man that you were a laundress,
were you pulled out of line?

Yes

Q: Was anybody else – were any other women pulled out of the line at the
same time you were?

Yes.

Q: How many others?

Another woman – one other woman.

Q: Do you remember her name?

Yes. Sonja Berman

Read the full article here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/sonialewkowicz.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org>

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

2009-03-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

<--Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Ernst Kaltenbrunner was born on 4 October 1903 in the valley of the Inn, near Braunau, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. Descended from a family of country artisans – his father and grandfather, were however lawyers, Kaltenbrunner was educated in Linz, where Adolf Eichmann was one of his boyhood friends, and subsequently studied law at Graz University.

He took his doctorate in law in 1926, setting up his practice as a lawyer in Linz. Active in one of the first groups of Austrian National Socialist students and for a time a militant in the Independent Movement for a Free Austria, Kaltenbrunner eventually joined the Nazi Party in 1932.

A year later he became a member of one of the more or less camouflaged SS organisations in Austria and a spokesman for the Party in Upper Austria, providing legal advice to members and sympathizers.

In 1934 Kaltenbrunner was arrested by the Dolfuss government, and again in May 1935 he spent six months in prison on a conspiracy charge, being struck from the bar for his political activities. Shortly before his second arrest he had been appointed Commander of the Austrian SS.

After his release he worked assiduously with Seyss- Inquart for the Anschluss with Germany and as a reward for his services, was appointed by Seyss- Inquart on 2 March 1938 as Minister for State Security in Austria and promoted to SS- Gruppenfuher.

At the same time he became a member of the Reichstag, and during the next three years Kaltenbrunner was successively appointed as Commander –in – Chief of the SS and Police for the regions of Vienna, the Upper and Lower Danube and then in April 1941 Lieutenant – General of the Police.

<-- Kaltenbruner (on right) with Himmler 1941 '

He created an impressive intelligence network radiating from Austria south-eastwards, which caught the attention of Himmler, who to general surprise recommended him in January 1943 as head of the RSHA in Berlin in succession to Reinhard Heydrich.

In this key position as head of the Security Police (SIPO) and the Security Service (SD) Kaltenbrunner not only controlled the Gestapo but also the concentration camp system and the administrative apparatus for carrying out the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

A giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall, with massive broad shoulders, huge arms, a thick square chin and deep scars from his student duelling days, Kaltenbrunner excelled in brutal repression and providing human fodder for the concentration camps.

Excitable, deceitful, self-indulgent – he was an alcoholic and a chain-smoker – he took a personal interest in various methods of execution used in the camps under his aegis and especially in the gas chambers.

Belzec Death Camp archaeological investigation!

2009-02-24T10:30:00.000-08:00

The Belzec Death Camp

Archaeological Investigations

A Review By Historians: Robin O’Neil, Salisbury and Michael Tregenza, Lublin.
Acknowledgment to the

Torun Team of archaeologists and the cartographer, Billy Rutherford.
Published with the exclusive permission of the author

Introduction

The investigation carried out at Bełżec by leading archaeologists was historically unique, as no similar investigations had been carried out at the other two designated pure death camps of Sobibór and Treblinka. The magnitude of what occurred in Bełżec has never been fully described in the historical literature until now. According to previous studies, which have always been inhibited by lack of eye-witness evidence, several hundred thousand Jews perished in Bełżec. The archaeological investigations confirm by overwhelming evidence that mass murder was committed here on an unprecedented scale and that there was a determined attempt to conceal the enormity of the crime. In this the Nazis failed. The material unearthed at Bełżec not only confirmed the crime but enabled, by scientific analysis, the historians to re-construct for the first time the probable layout of the camp in the first and second phases.

Previous Investigations

The 1997 archaeological investigations at Bełżec were initiated by an agreement between the Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom (Rada Ochrony Pamieci Walk I Meczenstwa – ROPWiM) in Warsaw in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. How Bełżec was to be commemorated was the subject of a wide-ranging competition among artists who placed their suggestions before a selecting committee. The successful contributors were a team of architects and artists led by Marcin Roszczyk who intended: ‘To honour the earth that harboured the ashes of the victims’. It is within this definition that the archaeological investigations were commenced to examine the topography of the former camp and locate mass grave areas before the erection of a suitable memorial commemorating the victims murdered in Bełżec.

