Holocaust – Page 3 – History of Sorts

The Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust

I am not a Jehovah’s Witness, and although I don’t really agree with their doctrine, I respect them for their unshakable faith in what they believe in.

The persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Nazi Germany is a dark chapter in history that often goes overlooked compared to other groups targeted by the regime. Despite being a relatively small religious minority, Jehovah’s Witnesses faced intense persecution under the Nazis due to their refusal to swear allegiance to the state, participate in military service, or salute the national flag, as they viewed these acts as conflicting with their religious beliefs.

As early as 1933, Jehovah’s Witnesses were targeted for their refusal to conform to Nazi ideology. They were arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to various forms of torture and abuse in concentration camps. In these camps, they were often identified by purple triangles on their clothing, denoting them as political prisoners.

The Nazis sought to suppress Jehovah’s Witnesses because they represented a challenge to the regime’s authority and ideology. Their steadfast commitment to their religious beliefs and refusal to compromise—even in the face of severe persecution, made them a symbol of resistance.

Despite the persecution, Jehovah’s Witnesses remained resilient, continuing their religious activities clandestinely when possible and maintaining their faith under the most difficult circumstances. Their experiences during this period serve as a reminder of the importance of religious freedom and the dangers of authoritarian regimes that seek to suppress dissenting voices.

Within months of the Nazi takeover, regional governments, primarily those of Bavaria and Prussia, initiated aggressive steps against Jehovah’s Witnesses, breaking up their meetings, ransacking and then occupying their local offices. By April 1, 1935, the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior ordered the responsible local officials to dissolve the Watchtower Society.

The children of Jehovah’s Witnesses also suffered. In classrooms, teachers ridiculed children who refused to give the “Heil, Hitler!” salute or sing patriotic songs. Classmates shunned and beat up young Witnesses. Principals expelled them from schools. Families were broken up as authorities took children away from their parents and sent them to reform schools, orphanages, or private homes, to be brought up as Nazis.

Simone Arnold Liebster was one of those children, this is her story.

When Simone was born she was welcomed into a large extended Roman Catholic Family. When she was eight her mum left the Roman Catholic Church to become a Jehovah’s Witness. Sometime later, despite fierce opposition from their Roman Catholic family, Simone and her Dad became Jehovah’s Witnesses too and Simone was baptised in 1941

Simone Liebster (born Arnold) was born in August 1930 in a small Alsatian village. At age three, she moved to the bustling city of Mulhouse with her parents, Adolphe and Emma, and her dog Zita. Starting at an early age, Simone, like her parents, was deeply religious with a strong developed sense of justice. Though her father provided well for her family, Simone felt incensed by the inequities she saw around her, especially during Christmas, when even the Christ child seemed to differentiate between rich and poor. Adolphe and Emma raised Simone to listen to her conscience, even if it meant being different from or unpopular with others.

When Simone’s mother, Emma, began reading the literature of the Bible Students (Bibelforscher, also called Jehovah’s Witnesses), Simone’s father forbade Emma to talk about her new beliefs with her insatiably curious girl but eventually all three were baptized as Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the meantime, Hitler’s armies were marching across Europe, bringing with them oppression and violence. Simone’s home region of Alsace became a special target of the Nazi “Heim ins’ Reich” program, to make the contested land “German” again.

Because of their faith and their refusal to conform, Simone and her parents faced threats and coercion. Simone’s father, Adolphe, was the first arrested, along with other male Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nevertheless, Simone, then age 11, was determined to listen to the voice of her conscience. She refused to give the Hitler salute or sing Nazi songs, acts that she felt amounted to worship of a man. After several patriotic teachers confronted, ridiculed, expelled, and even knocked her unconscious, Simone was arrested by juvenile authorities, taken to Germany, and put in a Nazi penitentiary home. For nearly two years, Simone was forbidden to talk and was forced to do hard labour. Both her parents by this time had been imprisoned in Nazi camps, and none expected to live to see the family reunited. When the war ended all the Arnolds returned home to rebuild their lives.

Simone attended art school, like her father. Then, after learning English, she went to the United States to the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead. In 1956 Simone married Max Liebster, and, together, they devoted their lives to their ministry and peace education.

Approximately 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered under the Nazi regime, 250 of whom were executed for refusing to take part in armed conflict.

Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jehovah-s-witnesses-in-the-holocaust

Short biography of Simone Arnold Liebster

https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/simone-arnold-liebster

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Entomology During the Holocaust

The story of Emanuel Arnold Maurice Speijer reminds me a lot of that of Nikolai Vavilov, a scientist who sacrificed his life to save the seeds in the Leningrad seed bank. Emmanuel Speijer was more fortunate though.

Speijer was an entomologist. Entomology is the study of insects and their relationship to humans, the environment, and other organisms. Entomologists make great contributions to such diverse fields as agriculture, chemistry, biology, human/animal health, molecular science, criminology, and forensics.

For most people, a concentration camp would not be the obvious place to collect insects. However, for the Dutch Jewish scientist Emmanuel Speijer, establishing an entomological collection was a way to survive. While he was a prisoner in De Schaffelaar internment camp, in Barneveld, Westerbork, and Theresienstadt concentration camps, He did research on the insects that lived there and the diseases they spread. After the liberation, he published an article on his experiences, ‘Entomological work in the Nazi camps’

Speijer managed to use his passion for entomology to make life a bit more bearable in the camps. Insect plagues were resolved in an animal-friendly manner and he tried to prevent infections such as typhus by drawing up rules. The extensive Westerbork collection was collected in just one year.

This drawer contains all kinds of bees, bumblebees, wasps and ants collected in concentration camps during the Second World War by Emanuel Speijer.

On 19 December 1942, Speijer and his family were deported to De Schaffelaar internment camp near Barneveld in the Netherlands. More than 600 ‘socially prominent’ Dutch Jews were interned in the camp, which was housed in a castle, between 1942 and 1943. Due to their positions or connections, they were initially exempt from deportation to the East, but they too, faced increasingly strict rules.

Speijer’s stay in De Schaffelaar did not last long. After nine months, he was deported to Westerbork in the Northeastern Netherlands. He felt that it was important to preserve his collection, even if this meant giving it to the Germans, and he therefore asked them to keep it safe. It is partly thanks to these efforts that some of his collections can still be admired in Naturalis today.

‘In the beginning, it didn’t seem that my stay in this camp would be interesting from an entomological perspective,’ wrote Speijer of his first days in Westerbork. It wasn’t long before the camp’s Medical Service made him the ‘entomologist in the quarantine department.’ Instead of the caterpillars he’d studied in De Schaffelaar, he had to examine new camp prisoners for lice and mites. These bugs need to be removed with the utmost care, to prevent disease from spreading in the camp.

Despite the careful checks in the quarantine department, there were various disease outbreaks in Westerbork. Speijer wrote in length about one of them—the mysterious disease 7. Could this disease have been caused by lice? Or was the culprit a mite that was brought from Greece on rags distributed by the Germans? Speijer began a study to find an answer to this question. He sent specimens of infected skin to Leiden, to no avail.

Speijer spent the final, and perhaps the most turbulent, year of his imprisonment in the Czech concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Nowadays, the typhus outbreak there in the first half of 1945 is one of the most discussed outbreaks of the Second World War. Fearing the Allied advance, the Germans took large groups of prisoners to Theresienstadt in the last months of the war. It soon became impossible to check all new prisoners for lice and ‘disinfect’ them. As a result, the body louse—the main spreader of typhus—rapidly moves through the camp.

Because of his close contact with patients, he also became infected with typhus. After two days, he had such a high fever that he was unable to keep working.

As the Allied forces closed in, the Nazis began to empty ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe and send prisoners on death marches to camps and ghettos closer to Germany. Approximately 15,000 such prisoners arrived in Theresienstadt in the last weeks of April 1945. This increase almost doubled the camp‘s population to approximately 30,000 people.

Following two further visits in April 1945, the International Red Cross took over the running of Theresienstadt on 2 May 1945. One week later, on 9 May 1945, Soviet forces liberated the ghetto. Speijer left Theresienstadt on a stretcher, with the Red Cross.

When he returned to the Netherlands after the war, his ‘first task was to inquire about the collection.’ Unfortunately, little remains of his collections from Westerbork and Theresienstadt. According to him, though, entomology had shown that ‘it can help to give meaning to our lives, even in the most difficult circumstances.’ Doing research had given him a goal and had prevented the occupying forces from breaking his spirit. The tiny creatures had thus been of the utmost importance.

He died on October 30, 1999, at 95, in the Hague, South Holland, Netherlands.

