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MURDERERS
AUGUST HIRT DEADLY COLLECTOR OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST
AUGUST HIRT, DEADLY COLLECTOR OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, he performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and played a lead role in the murders of 86 people at Natzweiler-Struthof for the Jewish skull collection. The skeletons of his victims were meant to become specimens at the Institute of anatomy in Strasbourg, but completion of the project was stopped by the progress of the war. He was an SS-Haupsturmfuhrer (captain) and in 1944, an SS-Sturmbannführer (major). SUICIDE JUNE 2, 1945.
AWAITING THEIR MURDER BY THE EINSATZGRUPPEN
AWAITING THEIR MURDER, BY THE EINSATZGRUPPEN, Volhynia – an area in Northwest Ukraine. With Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German army advanced so rapidly that most of Volhynia’s Jews were trapped, and only an estimated 5% were able to flee eastwards. As soon as the area was occupied, pogroms perpetrated by the local population as well as mass shooting of Jews by the German Einsatzgruppen began. Ghettos were established where Jews lived in terrible conditions and under a regime of terror and forced labor. In summer 1942 a new wave of killings was launched.
BELZEC DEATH PIT
BELZEC DEATH PIT, POLAND - CIRCA 1942: Holocaust: Mass execution in the concentration camp "Belzec", Poland.
BIKERNEKU FOREST NEAR RIGA LATVIA
BIKERNEKI FOREST NEAR RIGA, LATVIA, Jews were murdered by the thousands in this forest! Biķernieki forest is the biggest mass murder site during the Holocaust in Latvia, with two memorial territories spanning over 80,000 square meters (860,000 sq ft), with 55 marked burial sites with around 20,000 victims still buried in total. About 46,500 people were reported to have been killed there, including Latvian and Western European Jews, and Soviet prisoners of war.
DEATH PIT
DEATH PIT, a mass execution of Jews in Nazi occupied Soviet Union. Naked Jews, including a young boy, just before their murder.
DEHUMANIZATION
DEHUMANIZATION, Hlinka/Slovak soldiers humiliating Lipa Baum, an Orthodox man, during the deportation of the Jews of Stropkov. Slovakia, May 23, 1942.
DERECZYN, BELORUSSIAN S.S.R. EINSATZGRUPPEN MASSACRE OF THE JEWS
DERECZYN, BELORUSSIAN S.S.R., EINSATZGRUPPEN MASSACRE OF THE JEWS, mobile killing units of the German Army during WWII. On the eve of World War II, there were ca. 4,000 Jews living in Dereczyn. In September 1939, the town was seized by the Red Army and subsequently annexed to the Soviet Union. The Germans entered the town on 25 July 1941. The Jewish population from local towns and villages was deported to Dereczyn. All “useless” Jews were locked up in the ghetto set up in the town, while craftsmen initially lived outside the Jewish quarter. When rumors of the murder of Jews in the neighboring town of Słonim reached Dereczyn, the local Jews started to consider escaping to the nearby forests. However, the plan met with objections from “useful” Jews, who believed that their work for the Germans would save the lives of all Jewish people, while an attempted escape would only bring bloody repressions. Young Jews organized an underground movement in the ghetto with the aim of organizing an escape and armed resistance, if necessary. A group of underground activists smuggled weapons from a German warehouse – twenty pistols and machine guns with ammunition – which they hid outside the town. In the spring of 1942, the partisan movement became more active. Its members organized attacks on the German military police post in Kolinka and the labour camp in Puzewicze. The Jews held in the Dereczyn Ghetto were hoping that the partisans would soon reach their town. In July 1942, the first Jews escaped from the ghetto and went into hiding in the forest. On 24 July 1942, the Germans carried out an Aktion in the ghetto. Ca. 300 Jews escaped from the quarter and went to previously prepared hideouts in the forest. Several escapees became well-known partisans, for example Eliasz Lipszowicz. Ca. 100 Jews from Dereczyn lived to see the end of the war (the town was liberated in mid-July 1944).