As a result of the work carried-out by the archaeological team from Toruń University, and an historical assessment of the findings by the author, a clearer picture emerged of how the camp was constructed, organised and functioned in both phases of its existence. Before looking at the most recent survey, some background to previous investigations may be helpful.

The first investigation 1945.

Very shortly after the end of the war, several War Crimes Investigation Commissions were established in Poland by the Soviet-backed civil authorities. At all locations in Eastern Europe where Nazi atrocities had taken place, teams of specialist investigators descended to set up officially constituted boards of enquiry with powers to summon local people to attend and give evidence. On 10 October 1945, an Investigation Commission team lead by Judge Czesław Godzieszewski from the District Court in Zamosc entered Bełżec and commenced investigations. In addition to hearing oral testimony from many inhabitants of Bełżc village and its environs, the team of investigators carried out an on-site investigation at the camp. Nine pits were opened to confirm the existence of mass graves. The evidence found indicated that thousands of corpses had been cremated and any remaining bones crushed into small pieces. The human remains unearthed were re-interred in a specially built concrete crypt near the northeast corner of the camp. Within hours of this simple

ceremony to commemorate the victims, local villagers ransacked the grave area looking for treasure. This desecration of mass graves by local inhabitants continues to this day: Immediately after completion of the 1998 excavations, overnight, the excavation sites were penetrated and damaged by searches for Jewish gold. Similar acts of malicious damage have been recorded at Sobibór and Treblinka.

Read the full article here:

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/modern/archreview.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

Structure of the Hitler Death Squads. Einsatzgruppen C

2009-02-21T07:38:00.000-08:00

Organizational Structure
Einsatzgruppe C
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/

[click here for larger view]

For more on the Einsatzgruppen visit this link:

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/index.html

Sources :

Nuremberg IMT
NARA USA
USHMM

Copyright. Carmelo Lisciotto 2009 H.E.A.R.T

Memories of Treblinka - Richard Glazar

2009-02-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Richard Glazar
Treblinka Recalled

Richard Glazar

We travelled for two days. On the morning of the second day we saw that we had left Czechoslovakia and were heading East. It wasn’t the SS guarding us, but Schutzpolizei, the police in green uniforms. We were in ordinary passenger cars, all the seats were filled. You couldn’t choose – they were all numbered and assigned.

In my compartment there was an elderly couple. I still remember the good man was always hungry and his wife scolded him, saying they’d have no food left for the future. Then on the second day I saw a sign for Malkinia, we went on a little farther.

Then very slowly, the train turned off the main track and rolled at walking pace through a wood.

While we looked out – we’d been able to open a window – the old man in our compartment saw a boy…. cows were grazing and he asked the boy in signs, “Where are we?” And this kid made a funny gesture – draws a finger across his throat.

A Pole?

A Pole. It was where the train had stopped. On one side was the wood, and the other were fields. We saw cows watched over by a young man, a farmhand.

And one of you questioned him?

Not in words, but in signs, we asked, “What’s going on here?” And he made that gesture. Like this. We didn’t really pay much attention to him. We couldn’t figure out what he meant. And suddenly it started: the yelling and the screaming, “All out! -everybody out!” All those shouts, the uproar, the tumult! “Out! Get out! Leave the baggage!”

We got out stepping on each other. We saw men wearing blue armbands. Some carried whips. We saw some SS men – Green uniforms, black uniforms. We were a mass, and the mass swept us along. It was irresistible. It had to move to another place. I saw the others undressing. And I heard: “Get undressed – you’re to be disinfected.”

As I waited already naked, I noticed the SS men separating out some people. These were told to get dressed. A passing SS man suddenly stopped in front of me, looked me over, and said, “Yes, you too, quick, join the others, get dressed. You’re going to work here, and if you’re good, you can be a Kapo – a squad leader.” We were taken to a barracks. The whole place stank.

Piled about five feet high in a jumbled mess, were all the things people could conceivably have brought clothes, suitcases, everything stacked in a solid mass. On top of it, jumping around like demons, people were making bundles and carrying them outside. It was turned over to one of these men. His armband said “Squad Leader.”