Sources

https://www.niod.nl/en/blog/tiny-creatures-great-importance-how-emmanuel-speijer-did-entomological-research-concentration

https://topstukken.naturalis.nl/object/collectie-emanuel-speijer

https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/pres003onde01_01/pres003onde01_01_0035.php

https://filmkrant.nl/recensies/een-gelukkige-tijd

Nikolai Vavilov and the forgotten tragedy of the Siege of Leningrad.

https://collecties.kampwesterbork.nl/persoon/https%3A%2F%2Fkampwesterbork.nl%2Fdata%2Fperson%2F10698717

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Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler’s legacy is one of infamy and horror, with his name forever associated with the atrocities of the Holocaust and the devastation of World War II. His rise to power and the events of his regime serve as a stark reminder of the dangers of totalitarianism, xenophobia, and unchecked authoritarianism.

He was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn—a town in Austria. The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as “the embodiment of modern political evil”

In 1943, the US Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, commissioned Henry Murray, an American psychologist and a Harvard professor, to study Adolf Hitler’s personality to try to predict his behaviour. In his 229-page report, “Analysis of the Personality of Adolf Hitler,” Murray described Hitler as a paranoid “utter wreck” who was “incapable of normal human relationships.”

According to Murray, Hitler’s cycle from complete despair to reaction followed this pattern:
“An emotional outburst, tantrum of rage, and accusatory indignation ending in tears and self-pity. Succeeded by periods of inertia, exhaustion, melancholy, and indecisiveness. Followed by hours of acute dejection and disquieting nightmares. Leading to hours of recuperation. And finally confident and resolute decision to counterattack with great force and ruthlessness.”

Several theories have been proposed by psychologists, historians, and scholars to understand Hitler’s personality, motivations, and behaviour. Here are some key points often discussed in psychological analyses of Hitler:
Narcissism and Grandiosity: Many experts believe that Hitler exhibited traits of narcissistic personality disorder. He displayed grandiose self-importance, a sense of entitlement, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Hitler’s speeches and writings often emphasized his own perceived greatness and the superiority of the Aryan race.

Authoritarianism: Hitler’s leadership style was authoritarian, characterized by a desire for absolute control and obedience. He centralized power within the Nazi Party and created a cult of personality around himself, portraying himself as a strong and infallible leader.

Paranoia and Conspiracy Theories: Hitler harboured deep-seated paranoia and was prone to conspiracy theories, particularly regarding perceived enemies such as Jews, communists, and other groups he deemed responsible for Germany’s problems. He often saw himself as a saviour fighting against imagined threats to the German nation.

Psychological Trauma: Some historians and psychologists have speculated about possible traumatic experiences in Hitler’s early life, such as the death of his younger brother, Alois, or his experiences as a soldier in World War I. These experiences may have contributed to his worldview and psychological makeup.

Sociopathy or Psychopathy: Some experts have suggested that Hitler exhibited traits of sociopathy or psychopathy, including a lack of remorse, manipulative behaviour, and a disregard for the well-being of others. His willingness to use violence and cruelty to achieve his goals is often cited as evidence of these traits.

Propaganda and Manipulation: Hitler was highly skilled in the use of propaganda to manipulate public opinion and rally support for his regime. He understood the power of symbols, rhetoric, and mass communication to shape perceptions and influence behaviour.

Megalomania and Delusions of Grandeur: Hitler had a grandiose vision of himself as a messianic figure destined to lead Germany to greatness. He believed in his infallibility and was unwilling to listen to dissenting opinions or consider alternative viewpoints.

I was reluctant to post about a man who is evil personified, especially on his birthday—but I felt the importance of showing the analysis so we can recognize these traits in current or future leaders.

Sources

Click to access CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.pdf

https://www.thejournal.ie/hitler-psychological-profile-2620137-Feb2016/

https://digital.library.cornell.edu/collections/nuremberg/analysis-hitler

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Jews found themselves confined in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.

The uprising began on April 19, 1943, when the Nazis attempted to liquidate the ghetto by deporting its remaining inhabitants to concentration camps. Instead of passively submitting to their fate, the Jewish inhabitants organized themselves into various resistance groups, primarily the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ZZW).

Despite being vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the insurgents fought fiercely against the well-equipped German forces for almost a month. They utilized homemade weapons, including Molotov cocktails and a small number of firearms smuggled into the ghetto. The ghetto fighters inflicted significant casualties on the Germans and managed briefly to halt the deportation operations.