EICHMANN
EICHMANN, 11 May 1960 | Adolf EICHMANN, whose task was to facilitate & manage the logistics involved in the mass deportations of Jews to ghettos & extermination camps in German-occupied Europe, was captured in Argentina. After seizing Eichmann close to his Garibaldi Street home in a suburb of Buenos Aires, his captors rushed him to a place of concealment. Under interrogation, Eichmann admitted his true identity and signed a document giving his consent to stand trial in Israel.
EINSATZGRUPPEN
EINSATZGRUPPEN 1, executions of Jews by SS-led mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivanhorod, now Ukraine. Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II in German-occupied Europe.
EXECUTIONS CARRIED OUT BY THE EINSATZKOMMANDO
EXECUTIONS CARRIED OUT BY THE EINSATZKOMMANDO 3, World War 2, German gestapo officers executing Russian peasants, September 1943, the photo was taken by a German soldier captured by the red army. Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II in German-occupied Europe.
EXTERMINATION OF JEWS IN THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS
EXTERMINATION OF JEWS IN THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS, in the face of the overwhelming Holocaust, the Jews in the Eastern Borderlands – as their co-religionists in the general government- adopted various “survival strategies.” Some tried to find shelter on their own, for example by setting up hideouts in the forests, while others tried to survive “on the surface,” concealing their identity. Some Jews benefited from individual help, hiding in cities, towns, and in the countryside. However, the overwhelming majority of the pre-war Jewish inhabitants of the Borderlands had been murdered by the end of 1943. Read the historical study by Dr. Martyna Grądzka-Rejak on the course of the Holocaust in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands).
FOREST MASS EXECUTION
FOREST MASS EXECUTION, year 1943. April. Krępiecki Forest. A few people carefully approach the bent rails on which the remains of burnt bodies, brought from the Majdanek camp, lie. One of the men takes a photo that will show a pile of ashed bones, and next to him are two men looking at him. Moments later, they all have to run because they hear the footsteps of the guards guarding the bloody secrets of the place. The guards were Estonians, Ukrainians, Azeris and Kalmyks collaborating with the Germans.
GERMAN ATROCITIES IN RECHITSA
GERMAN ATROCITIES IN RECHITSA, on November 27, 1941, at least 12 Jews, according to witness testimony, women and children, were shot to death by the Germans in the vicinity of the railroad.
GERMAN WAR CRIMES
GERMAN WAR CRIMES, Polish teachers from Bydgoszcz led by members of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz to their execution site.
GORODOK
GORODOK, German Army executions (Gross Deutchland Division) of 36 Serbian civilians in Pancevo on April 21-22, 1941, during the invasion of Yugoslavia. With the German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, many Jewish refugees from western Poland arrived in the city, and by 1941 the Jewish population numbered over 5,000. From October 1939 until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941 the city was occupied by the Soviets. On June 29, 1941, the Germans captured Gorodok, and neighboring farmers, mainly Ukrainians, attacked the Jews there, and looted their property. Conscription into forced labor camps in Jaktorow and Winniki continued through the autumn of 1941 and 1942. On May 7, 1942, several hundred Jews were deported to Janowska camp in Lvov. On August 13, half the Jews were deported to the extermination camp in Belzec. On December 26, 1942, 1,300 Jews were murdered outside the town and on January 27, 1943, the ghetto was finally liquidated, in an Aktion that lasted three days. A labor camp was established in March 1943, but it was liquidated in May 1943. The last Jews of Gorodok were shot and buried in mass graves near Artyszczow.
HITLERJUGEND WITH WEAPONS
HOW DID THE MURDERERS BECOME MURDERERS-HITLERJUGEND Hitler Youth, German Hitlerjugend, organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youth in Nazi principles. Under the leadership of Baldur von Sshirach, head of all German youth programs, the Hitler Youth included by 1935 almost 60 percent of German boys. On July 1, 1936, it became a state agency that all young “Aryan” Germans were expected to join. Upon reaching his 10th birthday, a German boy was registered and investigated (especially for “racial purity”) and, if qualified, inducted into the Deutsches Jungvolk (“German Young People”). At age 13 the youth became eligible for the Hitler Youth, from which he was graduated at age 18. Throughout these years he lived a spartan life of dedication, fellowship, and Nazi conformity, generally with minimum parental guidance. From age 18 he was a member of the Nazi Party and served in the state labor service and the armed forces until at least the age of 21. Two leagues also existed for girls. The League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) trained girls ages 14 to 18 for comradeship, domestic duties, and motherhood. Jungmädel (“Young Girls”) was an organization for girls ages 10 to 14.
