#Majdanek Concentration camp

[dirjoh-blog]

Zyklon B: From Pesticide to Instrument of Mass Murder During the Holocaust

Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide, became an instrument of genocide during the Holocaust, marking one of the darkest chapters in human history. Originally developed for benign purposes, its transformation into a tool for mass murder within Nazi gas chambers represents the convergence of industrial efficiency, scientific innovation, and the deliberate, systematic extermination of millions of…

[antifainternational]

"My late father was in Auschwitz. My late mother was in Majdanek concentration camp. Every single member of my family on both sides was exterminated. Both of my parents were in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. And it's precisely and exactly because of the lessons my parents taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent when Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians. And I consider nothing more despicable than to use their suffering and their martyrdom to try to justify the torture, the brutalization, the demolition of homes that Israel daily commits against the Palestinians. So I refuse any longer to be intimidated or brow beaten by the tears. If you had any heart in you, you would be crying for the Palestinians, not for what you have done." - Norman Finkelstein responding to a Zionist detractor at a university lecture.

[steveyockey]

While visiting the Majdanek concentration camp I, at that time a still fervent Zionist, had a strange revelation which I still cannot explain. While standing in the gas chamber—the walls covered in scratch marks and the hauntingly soft blue stains left behind by so many administrations of Zyklon B—it occurred to me: there was nothing ontologically evil about the perpetrators, nothing ontologically righteous or defeated about the victims; their fates were contingent on history. If this, even this, was contingent, then there must be something about the structure of the world that made it so.

When the Zone of Interest cuts to the Auschwitz of the present day, this memory rushed to the surface. That scene—long and wordless—seems to suggest that our contemporary atrocities will one day receive a similar memorialization, that such memorialization always sanitizes atrocity by placing it firmly in the past, even as we continue to live in a present it created; that we are, in turn, already sanitizing our own atrocities in the present. Even that, most chillingly, the Polish workers, like the Polish servants at the Auschwitz homestead, will continue to polish and clean Höss’s trophies. Höss and the Nazis may have lost the war, but present events make clear that their ideology lives on, polished up.

As the film ends with a cut to black, Mica Levi’s score fills the void: an ostinato of screams and trudging strings. The screams continue to pitch up, more voices added, a cacophony of screaming, and still the trudging line: history continues as one single catastrophe.

Walter Benjamin wrote that "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train – namely, the human race – to pull the emergency brake.” The train: a resonance he could not yet have known. Unlike other concentration camps, the Nazis did not have time to destroy Majdanek prior to their retreat from the rapidly advancing Soviet forces. The bulk of the camp is not only intact, but theoretically still operational. The brake has not been pulled. Can you smell it? We’re in the zone of interest. We never left.

[thetepes]

You're going to fucking sit with me through something.

I want you to fucking sit and take this in. Sit and listen to it. Watch her fucking type it out.

Mage-danek. Majdanek.

Sit and fucking watch it. Watch her make that fucking joke. Tell me how funny it is. I want to hear how funny you think it is that concentration camps are. I want you to tell me how seriously she takes Nazis and what they fucking did.

I'm sure it will just be blown off as a joke, but I really want it people to sit and watch her chuckle to herself and repeat her little joke.

Get back to me with your thoughts because I'm sure they'll be fascinating.

[cursedreverie1945]

Today is trump's inauguration

MLK Day

It's also the 83rd anniversary of the Wannsee Conference.

The Wannsee Conference was held OTD in 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. It was organized by Reinhard Heydrich, at the request of Hermann Göring, to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question,"which was the plan to systematically exterminate European Jews. Key attendees included:

Reinhard Heydrich: As the chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Heydrich was the main architect of the Final Solution. He called and chaired the conference to ensure coordination among various Nazi departments in the extermination plan.

Adolf Eichmann: A key figure in organizing the logistics of the Holocaust, Eichmann was the head of the RSHA department responsible for Jewish affairs and coordinating the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, ghettos, and death camps. He took minutes during the meeting. One copy survived and it wasn't even a full copy.