However, on May 16, 1943, the Nazis succeeded in suppressing the uprising. They systematically destroyed the ghetto and deported its remaining inhabitants to concentration camps, primarily Treblinka. Most of the ghetto’s population perished in the uprise or met their fate in its aftermath.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising should not be confused with the Warsaw Uprising, which was an operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation in August 1944.

The ghetto, established in October 1940, was initially confined (approximately) 400,000 Jews in a small area of the city. Conditions in the ghetto were appalling, with severe overcrowding, inadequate food, sanitation, and medical care. Disease and starvation were rampant, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of residents.

The ghetto was surrounded by walls and heavily guarded by German forces to prevent the inhabitants from escaping. Movement—in and out of the ghetto—was strictly controlled, and Jews were subjected to forced labor and arbitrary violence by the Nazi authorities.

In 1942, the Germans began mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to extermination camps, primarily to Treblinka. These deportations, coupled with the harsh living conditions, led to a significant decrease in the ghetto’s population.

On January 9, 1943, Heinrich Himmler visited the Warsaw ghetto. He ordered the deportation of another 8,000 Jews. The January deportations caught the Jews by surprise, and ghetto residents thought that the end had come. The underground leadership, believing it to be the onset of the final deportation, ordered its forces to respond with arms. Upon discovering the Resistance, the Germans decided to halt the Aktion. This incident marked a turning point for most of the ghetto population, which from then on prepared for mass resistance and for hiding in underground bunkers in the cellars of homes.

The uprising started on April 19th, when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who ordered the destruction of the ghetto, block by block, ending on May 16th. A total of 13,000 Jews were killed, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. Stroop reported 110 German casualties, including 17 killed.

Jürgen Stroop issued a report, The Stroop Report, also known as the “Stroop Report on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,”

The report, compiled from Stroop’s daily situation reports, provides a chilling account of the brutality with which the Nazis suppressed the uprising. It includes descriptions of street battles, the destruction of buildings, the capture and deportation of Jews, and the use of heavy weaponry against the ghetto fighters.

The Stroop Report is significant as it provides firsthand insight into the tactics and mindset of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. It serves as a historical document attesting to the atrocities committed against the Jewish population of Warsaw and stands as a grim testament to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Stroop Report was presented as evidence for the Nuremberg Trials, where Stroop was on trial for his role in the atrocities committed during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Today, the Stroop Report is preserved as an historical record studied by historians and scholars—to better understand the events of the Holocaust and the actions of the Nazi regime.

It is probably one of the more disturbing pictures, not because of its graphics, but because it clearly shows the Nazis enjoying themselves while tormenting the Jews from the ghetto. An interesting point here is that not all of the Nazis are wearing the SS insignia indicating that they were regular Wehrmacht soldiers.

Sources

https://www.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/photographs-warsaw-ghetto/stroop-collection.html

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/combat-resistance/warsaw-ghetto.html

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/warsaw-ghetto-uprising

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising

https://www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Ghetto-Uprising

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Holocaust Art by David Olère—A Survivor

David Olère was a Polish-French artist known primarily for his powerful and haunting artworks depicting the Holocaust. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1902, Olère survived internment in several concentration camps during World War II, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

After the war, Olère settled in France and began creating art that bore witness to the atrocities he had experienced. His works often depicted scenes from the camps, capturing the brutality and inhumanity of the Holocaust. Olère’s art served as a form of testimony and remembrance, ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust would not be forgotten.

One of his most well-known works is a series of paintings and drawings depicting the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, based on his firsthand experiences. These works are particularly striking in their stark portrayal of the grim realities of the Holocaust.

Olère’s art continues to be a significant contribution to Holocaust remembrance, offering a unique perspective from someone who survived the horrors of the camps and felt compelled to document them through his art.

I did post some of his works before, the painting at the top is titled, “The Food of the Dead for the Living,” and below are more.

Admission in Mauthausen by David Olère.

The Experimental Injection by David Olère

The Oven Room by David Olère

Gassing by David Olère.

On 20 February 1943, due to his Jewish origin, he was arrested by the French police and placed in the Drancy Camp. On 2 March, he was deported from Drancy to the German Nazi Auschwitz Camp, where he was registered with number 106144. Throughout his entire stay at the camp, he worked in the Sonderkommando, a special work unit forced by the Germans to aid in the operation of the crematoriums and gas chambers.