JEWISH DEATH
JEWISH DEATH, Jews were dying for multiple reasons in these Nazi ran concentration camps. For instance, in the camp of Auschwitz, 700 people or more were assigned to each barrack. The huge amount of people contained in one area caused many deaths due to disease and infection.
KILLINGS IN TRANSNISTRIA
KILLINGS IN TRANSNISTRIA, Jews are deported to Transdniester in 1941 or 1942. Transnistria was conquered by the Germans and Romanians in the summer of 1941. Before the war, some 300,000 Jews lived in the region. Tens of thousands were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen D, commanded by Otto Ohlendorf, as well as by German and Romanian soldiers. After the occupation, Transnistria became a concentration point for Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina deported there at the command of Ion Antonescu. Murders survivors of the mass murders in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were mostly deported and concentrated in ghettos and camps in northern and central Transnistria. They were forbidden to travel or choose where to live and were sent to forced labor.
LATVIAN AUXILIARY POLICE WERE COLLABORATORS
LATVIAN AUXILIARY POLICE WERE COLLABORATORS, victims are assembled on the beach at Skede outside Liepāja, guarded by members of the Latvian auxiliary militia. The police battalions were poorly armed. Therefore, they sometimes even had to steal automatic weapons from German supply depots. To improve the firepower of the 26th Battalion, corporal Žanis Butkus dug up weapons which he had captured as a leader of a group of national partisans in June and July 1941 and which he had hidden from the Germans. Not all of the service was on the front lines, and the actions in the rear frequently brought Latvians and Germans into conflict. The Latvians had no desire to fight against national partisans, such as Poles and Ukrainians, who were against both Germans and the Soviets. For example, the Latvian battalions stationed for a while near Vilnius established secret communications with the Polish partisans and agreed not to attack each other (when the Poles mistook a Latvian company for Germans and did attack them, they later sent an apology). A battalion on the other side of the former Latvian-Polish border prevented the German SD from collecting and sending Polish women to Germany in September 1943.
LIEPAJA, LATVIA
LIEPAJA, LATVIA,15.12.1941, Jewish women and children at the time of their execution.
LITHUANIA
LITHUANIA, Lithuanian civilians and German soldiers watching the massacre of 68 Jews in the Lietūkis garage of Kaunas on 25 or 27 June 1941. The Lithuanians carried out violent riots against the Jews both shortly before and immediately after the arrival of German forces. In June and July 1941, detachments of German Einsatzgruppen together with Lithuanian auxiliaries, began murdering the Jews of Lithuania. By the end of August 1941, most Jews in rural Lithuania had been shot. By November 1941, the Germans also massacred most of the Jews who had been concentrated in ghettos in the larger cities. The surviving 40,000 Jews were concentrated in the Vilna, Kovno, Siauliai, and Svencionys ghettos, and in various labor camps in Lithuania. Living conditions were miserable, with severe food shortages, outbreaks of disease, and overcrowding.
LVIV POLAND
LVIV, POLAND, Germans capture Lviv—and slaughter ensues. the Lviv Ghetto was one of the largest Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the city of Lviv was home to more than 110,000 Jews; when the Nazis captured the city in 1941, this number had increased to more than 220,000 Jews. Previously, Jews living in Nazi-occupied western Poland fled eastward into the relative safety of Soviet-occupied Poland, including Lviv. In the second half of 1941, the Germans established the ghetto, which was cleared in June 1943. All residents who had survived previous killings were loaded into livestock wagons and transported to the Belzec and Janowska extermination camps for execution.