Heinrich Müller: As head of the Gestapo, Müller was involved in the coordination of secret police operations during the Holocaust.

Karl Eberhard Schöngarth: A commander in the SS and police in the General Government (part of occupied Poland), Schöngarth was actively involved in the implementation of mass shootings and deportations of Jews.

Josef Bühler: As the State Secretary for the General Government, Bühler advocated for the inclusion of Poland in the Final Solution plans, expressing eagerness to "solve" the Jewish question in his jurisdiction promptly.

Roland Freisler: A representative of the Reich Ministry of Justice, Freisler was involved in ensuring that legal frameworks were in place for the persecution and deportation of Jews.

Otto Hofmann: As the head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, Hofmann was responsible for racial policies that included identifying and rounding up Jews for deportation.

At the Conference, Bühler remarked “...that the General Government would welcome it if a start were to be made on the final solution of this question in the General Government, because here transportation does not pose a real problem nor would the deployment of a labor force interfere with the process of this operation. Jews should be removed from the area of the General Government as quickly as possible, because it is here that the Jew represents a serious danger as a carrier of epidemics, and in addition his incessant black marketeering constantly upsets the country's economic structure. Of the approximately 2.5 million Jews in question, the majority are anyway unfit for work.”

Soon after the Conference, the Holocaust entered into a new, more deadly phase. Among other events, Operation Reinhard was a direct result. Named for Heydrich, who was assassinated just months after the conference, it was intended to kill every Jew.

Operation Reinhard built a series of death camps called Operation Reinhard Camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Three other pre-existing camps, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz II, were also put to work towards this goal.

Ultimately, 90% of the Jews of Poland would not survive.

May all of these sonsofbitches never find rest.

Pictured, Reinhard and Lina Heydrich the day before the attempt on his life 26 May 1942. He would die on 04 June 1942.

[mariacallous]

The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

World War II and the Holocaust have been the subject of many remarkable stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust (Simon & Schuster, 2024) is unique. It tells the previously unknown story of “Countess Janina Suchodolska,” a courageous Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Nazi occupiers. Assuming the identity of a Polish aristocrat, Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg (born Pepi Spinner) worked as a welfare official, served in the Polish resistance, and persuaded the SS to release thousands from the Majdanek concentration camp. Drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa, both historians and Holocaust experts, have reconstructed the story of this remarkable woman.

[contremineur]

Yva, subject and date unknown

Yva was the professional pseudonym of Else Ernestine Neuländer-Simon (26 January 1900 – disappeared June 1942 and officially declared dead on 31 December 1944), a German Jewish photographer deported by the Gestapo in 1942 and murdered, probably in the Majdanek concentration camp.

from here

Stolperstein outside Schlüterstraße no. 45 in Berlin, Yva's last home

from here

[djuvlipen]

Wanna learn about women history and WWII? Here is a non-exhaustive list to get you started

German women and the Nazi regime

Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics, Claudia Koonz

Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942-1944, Elissa Mailänder

Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Gisela Bock

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, Wendy Lower

"Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies," in Journal of the History of Sexuality Julia Roos

"German Women and the Holocaust in the Nazi East," Wendy Lower, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Frausein im Dritten Reich, Rita Thalmann

Women as victims or perpetrators of the Holocaust (general)

"Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research," in Signs, Joan Ringelheim

Women in the Holocaust, Dalia Ofer & Lenore J. Weitzman

Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, Robert Sommer

SS-Bordelle und Oral History. Problematische Quellen und die Existenz von Bordellen für die SS in Konzentrationslagern, Christa Paul & Robert Sommer

Sexual Violence during the Holocaust—The Case of Forced Prostitution in the Warsaw Ghetto, in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Katarzyna Person

"Gender: A Crucial Tool in Holocaust Research," Marion Kaplan, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, Carol Rittner & John K. Roth

Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, Nechema Tec

« Reframing Sexual Violence as a Weapon and Strategy of War: The Case of the German Wehrmacht during the War and Genocide in the Soviet Union, 1941–1944 », in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Regina Mühlhäuser

Sex and the Nazi soldier. Violent, commercial and consensual encounters during the war in the Soviet Union, 1941-45, Regina Mülhäuser

Romani women during the Holocaust

« Krieg im Frieden im Krieg: Reading the Romani Holocaust in terms of race, gender and colonialism », Eve Rosenhaft

« Hidden Lives : Sinti and Roma Women », Sybil Milton

« Romani women and the Holocaust Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Transnistria », Michelle Kelso

"No Shelter to Cry In: Romani Girls and Responsibility during the Holocaust," Michelle Kelso, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Jewish women during the Holocaust

Jewish women's sexual behaviour and sexualized abuse during the Nazi era, in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, Beverley Chalmers

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, Sonja M. Hedgepeth & Rochelle G. Saidel

Persecution of lesbians by the Nazis

Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, Claudia Schoppmann

Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

“This Kind of Love”: Descriptions of Lesbian Behaviour in Nazi Concentration Camps, from Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

Queer in Europe during the Second World War, Regis Schlagdenhauffen

Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück. Everyday Life in a Woman’s Concentration Camp 1939-45, Jack G. Morrison

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm

Women and the Memory of WWII

Women, Genocide, and Memory: The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research, in Gender & Society, Janet Jacobs

Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women's Holocaust Narratives, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Myrna Goldenberg

« An Austrian Roma Family Remembers: Trauma and Gender in Autobiographies by Ceija, Karl, and Mongo Stojka », Lorely French

Beyond Survival: Navigating Women's Personal Narratives of Sexual Violence in the Holocaust, Roy Schwartzman

Comfort Women and imperial Japan

Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Yoshimi Yoshiaki

The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, George Hicks

The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, Caroline Norma

Lola's House: Filipino Women Living With War, Evelina Galang

Soviet Women during WWII

« “Girls” and “Women”. Love, Sex, Duty and Sexual Harassment in the Ranks of the Red Army 1941-1945 », in The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Brandon M. Schechter

Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War, Roger D. Markwick & Euridice Charon Cardona

Soviet Women in Combat. A History of Violence on the Eastern Front, Anna Krylova

[vintagecontinuum]

"Berlin was in a state of civil war," Christopher Isherwood writes in his Berlin Stories. "Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere." The failing Weimar government teetered on the verge of collapse, and along with it, the hopes of millions of Germans. Yet within the tumultuous early 1930s, high fashion nevertheless prevailed in Berlin.

Yva, a pioneering German-Jewish photographer, was a leading figure in the vibrant queer community of pre-Nazi Berlin. Her innovative work embodies the subtle elegance and boundary-pushing expressions of early 1930s aesthetics before the Nazi rise to power. Her evocative multiple exposure techniques and deliberately ungendered emphasis on the female figure offer a nuanced counterpoint to the artistic norms of the day, capturing glimpses of gender non-conformity and artistic sexual liberation that would soon be brutally suppressed.

Unfortunately, Yva was tragically unable to escape Germany before she and her husband were deported and murdered at the Majdanek concentration camp in 1942. Most of her negatives were destroyed, but in the years following the war, her surviving works were displayed at her last home in the Hotel Bogota at Schlüterstraße 45. Currently, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin website maintains a digitalized collection of her work.

[allycat75]

If Hollywood promises not to fuck this up, how about making this amazing, original story.

Possibly Melanie Lynskey? Alison Brie, maybe?

[franavu]

On today's episode of what the absolute fuck, turns out the Dutch security service spent literally decades spying on Dutch holocaust survivors and the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, a support and advocacy group for concentration camp survivors.

They were marked as an extremist organization and a possible threat to society with "communist" sympathies. And this happened until the 1980s; reading the article, it's worse than I expected after hearing about it, and absolutely disgraceful. Like, they reported on memorial services for the holocaust, and sent informers along on memorial trips to concentration camps. Because these were obviously severe threats to Dutch society /s.