“David Olère is the only prisoner of Sonderkommando who transferred his traumatic experiences from the shadow of the crematorium chimneys on paper and canvas.” — Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński

Sources

https://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/gallery/olere.htm#D54

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/18-paintings-by-former-sonderkommando-prisoner-david-olre-enriched-the-collections-of-the-auschwitz-memorial,1277.html

David Olère, art as an act of Remembrance of the Holocaust

Michael van West & Saartje van West-Goudsmit

Just two names of people who should have never been murdered. Micheal van West was a florist. There is no records of his wife, Saartje van West-Goldsmit’s profession, but I will presume she was a stay at home mother. They were no threat to anyone–just two people trying to get by.

Michael van West was the sixth of the nine children of Salomon van West (1859-1931) and Betje Lelie (1853-1935) and born in Amsterdam on 31 October 1887. Like all his brothers and his father, Michel was also a flower dealer. He married Saartje Goudsmit on 31 July 1912 in Amsterdam, a daughter of Levie Goudsmit and Hanna Vos, she was born on 6 October 1887 there. At the same time as Michael, his brother Jacob, married Saartje’s sister, Raatje Goudsmit.

Michael had five brothers and four sisters, all born in Amsterdam. On 1 December 1910, the still unmarried Michael van West left for Belgium and was registered there at the address Krijtstraat 8 in Berchem. According to the statement that Michael made to the Antwerp officials, he planned to stay there for more than six months.

After the marriage of Michael and his brother Jacob van West to Saartje and Raatje Goudsmit respectively, at the end of July 1912, the four of them left for Brussels on 6 August 1912, where they came to live at 31, Rue de L’Ascension.

Nothing is known about the period from August 1912 to 1944 about Michael and his wife Saartje, as well about Jacob and his wife Raatje. However, it is certain that Michael van West and Saartje Goudsmit were arrested in the early spring of 1944 and transferred to the transit camp in Mechelen, Kazerne Dossin. In March of that year, by order of the Central Bureau for National Security, an instruction was issued to urgently proceed to the arrest of Jews.

Michael and Saartje were deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz on 4 April 1944 with convoy 24, which arrived there on 7 April 1944 with 625 victims in total. Of these, 270 were murdered immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau; 355 people were registered in the camp, of which 147 were still alive when Auschwitz was liberated.

It is not known whether Michael and Saartje belonged to the group of 270 victims, or to the group of 355 people who were registered. However, it is clear that they did not belong to the 147 people who were liberated ,but were murdered in Auschwitz after 7 April 1944, or died due to exhaustion, abuse or diseases.

The 24th Convoy of 4 April 1944, was one of the many tragic transports during the Holocaust. It departed from Mechelen, Belgium, which was a major transit point for deportations of Jews during World War II. The destination of this convoy was Auschwitz.

The convoy consisted of Jewish men, women, and children who were rounded up by the Nazis and their collaborators as part of their systematic genocide of European Jews. The journey from Mechelen to Auschwitz was harrowing, with cramped conditions, lack of food and water, and the constant fear of the unknown awaiting them at their destination.

Michael and Saartje had two sons. Edouard Elias van West was murdered somewhere in Germany in February 1945. aged 17. The eldest son, Leo van West, was also murdered in February 1945 in Mauthausen. He was 31 years old.

Source

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720814/michael-van-west

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720813/saartje-van-west-goudsmit

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April 15, 1945—Bergen-Belsen Liberated

On April 15, 1945, British forces, including units of the British Second Army and the 11th Armoured Division, entered Bergen-Belsen and liberated the remaining prisoners. The sight that greeted the liberators was horrifying. They found tens of thousands of emaciated and diseased prisoners, along with thousands of unburied corpses strewn throughout the camp.

The liberation of Bergen-Belsen brought the horrors of the Holocaust to the attention of the world in a particularly stark and poignant manner. Images and reports from the camp shocked the world, revealing the true extent of Nazi atrocities and the human suffering inflicted upon millions of innocent people.

Following the liberation, efforts were made to provide medical care, food, and sanitation to the survivors. However, despite these efforts, many prisoners succumbed to disease and malnutrition even after their liberation.