<-- The Treblinka Station

He shouted and I understood that I was also to pick up clothing, bundle it and take it somewhere. As I worked I asked him, “What’s going on? Where are the ones who stripped?” And he replied, “Dead all dead!”

But it still hadn’t sunk in, I didn’t believe it. He’d used the Yiddish word. It was the first time I’d heard Yiddish spoken. He didn’t say it very loud, and I saw he had tears in his eyes. Suddenly he started shouting, and raised his whip. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an SS man coming. And I understood that I was to ask no more questions, but to rush outside with the package.

All I could think of then was my friend Carel Unger. He’d been at the rear of the train, in a section that had been uncoupled and left outside. I needed someone – near me – with me. Then I saw him. He was in the second group, he’d been spared too. On the way, somehow, he had learned, he already knew. He looked at me. All he said was, “Richard, my father, mother, brother. “He had learned on the way there.”

Your meeting with Carel – how long after your arrival did it happen?

Reinhard Heydrich "The Hangman"

2009-01-29T10:03:00.000-08:00

Reinhard Heydrich

"The Hangman"

< - Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in the German town Halle, and baptized Reinhardt Eugen Tristan. It was his given name of "Reinhardt" that would become synonymous (besides Auschwitz) with the deportation, mass shooting and systematic slaughter of European Jews and Romanies in Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek. The Heydrich family was one of culture and piety.

His father, Bruno Richard Heydrich, an exceptionally gifted musician, founded the Halle Conservatory of Music and young Reinhardt was trained as a violinist, a skill that remained with him throughout his lifetime. The Heydrichs were devoutly catholic yet despite the Protestant majority in Halle.

They maintained an upper class lifestyle enjoying privileged status among the community. Heydrich attended the best schools and excelled in academics. Fiercely self-driven he also displayed natural athletic ability, especially in the art of fencing for which he received several awards; in his later years he would also become an accomplished pilot.

Heydrich Fencing - >

As a teen he was plagued by rumours of Jewish ancestry that allegedly stemmed from his fathers bloodline. These rumours continued on through his adult life resulting in an investigation ordered by Gregor Strasser in 1932, at the instigation of Rudolf Jordan, the Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg.

A report was submitted to the information office of the NSDAP center in München (Munich). However, it dealt only with the parental line, since Jordan's suspicions were based primarily on the fact that the father, Bruno Heydrich, was described in Riemann's musical encyclopedia of 1916 as "Heydrich, Bruno, real name Süss". The report came to the conclusion that the name "Süss" was not incriminating and that Bruno Heydrich's son was free from any "Jewish blood".

There have been theories of Jewish ancestry also originating on his mother’s side but no conclusive evidence supporting these theories has thus surfaced. Martin Bormann's personal file on Heydrich, which included his family tree, has been preserved. This family tree goes back only one generation on his mother's side and omits the name, parentage and place of origin of his grandmother. Anyway Heydrich changed his first name into "Reinhard" and tried to avoid writing his name with a "t" when he started his career as a major SS-officer. At the age of 16 Heydrich took up with the local Freikorps and became strongly influenced by the racial fanaticism of the German Volk movement and their violent anti-Semitic beliefs.

Two years later he left Halle to pursue a Naval career as a signals officer, and by 1926 he had risen to the rank of second lieutenant in the Baltic Command of the German Navy (Admiralstabsleitung der Marinestation Ostsee). It was here that he first made contact with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the German Military Intelligence. The two became close friends, but later bitter rivals. Heydrich’s dreams of becoming an admiral in the German Navy were cut short in 1931 when he, well over six feet tall, blonde haired and blue-eyed, had taken to womanizing.

While engaged to Lina von Osten (whom he later married in 1931), he was accused of having sexual relations with the unmarried daughter of a local shipyard director. It was claimed she became pregnant as a result of the affair but Heydrich refused to marry her. A scandal ensued and he was subsequently forced to resign his commission on the orders of Admiral Raeder, due to charges of "conduct unbecoming and officer and a gentlemen".