Links to the story in English, it's a pretty good summary of the main article in Dutch:

In Dutch, from the national news service, and the investigative article that broke the story, it's paywalled, so I'll put the text under a cut:

Leden van het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité jarenlang gevolgd door de veiligheidsdienst: ‘Niemand heeft dit ooit geweten’

Teun Dominicus23 december 2023, 03:00

11–15 minuten

Joodse Amsterdammers die betrokken waren bij het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité, werden na hun terugkeer uit de kampen bespioneerd door de voorloper van de AIVD, blijkt uit onderzoek van Het Parool. Nabestaanden en het Auschwitz Comité zijn ontsteld. ‘Het feit dat je verslag doet van de mensen die stil kwamen staan bij hun familie die was afgeslacht, tart elk idee van beschaving.’

Berooid en beroofd: zo kwamen Joodse overlevenden van de vernietigingskampen in 1945 terug in Nederland. Familie en vrienden waren door de nazi’s vermoord. In hun huizen woonden vreemden die niet op hun terugkeer hadden gerekend. De gemeente Amsterdam presenteerde hun ook nog een erfpachtschuld voor de jaren die ze in de onderduik of kampen hadden gezeten. Kil en koud, was de ontvangst in het naoorlogse Nederland. Niemand had oog voor deze Holocaustslachtoffers.

Daar komt nu bij dat de Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD), de voorloper van de AIVD, Joodse Amsterdammers na terugkeer decennia scherp in de gaten heeft gehouden, zo blijkt uit archiefonderzoek van Het Parool. Vele Holocaustoverlevenden werden tot in de jaren tachtig door de dienst gezien als ‘extremisten’ en als een potentieel gevaar voor de democratie. Teruggekeerdenuit het kamp kwamen terecht in de kaartenbak van de veiligheidsdienst.

Lange tijd deed de BVD verslag van Holocaustherdenkingen: of die nou in het Joods Cultureel Centrum in Buitenveldert waren, in kamp Westerbork of op de Nieuwe Oosterbegraafplaats. Genoteerd werd wie aanwezig waren.

Marechaussee

Zo vertrok met een dag vertraging op donderdag 8 april 1965 van Schiphol een vliegtuig met Auschwitzoverlevenden naar de Poolse hoofdstad Warschau, zo blijkt uit het verslag van een informant die mee was op de reis. De groep van twintig personen reisde door naar het voormalige vernietigingskamp om daar aanwezig te zijn bij de twintigste bevrijdingsdag van het kamp. Kampoverlevende Jacques Furth legde er namens het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité een krans.

Op 13 april ging de groep ‘per autobus naar Krakau, kamp Majdanek en Lublin. Daar werden zoutmijnen, kerken, kastelen enz., bezichtigd’, aldus het reisverslag dat door de BVD is opgesteld.

Niet alleen de BVD bespioneerde het reisgezelschap. Zodra ze de douane op Schiphol waren gepasseerd, gaf de marechaussee reisgegevens door, onder vermelding van ‘lijst met personen die hebben deelgenomen aan de herdenking van de bevrijding van het concentratiekamp Auschwitz’, waarna de geheime dienst notities maakte voor de individuele dossiers.

Verzetsmensen over de vloer

Bestuursleden Jos Slagter en Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt zijn twee van de mensen die door de BVD werden gevolgd. Samen waren zij opeenvolgend vanaf 1958 tot 1994 voorzitter van het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité.

Niemand van de generatie van de oprichters van het Comité leeft nog, maar sommige van hun kinderen wel. Bijvoorbeeld Chaja Polak. Geboren in 1941 was Polak twee jaar oud toen haar moeder Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt en haar vader Hans Polak in april 1944 door de nazi’s werden opgepakt. Haar vader stierf in Dachau, maar haar moeder overleefde Auschwitz. De jonge Chaja bleef op het nippertje uit handen van de nazi's.