MASSACRE IN VOLHYNIA
MASSACRE IN VOLHYNIA, Polish civilian victims of March 26, 1943, massacre committed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the village of Lipniki. From 1943 to 1944,200 000 Polish civilians were killed. The extermination of the Jews of Volhynia began in the first days after the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. In many places, the Ukrainians perpetrated acts of murder before the arrival of the Germans or immediately after it. In Zhitomir, 2,500 Jews were exterminated during the last week of July 1941, while several thousand were confined to a ghetto that was liquidated on September 19 of the same year (mainly by Ukrainians). Ghettos were set up in various towns in formerly Polish Volhynia. They continued to exist until the autumn of 1942, and during the months of September–November, the Jews were exterminated, and the ghettos of Rovno, Kremenets, and Dubno were liquidated. It is difficult to estimate the number of Jews who perished in Volhynia, but there is no doubt that it reached tens of thousands.
MASSACRE OF JEWS
MASSACRE OF JEWS, mass grave of exterminated Jews at concentration camp.
MASSACRES AND ATROCITIES
MASSACRES AND ATROCITIES, Soviet Prisoners believed to be leveling the sand roof in Babi Yar a few days after the great massacre. During the first week of the German occupation of Kyiv, there were two major explosions. These explosions destroyed the German headquarters and areas around the main street of the city center (Khreshchatyk Street). A large number of German soldiers and officials were killed in the blasts. Though the explosions were caused by mines left by retreating Soviet soldiers and officials, the Germans used the sabotage as a pretext to murder those Jews who still remained in Kyiv. On September 29–30, 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries, under the guidance of members of Einsatzgruppe C, murdered a significant number of the Jewish population who remained in Kyiv. The massacre occurred at a ravine called Babyn Yar (sometimes spelled “Babi Yar” in English). At the time, the ravine was located just outside the city. The victims were summoned to the site, forced to undress, and then compelled to enter the ravine. Sonderkommando 4a, a special detachment from Einsatzgruppe C under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, shot them in small groups. According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen View This Term in the Glossary headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. The massacre at Babyn Yar was one of many mass shootings perpetrated by the Nazi Germans beginning in 1941. It was also one of the largest mass killings at a single location during World War II.
MIZOCZ GHETTO
MIZOCZ GHETTO, naked Jewish women wait in line before being executed by German police with the help of Ukrainians. Ukrainians were famous for brutality, Natzie Galitzien (Ukrainian SS forces) was the worst from all SS formation, when Ukrainians were involved in interrogation or other brutal activities, Germans were turning their heads. Ukrainians UPA and OUN, two natzi formations run by Stefan Bandera are also responsible for Wołynia genocide, nothing but ethnic cleansing, it wasn't against military members, it was directed on civilians mostly women, older men and kids, total over 200k victims, mostly Polish but they also went after Jews and Armenians to make sure only Ukrainians were leftover.
MURDER IN BARANOWICZE
MURDER IN BARANOWICZE, German soldiers standing among corpses. On the eve of the Holocaust, 12,000 Jews lived in Baranovichi. Under Soviet rule (1939–41), Jewish community organizations were disbanded and any kind of political or youth activity was forbidden. Some youth groups organized flight to Vilna, which was then part of Lithuania, and from there reached Palestine. The Hebrew Tarbut school became a Russian institution. A Jewish high school did continue to function, however. In the summer of 1940 Jewish refugees from western Poland who had found refuge in Baranovichi after September 1939 were deported to the Soviet interior. When Germans captured the city on June 27, 1941, 400 Jews were kidnapped, leaving no trace. A Judenrat was set up, headed by Joshua Izikzon. The community was forced to pay a fine of five kg. of gold, ten kg. of silver, and 1,000,000 rubles. The ghetto was fenced off from the outside on Dec. 12, 1941. The ghetto inhabitants suffered great hardship that winter, although efforts were made to alleviate the hunger. The Jewish doctors and their assistants fought to contain the epidemics. On March 4, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded. In a Selektion carried out by the Nazis to separate the “productive” from the “nonproductive”, over 3,000 elderly persons, widows, orphans, etc., were taken to trenches prepared in advance and murdered. Resistance groups, organized in the ghetto as early as the spring of 1942, collected arms and sabotaged their places of work. Plans for rebellion were laid, but the uprising never came to pass, partly due to German subterfuge. In the second German Aktion on Sept. 22, 1942, about 3,000 persons were murdered. On Dec. 17, 1942, another Aktion was carried out, in which more than 3,000 persons were killed near Grabowce. Baranovichi was now declared judenrein. At the end of 1942 Jews were already fighting in groups among the partisans. A few survivors from the ghetto were still in some of the forced labor camps in the district, but most of them were liquidated in 1943. On July 8, 1944, when the city was taken by the Soviet forces, about 150 Jews reappeared from hiding in the forests. Later a few score more returned from the U.S.S.R.