I was going to include photos of what the liberators found that day, but although a picture tells a thousand words—it never tells the full story, Therefore following are testimonies of some of the liberators.

Dick Williams: “But we went further on into the camp, and seen these corpses lying everywhere. You didn’t know whether they were living or dead. Most of them were dead. Some were trying to walk, some were stumbling, some on hands and knees, but in the lagers, the barbed wire around the huts, you could see that the doors were open. The stench coming out of them was fearsome. They were lying in the doorways – tried to get down the stairs and fallen and just died on the spot. And it was just everywhere.

Going into, more deeper, into the camp the stench got worse and the numbers of dead – they were just impossible to know how many there were…Inside the camp itself, it was just unbelievable. You just couldn’t believe the numbers involved… This was one of the things which struck me when I first went in, that the whole camp was so quiet and yet there were so many people there. You couldn’t hear anything, there was just no sound at all and yet there was some movement – those people who could walk or move – but just so quiet.

You just couldn’t understand that all those people could be there and yet everything was so quiet…It was just this oppressive haze over the camp, the smell, the starkness of the barbed wire fences, the dullness of the bare earth, the scattered bodies and these very dull, too, striped grey uniforms – those who had it – it was just so dull. The sun, yes the sun was shining, but they were just didn’t seem to make any life at all in that camp. Everything seemed to be dead. The slowness of the movement of the people who could walk. Everything was just ghost-like and it was just unbelievable that there were literally people living still there. There’s so much death apparent that the living, certainly, were in the minority.”

Harry Oakes: “About that time the chaps attached to 11th Armoured Division had seen a staff car come up to headquarters one day with a German officer, or two German officers I believe, blindfolded. And when they made enquiries they were told that they were from a Political Prison Camp at Belsen.

The Germans, anticipating us capturing the camp or over-running it, wanted the British to send in an advanced party to prevent these prisoners who were supposed to be infected with typhus from escaping. But the force we wanted to send in was too much. The Germans felt it wouldn’t have been fair so they agreed on a compromise that they would leave 1,000 Wehrmacht behind if we returned them within ten days. So we were standing by at Lüneburg, Lawrie and myself, to go into Belsen.”

Bill Lawrie: “We had this business of the staff car with the white flags telling us that there was a typhus hospital on the way ahead of us, and would we be willing to call a halt to any actual battle until this area was taken over in case of escapees into Europe and the ravage that would take place.

And as far as I know, the Brigadier believed this story, and we set sail that evening to have a look at this typhus hospital under a white flag. And there was no typhus hospital. There was barbed wire, sentry boxes, a huge garrison building for SS troopers, and Belsen concentration camp. And, as I say, we drove up in two, three jeeps, four jeeps maybe, in the evening, and we saw this concentration camp that we believed was a
typhus hospital. But we knew immediately that it wasn’t a typhus hospital.”

Gilbert King: “I can remember going down this road with these Hungarian guards, soldiers, all got their bullets and grenades on their chest. We went in then to a very large military hospital and parked our vehicles for the time being and we was told that we would be going up to relieve the camp in the morning. And our Troop, which was C Troop, were the first up there to enter the gates. A medical team had gone through the gates, but we were the first military, and we had to round up the German military. One thing that I remember vividly was after entering the camp, you’d see the inmates which weren’t too bad – they got worse as they went down the camp – and as I stood there this, I don’t know if it was a man or a woman you couldn’t tell really, came up to me and kissed my boots. And it nearly brought tears to me eyes. It was very emotional.”

William Arthur Wood: “And then on the left hand side there were the huts and of course outside the huts were piles and piles of dead bodies, and living ones, we didn’t know which were which. In the huts themselves, equally, you didn’t know who was dead and who was alive unless they made, there was some movement you could see, because the dead and the living were all together – they hadn’t the energy to take the dead out and there were so many piled outside as I say that it was hard to see, to pick out the dead from the living…”

BBC recording from April 20, 1945 of Jewish survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp singing Hatikvah, today the national anthem of Israel, only five days after their liberation by Allied forces. (The words sung are from the original poem by Naftali Herz Imber.)

Ending with a quote from Margot Frank, one of the victims who was not liberated, but perished a few weeks earlier together with her younger sister, Anne Frank. I used this quote a few years ago in a speech for my eldest son‘s high school graduation, as a representative as the parents council.