Ze heeft nu voor het eerst inzage in het BVD-dossier van Fels-Kupferschmidt en kan moeilijk geloven dat de veiligheidsdienst haar moeder in de gaten hield. “Zij kwam vooral op voor nazislachtoffers en hielp waar het kon,” zegt de inmiddels 82-jarige Polak.

Aan het gezin waarin ze opgroeide heeft ze warme herinneringen. “Thuis was veilig,” zegt ze. “Daar waren mensen die in het verzet hadden gezeten. Mijn tweede vader was niet-Joods en had in het verzet gezeten. Er kwamen veel verzetsmensen en Joden van over de hele wereld over de vloer: familie en vrienden die de kampen hadden overleefd.”

Dossiers vermelden wat het Auschwitz Comité tijdens vergaderingen besprak. Van alledaagse regelzaken – wie schrijft een brochure? – tot aan het opzetten van politieke acties. Zoals de protesten tegen de vrijlating van Willy Lages, de nazi die verantwoordelijk was voor de deportatie van 70.000 Joden. Een vergadering daarover vond in september 1966plaats bij bestuurslid Eva Tas thuis, in haar woning op de Amsteldijk. ‘Allen vonden het een schande, want deze man had tot aan zijn dood in de gevangenis behoren te blijven,’ schetst een informant de stemming binnen het comité.

Voor Polak is het wrang dat haar moeder is bestempeld als extremist, maar dat oorlogsmisdadiger Lages géén BVD-dossier heeft: ‘Dat zie ik als een heel groot onrecht.’

Inlichtingen van lokale politiekorpsen

Een andere zaak waar het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité zich hard voor maakte, was financiële tegemoetkoming voor Joodse overlevenden van de oorlog en nabestaanden. Pas in 1973, 28 jaar na het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog, kwamen zij in aanmerking voor een uitkering.

Met voorlichtingsbijeenkomsten lichtte het comité slachtoffers in over hun financiële positie. Op 25 april 1971 was er zo’n samenkomst in het Anne Frank Huis: een kleine vijftig mensen kwamen luisteren naar twee ambtenaren van de sociale dienst, aldus het BVD-verslag. Izak Stibbe, de penningmeester van het comité, vertelde daar dat hij ‘gedurende de oorlog in een aantal Duitse kampen was geweest’ en dat daardoor zijn gezondheid ‘geknakt’ was.

Voor zijn surveillancepraktijken kon de BVD ook rekenen op de politiekorpsen. Eva Furth, de secretaris van het Auschwitz Comité, zat op Bevrijdingsdag 1982 in een panel over ‘vrouwen in het verzet’, schrijft de inlichtingendienst van de Leidse politie aan de geheime dienst. De discussie was georganiseerd door het lokale 5 meicomité.

‘Dit is schandalig’

In het café naast het Namenmonument leest Jacques Grishaver voor het eerst hoe de BVD het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité heeft bespioneerd. Sinds 1998 is hij voorzitter van het Comité, op zijn revers zit de koninklijke onderscheiding die hij kreeg voor zijn inzet voor het Holocaust Namenmonument.

“Onder de aanwezigen veel Israëlieten,” leest hij zachtjes voor als hij de stukken onder ogen krijgt. Op tafel ligt het verslag van de Auschwitzherdenking in 1965 in de Haagse zaal Diligentia, met een lijst namen van Joodse aanwezigen. “Het is schandalig, eigenlijk.” Hij kijkt nog eens naar het blad. “Nee, het ís schandalig.”

“Niemand heeft dit ooit geweten,” vervolgt hij. “En als je het leest, is het eigenlijk om te huilen. Al die namen die je leest, dat zijn mensen die zo veel hebben meegemaakt. Ze hebben bijna allemaal hun familie verloren. En vervolgens werden ze als vijand van de staat in de gaten gehouden.”