MURDER OF THE JEWS
MURDER OF THE JEWS, Liepaja, Latvia, Local collaborators gathering Jewish children before their execution. The place where this photo was taken is at Leipaja Beach. They were actually shot into ditches. Leipaja Beach saw many executions like this & there is one scene shot by a personally held movie camera showing dozens of spectators like a sports event.
MURDERERS
MURDERERS, 17 March 1942 | Germans sent the first transport of Jews from cities of Lublin & Lwów (Lviv) to the extermination camp in Bełżec.
MURDERERS IN ACTION
MURDERERS IN ACTION, Wehrmacht troops executing captured Red Army troops.
MURDERING JEWS A FAVORITE NAZI PASTIME
MURDERING JEWS, A FAVORITE NAZI PASTIME, Mosze Feldman, a Jewish butcher, who was publicly hanged in April 1942 for the "crime" of carrying out kosher slaughter.
OCCUPIED POLAND
OCCUPIED POLAND, Polish women led to execution. German atrocities in the Lublin region, 1939-1944. This photo is related to the executions in Palmiras. It is a village near Warsaw. The murders took place in 1939-1941 in the surrounding forests. It was related to the German AB action whose goal was to eliminate Polish intelligentsia. The victims brought here were mainly from Pawiak. Pawiak is Europe's largest Gestapo prison, located in Warsaw.
ODESSA EINSATZGRUPPEN
ODESSA EINSATZGRUPPEN, the Einsatzgruppen were a special group of soldiers who came after the main army and shot the Jews in the new occupied areas, towns, and cities. They rounded the Jews up beside a pit that they had built, and they shot the Jews into the pits.
ODESSA MASSACRE 1941
ODESSA MASSACRE 1941, deported Jews killed near Podilsk (Romanian: Bârzula), then under Romanian control. The Odessa massacre was the mass murder of the Jewish population of Odessa and surrounding towns in the Transnistria Governorate during the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 while it was under Romanian control. It was one of the worst massacres in the Ukrainian territory.
PONARY FOREST MASSACRE
PONARY FOREST MASSACRE, was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by German SD and SS and their Lithuanian collaborators, during World War II and the Holocaust in the Generalbezirk Litauen of Reichskommissariat Ostland. The murders took place between July 1941 and August 1944 near the railway station at Ponary, a suburb of today's Vilnius, Lithuania. 70,000 Jews were murdered at Ponary, along with up to 20,000 Poles, and 8,000 Soviet POWs, most of them from nearby Vilna (Vilnius), and its newly formed Vilna Ghetto. Lithuania became one of the first locations outside occupied Poland in World War II where the Nazis would mass murder Jews as part of the Final Solution. Out of 70,000 Jews living in Vilna, only about 7,000 survived the war.
PONARY THE VILNA KILLING SITE
PONARY THE VILNA KILLING SITE, Jews lined up for execution at Ponary. Ponary, the murder site of the Jews of Vilna and the surrounding area, was situated 10 km south of Vilna on the road to Grodno. Before the war it was a forested area used for holidays and recreation. Vilna residents used to go there for their summer holidays and to gather berries and mushrooms. The site was chosen for murder due to its proximity to the train track and also because there were pits 12-23m wide and 5-8m deep. There were high embankments with ditches between the pits, which had been dug by the Soviets in 1940 as a planned emergency fuel store.