“Times change, people change, thoughts about good and evil change, about true and false. But what always remains fast and steady is the affection that your friends feel for you, those who always have your best interest at heart.”

Sources

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/733167

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp

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Music and Holocaust

Music and Holocaust

From Zero to 102

I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust.

This is how evil the Nazi regime really was. It is also why their industrialized way of murder was so effective. It is in human nature to always find the good in our fellow human beings, even animals. No one could really fathom the level of cruelty by the Nazis. It was unprecedented.

Suzanne Kaminski was born on 11 March 1943, in Brussels, Belgium. On 19 April 1943, she was deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival on 22 April, she was murdered by the Nazis that same day. She was only 45 days old and considered the youngest Jewish child to be deported from Belgium.

Klara Engelsman was born on 30 April 1842 in Amsterdam as the daughter of Salomon “Samuel” Abraham Engelsman and Saartje Hartog Cosman. Klara Engelsman married Daniel Brush on 24 May 1865. As far as we know, the couple had no children. Daniel Brush died at 76 years old on 9 July 1918 in Amsterdam.

At the time of her 100th birthday, Mrs. Klara Brush-Engelsman lived at the home of the Morpurgo family. Later she stayed in the Jewish care home. In March 1944 she arrived in Camp Westerbork, where she was nursed in the camp hospital. There she still experienced her 102th birthday. She was taken on a stretcher to the train on 4 September 1944, which went to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered on 12 October 1944.

The murder of a 45 days old baby and a 102-year-old lady, is the clearest indication that the Nazis’ ideology was based on hate and hate only. Anyone who condoned this or still condones it, subscribes to that same ideology.

Sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/228136/klara-borstel-engelsman

https://www.bruzz.be/actua/samenleving/jongste-joodse-gedeporteerde-krijgt-struikelsteen-brussel-2024-01-26

Buchenwald Liberated

Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established by the Nazis, located near Weimar, Germany. It was operational from 1937 until its liberation on April 11, 1945, by American forces.

When the American soldiers arrived at Buchenwald, they were shocked by the appalling conditions they encountered. The camp was overcrowded, with thousands of emaciated prisoners subjected to forced labor, starvation, disease, and brutal treatment by the SS guards. Many inmates were on the brink of death, and mass graves dotted the landscape.

The liberation of Buchenwald was a moment of both relief and horror. For the survivors, it meant freedom from the daily torment and the hope of rebuilding their lives. However, it also revealed the extent of Nazi atrocities to the world. The images and testimonies from Buchenwald played a crucial role in documenting the Holocaust and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes.

As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp–including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true.

Among the camp’s most gruesome characters was Ilse Koch, wife of the camp commandant, who was infamous for her sadism.

Witnesses claimed “she wore clothes which were deliberately chosen to be inciting for the prisoners”,. They accused her of whipping prisoners for daring to look at her and of having “a desire to own certain objects made of human skin”, such as lampshades, a cover for a family photo album, and gloves.

Various objects made from human skin were found in Buchenwald when it was liberated. Despite the testimony of former prisoners who were forced to make such grisly objects, prosecutors could not conclusively prove her involvement in committing such crimes.

On April 11,1945, around 2:30 pm the tanks of the Fourth Armoured Division rolled through the SS complex without stopping. The SS fled. Armed inmates took control of the camp and overpowered the last remaining SS soldiers. By 4:00 pm they had taken control of the camp. Buchenwald was freed from within and without. About one hour later, scouts from the Fourth and Sixth Armoured Divisions were the first American soldiers to reach the camp. 21,000 inmates were liberated on that day, among them some 900 children and youth.

In the aftermath of liberation, efforts were made to provide medical care, food, and support to the survivors.

Many displaced persons would face a long road to physical and psychological recovery. The liberation of Buchenwald stands as a reminder of the horrors of genocide and the importance of never forgetting the lessons of history.

Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, seen in the photo at the top of the blog-seen in the second row, seventh from left-who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His mother and the youngest of his three sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, while he and his father were moved to Buchenwald where his father died of starvation and dysentery just months before it was liberated by Allied troops. Seventeen-year-old Elie was barely alive when American soldiers opened the camp.

I’ll finish with some of Elie Wiesel’s quotes:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

Sources

https://www.buchenwald.de/en

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175448

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-u-s-army-liberates-buchenwald-concentration-camp

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/us-forces-liberate-buchenwald

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ilse-Koch