“Ik denk dat dit aangeeft hoe men aankeek tegen Joden die waren teruggekomen. Ze hadden beter kunnen blijven en niet kunnen terugkomen. Dat is eigenlijk wat met deze dossiers wordt gezegd: vijfduizend Joden zijn teruggekomen en we hadden er eigenlijk niet op gerekend. Dat blijkt hier duidelijk uit.”

Communistische invloeden

De grote vraag is: waarom achtte de BVD het noodzakelijk het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité tientallen jaren te volgen? De AIVD laat desgevraagd schriftelijk weten niet in te gaan op vragen over individuele dossiers. De dienst wijst erop dat de BVD tijdens de Koude Oorlog onderzoek deed naar het communisme en dat ‘mogelijk onderzoek naar personen’ van het comité ‘in dat licht [kan] worden gezien’.

Blom en Slagter werden, als leden van de CPN, al voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog in de gaten gehouden door de Centrale Inlichtingendienst, de voorloper van de BVD. Beiden zaten tijdens de oorlog in het verzet, waren Joods, werden naar de kampen gedeporteerd en overleefden de Holocaust – Blom als enige van zijn familie, Slagters eerste vrouw werd in Auschwitz vermoord.

Als bestuurslid van de communistische verzetsstrijdersorganisatie Verenigd Verzet probeerde Blom via Slagter inderdaad invloed uit te oefenen op het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité. Het zette echter weinig zoden aan de dijk: steeds weigerden de niet-partijleden zich voor het karretje van de CPN te laten spannen, wist ook de BVD.

Grishaver vindt het onterecht dat het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité als communistische mantelorganisatie werd weggezet. “Ja, sommigen waren lid van de CPN, maar anderen ook niet.”

Hij wijst erop dat er door die beschuldiging lang weinig aandacht was voor het leed van de kampoverlevenden. Ook van het argument dat het optreden van de BVD ‘in de tijd’ gezien moet worden, moet hij weinig hebben. “Het waren andere tijden, maar het feit dat je van Auschwitzherdenkingen een verslag gaat maken, van de mensen die ernaartoe kwamen om stil te staan bij hun familie die was afgeslacht, om daar de BVD op te zetten, tart elk idee van beschaving. Dat is niet goed te praten, ook niet met de tijd.”

Als twintigjarige in het dossier

Aan het einde van het gesprek moet Chaja Polak bijkomen. Zij las dat de BVD gesprekken in de winkel van Cor Fels, haar tweede vader, afluisterde. Dat de dienst in 1958 Joodse communistische verzetsgroepen uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog in kaart bracht: ‘Joodse antifa-groeperingen’ staat erboven, gevolgd door namen van familie en vrienden van haar ouders, enkelen in Sobibor vermoord. En ze hoorde dat de BVD een dossier over háár heeft aangelegd: ze was amper twintig jaar oud toen ze in Israël familie ging opzoeken, een reis waar de dienst verslag van deed.

Maar uiteindelijk gaat het Polak niet om haar, maar om al die leden van het Nederlands Auschwitz Comité. “Ik vind dat al deze mensen,” zegt ze, verwijzend naar de bestuursleden van het comité, “die zich zo hebben ingezet om Auschwitz op de kaart te zetten en de wereld te laten weten wat daar is gebeurd, die zich hebben ingezet om de overlevenden financieel te steunen omdat ze na de oorlog voor het overgrote deel in armoede leefden, dat hun namen gezuiverd moeten worden van deze blaam.”

[dirjoh-blog]

Music and Holocaust- The weaponization of music in the Concentration camps.