SKEDE MASSACRE
SKEDE MASSACRE, Skede, Latvia, Jewish women being executed by Einsatzgruppe A and Latvian collaborators, 15/12/1941. On the eve of World War II, some 7,000 Jews lived in Liepaja, Latvia. The Germans occupied Liepaja on 29 June 1941, and immediately started to imprison and murder Jews, assisted by armed Latvians. By the end of July, almost 1,000 Jewish men had been murdered. Latvian volunteers from the "Arajs Kommando" participated in the massacre. Most of the murders were committed on the shores of the Baltic Sea, including in the fishing town of Skede, north of Liepaja. In August, the executions were fewer and more random, but in September and October, the mass murder recommenced, and hundreds of Jews were killed. By November, some 3,900 Jews remained in Liepaja, mainly women and children. On 14 December, Latvian policemen assembled the city's Jews and carried out a selection. Essential workers were sent back home, while the rest of the Jews were taken in trucks and sleds to Skede, to the dunes overlooking the Baltic Sea. A long ditch had been dug at the foot of the dunes. The Jews were forced to strip off their clothing except for their underwear. Near the ditch they were made to take off their remaining clothes and were executed by units made up of Latvian collaborators and German policemen, under the command of SS officer Fritz Dietrich. On 15-17 December 1941, 2,700-2,800 Jews from Liepaja were executed, most of them women and children. Approximately 1,000 Jews with working permits, their families and those who had managed to evade the massacre were left in Liepaja. In the summer of 1942, a ghetto was established in Liepaja, and in October 1943, the ghetto was liquidated, and Liepaja was declared "Judenrein" (cleansed of Jews). The Jews were taken in cattle cars to the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga. The next day, all those considered unfit to work were confined in the Riga ghetto. When the Riga ghetto was liquidated less than a month later, these Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
SLAUGHTER OF THE JEWS OF POLAND
SLAUGHTER OF THE JEWS OF POLAND 2, Deportation of Jews from the Bedzin Ghetto to Auschwitz, April 1941. The German army entered the town on Sept. 5, 1939, and five days later they burned the Great Synagogue in the Old City. About 50 houses surrounding the synagogue, which were inhabited exclusively by Jews, went up in flames and 60 Jews were burned to death. During 1940–41 the situation in Bedzin was considered somewhat better than in most other places in occupied Poland (Bedzin and its neighbor *Sosnowiec were for a long time the only large cities in Poland where no ghetto was established). For this reason, thousands of Jews from central Poland sought refuge there. Several thousand Jews from the district were expelled and forced to reside in Bedzin, among them all the Jews from Oswiecim (German name – Auschwitz), who arrived in April–May 1941, prior to the construction of the Auschwitz camp. About 6,500 Jews in the town were sent to forced labor camps and others were put to work locally making clothing and boots for the German army. In May and June 1942, the first deportations took place in which 2,400 "nonproductive" Jews were sent to their death in Auschwitz. On Aug. 15, 1942, about 8,000–10,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz, while others were shot on the spot for disobeying German orders. In spring 1943 a ghetto was established in the suburbs of Kamionka. On June 22, 1943, 4,000 Jews were deported and on August 1, 1943, the final liquidation of the ghetto began. In all, about 30,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz from Bedzin. Only a limited number of Jews survived the concentration camps by hiding. The Jewish underground resistance in Bedzin became active at the beginning of 1940. They circulated illegal papers and made contact with the Warsaw Ghetto underground. After the establishment of the ghetto, the underground concentrated mainly on preparations for armed resistance. A unified fighting organization came into being with strong ties with the Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto. On Aug. 3, 1943, during the last deportation, some armed resistance broke out. Among the fighters who fell in battle was the leading Jewish partisan Frumka Plot-nicka. Deportees from Bedzin played a major role in the underground and uprising in the Auschwitz death camp (among them – Jeshajahu Ehrlich, Moshe Wygnanski, Ala Gertner, and Rosa Sapirstein). Although some Jewish survivors settled in Bedzin after the war (in 1946 the Jewish population numbered 150 people), all of them left after some time.