< - Heydrich & Family

Out of work and with few options open he joined the Nazi party with the number of 544,916. In 1931, at the age of 27, he became a member of the SS, registration number 10,120. It wasn’t long before his Aryan looks and strict attention to detail caught the eye of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, with whom he managed to secure an interview for the role of SD Chief.

The SD (Sicherheitsdienst) was to be the new intelligence service for the SS and Himmler was looking for the right man to run it. The interview took place on 14 June 1934, and lasted twenty minutes. Legend has it the interview itself consisted of only a single question put forth by Himmler: How an Intelligence organization should be structured? Heydrich responded quickly and decisively.

He called on his experience as a Naval Signals Officer and his passion for British spy novels. Armed with this pool of knowledge both factual as well as fictional, he provided an outline that met with an enthusiastic Himmler’s immediate approval. Heydrich’s star was on the rise. Heydrich grew the SD from a single room non-entity to an organization controlling a national network of informants. He collected information and created files on Communists, Trade Unions, Social Democrats, wealthy industrialists, Jews, even Nazi party members and SA leaders.

The Destruction of the Italian Jews!

2009-01-26T08:36:00.000-08:00

The destruction of the Jews of Italy

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Italian soldiers waving white flag of surrender

The Italian Government surrendered its forces to the Allies on 8 September 1943, and on the following day General Mark Clark launched Operation Avalanche, the landing of Allied troops on the coast of Italy, near Salerno. On the 10 September 1943 the Germans occupied Rome, Mussolini’s officials perhaps guided by Mussolini himself tried to substitute half-measures to thwart deportation to the gas chambers in the death camps in the east.

But after his captivity on the Gran Sasso, Mussolini was a deflated balloon, and the Italian government was much weakened, the Gestapo wasted no time, aided by the Jewish registration lists created in the days when Mussolini and his fascist government had issued anti-Jewish decrees.

Bishop Hudal

It was most unfortunate that many of the native and refugee Jews who made their way south following the Allied forces landings in Calabria should have waited in Rome, when the Germans occupied the city on the 10 September 1943 about 8,000 Jews fell into German hands, a sixth of the Jewish population of Italy.

By the end of September 1943 it was known to the German Embassies in Rome and the Vatican City that Himmler intended to send these Jews to the Auschwitz – Birkenau death camp. On the 30 September Bishop Hudal, rector of the German church in Rome warned General Stahel, the Town Commandant, that the Pope might take a position against the deportations. Stahel decided not to carry out the deportations without the permission of the Foreign Office, at the same time Mollhausen, the German Consul-General in Rome, wrote personally to Ribbentrop, recommending internment in Italian labour camps rather than deportation.

The response could have been predicted, Ribbentrop would not intervene with the SD, from whom Stahel took his orders – the first round-up of Jews in Rome occurred on 18 October 1943.

OSS report on the treatment of Italian Jews by the Nazis Page 1 (click text to enlarge)

OSS report on the treatment of Italian Jews by the Nazis page 2 (click text to enlarge)

The always compliant Baron Ernst von Weizsacker was now very much on the spot as Ambassador to the Holy See. Much was made at Weizsacker trial of the warnings which he gave both to the Vatican and the Jewish community leaders of the impending action. The only certain intervention of von Weizsacker is the forwarding of Bishop Hudal’s protest to the Security Police commander, Obersturmbannfuhrer Hubert Kappler. But that was only on 22 October 1943 after the round-up had already taken place.

According to Gerhard Gumpert, Weizsacker’s First Secretary, Kappler was persuaded that Hudal’s warning to Stahel had been inspired by the Pope. Kappler was now too frightened to continue the actions.
This version of events does not ring true firstly because Kappler did inh fact continue the round-ups, and secondly because the action of 18 October had taken place without the least protest from the Vatican.

The best witness is Weizsacker himself, writing to Dr Karl Ritter, Minister for Special Purposes at the Foreign Office in Berlin: “Although pressed on all sides, the Pope did not allow himself to be drawn into any demonstration of reproof at the deportation of the Jews of Rome. The only sign of disapproval was a veiled allusion in Osservatore Romano on 25-28 October, in which only a restricted number of people could recognise a reference to the Jewish question.”