During the Holocaust, several Nazi concentration camps had orchestras composed of prisoners. These orchestras were used for propaganda, forced to play during appalling situations such as executions, roll calls, and as prisoners were marched to forced labor or gas chambers. Below are some of the most notable orchestras formed in concentration camps. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Women’s Orchestra: The…

[stillunusual]

A tweet from an American idiot who had no idea that Polish slavic people were deported to Auschwitz (a concentration camp created by Nazi Germany in 1940 specifically to intern Polish slavic people)…. Janina Nowak was born on 19th August 1917 in Będów, near Łódź, and was one of 31,000 Polish slavic women who the Germans deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Second World War. She was registered at the camp on 12th June 1942 and received the prisoner number 7615. Less than two weeks later, on 24th June 1942, Nowak also became the first of 50 female prisoners who tried to escape from the camp. She fled while working near the Soła river as a member of a "Kommando" (work party) consisting of 200 Polish women.

She managed to reach Łódz (which was now called "Litzmannstadt", after being incorporated into the Third Reich) and managed to evade the German authorities until March 1943, when she was re-arrested.

On 8th May 1943, Nowak was brought to Auschwitz once again, where she received a new prisoner number - 31529. Later that year, she was transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and was finally liberated in April 1945.

Not much is known about Nowak's post-war life. She died in 1999….

Like Łódz, Auschwitz was located in Polish territory that was annexed directly into the Third Reich after Nazi Germany invaded and occupied western Poland in 1939.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was established on Heinrich Himmler's orders in April 1940. Alongside Stutthof (opened in 1939) and Majdanek (opened in 1941), it was constructed initially to intern Polish slavic prisoners, who made up the majority of the inmates until 1942. The first transport of Polish prisoners to Auschwitz took place on 14th June 1940, and the Germans eventually deported at least 140,000 Polish slavic people to the camp, approximately half of whom did not survive.

Pursuant to a law passed by the Polish Parliament in 2006, the anniversary of the first mass transport to Auschwitz is now commemorated annually in Poland on 14th June, as the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camps.

I sometimes think that the rabbit hole of American ignorance is so deep that you could probably use it to get from the USA to Australia….

[bornonthe21stofmarch]

I live in a city with a lot of jewish history. In Poland. Majdanek concentration camp is located in my city. Lublin.

When I saw facebook page "Lublin for Israel" I felt a new kind of disgust.

We as Poles are spending a lot of education on holocaust. Every or almost every child/teenager in Lublin was in this concentration camp on a school trip.

I can't even find the words to express this disgust.

[thetepes]

Anyway, how about that concentration camp pun Lily made in her video?

That was a slap in the face.

Magedanek - Majdanek 

[cursedreverie1945]

How did women become guards at the concentration camps?

Of the 55,000 guards who served in Nazi concentration camps, about 3,700 were women. In 1942, the first female guards arrived at Auschwitz and Majdanek from Ravensbrück. The year after, the Nazis began conscripting women because of a guard shortage.

The German title for this position, Aufseherin (plural Aufseherinnen), means female overseer or attendant.

How were they recruited?

Female guards were generally low class to middle class and had no work experience; their professional background varied: one source mentions former matrons, hairdressers, street car ticket takers, opera singers, or retired teachers. Volunteers were recruited by ads in German newspapers asking for women to show their love for the Reich and join the SS-Gefolge ("SS- Retinue" an SS support and service organisation for women). Additionally, some were conscripted based on data in their SS files. The League of German Girls (BDM) acted as a vehicle of indoctrination for many of the women.

Many SS men and SS women were executed by the Soviets when they liberated the camps, while others were sent to the gulags. Only a few SS women were tried for their crimes compared to male SS. Most female wardresses were tried at the Auschwitz Trial, in four of the seven Ravensbrück Trials, at the first Stutthof Trial, and in the second and Third Majdanek Trials and from the small Hamburg-Sasel camp. At that trial all forty-eight SS men and women involved were tried.

One such woman was Jenny Wanda Barkmann.

Twenty four year old Jenny Wanda Barkmann was thought to be from Hamburg and was nicknamed "The Beautiful Spectre" by the camp inmates who considered her to be a ruthless killer. She was arrested in May 1945 at a railway station near Danzig trying to escape. At her trial she is reported to have flirted with her male guards and wore a different hairstyle each day.

She was hung for her crimes in 1946 at the ripe old age of 25. It was well deserved.