SLAUGHTER OF THE JEWS OF POLAND
SLAUGHTER OF THE JEWS OF POLAND 3, view of the market square in Chmielnik, Poland. Prior to World War II Chmielnik had nearly 10,000 Jews, comprising 80% of the town's population. During the first months of the war several hundred Jews, mostly young men and women, fled to the Soviet-held territories. At the beginning of 1940 contact was made with the Warsaw underground leaders and Chmielnik was twice visited by Mordecai *Anielewicz, who came to help in the preparations for armed resistance. Because of the lack of arms, the underground could only show passive resistance, for which many were executed, among them the chairman of the Judenrat, Shmuel Zalcman. During 1940 and the winter of 1940–41 about 2,000 Jews who had been expelled from the smaller nearby towns and villages and from more distant regions of *Plock and *Ciechanow arrived in Chmielnik. The establishment of the ghetto in April 1941 drastically worsened the plight of the Jewish population which was greatly reduced by hunger and epidemics. From December 12, 1941, when a death decree was issued against anyone caught leaving the ghetto, many Jews were shot for smuggling food into it. On October 1, 1942, about 1,000 young men and women were deported to the forced labor camp in *Skarzysko-Kamienna. Many succumbed to the inhuman conditions there, while others were deported to the forced labor camp in *Czestochowa (Hasag) and to camps in Germany. Only a handful survived.
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE CITIZENS OF SOSNOVIEC
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE CITIZENS OF SOSNOVIEC, Polish citizens hanged by the Nazis in Sosnowiec. Poland, wartime. The final liquidation of the Sosnowitz ghetto began on the night of August 1, 1943. Police companies from Sosnowitz, Maczki, Kattowitz, Bytom, and Gilwice arrived for the 'Aktion,' as were training, factory, and reserve police detachments, for a total force of 22 officers and 775 men, armed with machine guns and grenades. Lieutenant- Colonel Schadow, the chief of the Sosnowitz police, directed the 'Aktion' in which approximately 10,000 Jews were deported to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, whilst some 400 people were shot, when they resisted or tried to escape. On August 2, 1943, a group of 300 people - mainly officials of the Judenrat, the Central Office, and the Jewish Police - were sent to the labor camp at Gora Swietej Anny. The 'Aktion' lasted until August 15, 1943.
THE MAN WHO WOULDNT SHOOT
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T SHOOT, sixteen blindfolded Yugoslav partisan youth await execution by German forces. Allegedly, German soldier Josef Schulz refused to take part in the action and was executed along with the youth.
THE MURDER SITE OF THE JEWS
THE MURDER SITE OF THE JEWS, the last Jew in Vinnitsa. German troops massacred Jews en masse in Vinnitsa, Ukraine.
WLODAVA POLAND FASCIST ABUSER AT WORK
WLODAVA, POLAND, FASCIST ABUSER AT WORK, a scene of ripping off beards along with pieces of skin of the Wlodawa Jews. The Germans immediately instituted a series of economic measures against the Jews. In the spring of 1940, all Jewish stores were expropriated or placed under trusteeship. Thus, the Nazis rapidly proceeded with the elimination of the Jews from economic life. The Jews were also subjected to extortion: in October 1939, the community had to raise a ‘contribution’ of 50,000 zlotys within 24 hours. Early in 1942 the Kreishauptmann demanded 3 kilograms of gold from the Wlodawa Judenrat to avert a planned ‘resettlement Aktion.’ The Jews collected the required gold, apparently delaying the ‘Aktion’ by several months. During the early stages of the occupation, possibly in late 1939, the Jews were removed from some of the main streets in the town and were given only ten minutes to leave. Sara Umelinsky, a Jewish survivor, recalled that her family had to move in with another family in a district that became the ‘Jewish Quarter,’ but she did not call it a ghetto. Other survivors also mention the existence of a Jewish quarter but did not give any details. Several waves of Jewish deportees were sent to Wlodawa, which is described in one account as a Judenstadt or collection point for Jews. For example, in December 1939, several hundred Jews were deported from Kalisz, in the Warthegau, in Wlodawa, where the local community had to provide them with assistance. In mid-March 1942, 785 Jews arrived by train from Mielec, where the local Jewish population were completely resettled. A further transport of Jews arrived from Vienna. This transport of 1,000 men, women and children left Aspang station in Vienna, on 27 April 1942, and only 3 survived the Holocaust.
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