What is Theresienstadt?

Theresienstadt was a nazi holding pen in Czechoslovakia. It served as a transit camp for Czech Jews whom the Germans deported to killing centers, concentration camps, and forced-labor camps in German-occupied Poland, Belorussia, and the Baltic States. It was a ghetto-labor camp to which the SS deported and then incarcerated certain categories of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews, based on their age, disability as a result of past military service, or domestic celebrity in the arts and other cultural life. Third, Theresienstadt served as a holding pen for Jews in the above-mentioned groups.

Today, on 27 Iyar in 1945, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was liberated. From Aish.com:

Theresienstadt was not a death camp by the usual definition. It was the center of a Nazi PR ploy -- a mythic, idyllic city that was supposedly built to protect Jews from the vagaries and stresses of the war. The Red Cross was once allowed to visit Theresienstadt, which was spruced up for the occasion; inmates were dressed up and baked goods suddenly filled the shelves. (The Red Cross concluded that the Jews were being well-treated.)

In reality, starvation and disease proved rampant. Of the 200,000 people (mostly Czech Jews) who passed through its gates, thousands died of malnutrition and exposure, and others were sent to Auschwitz.

Today In Jewish History: Eichmann captured in Argentina

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In 1960, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina. Eichmann was in charge of implementing the "final solution" to exterminate Jews in the concentration camps. In one seven-week period alone, Eichmann transported 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers. Eichmann was captured through the efforts of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and the Israeli Mossad (Secret Service). Eichmann was later put on trial in Israel, which was broadcast worldwide and featured the wrenching testimony of many Holocaust survivors. Eichmann was convicted and executed by hanging, the only capital punishment ever carried out in Israel. His body was cremated and ashes scattered at sea, so that no nation would serve as Eichmann's final resting place.

Hundreds march in Latvia to commemorate Waffen SS unit

It's still my father's Europe. Via IHT:

About 3,000 Latvians marched through the capital Sunday under heavy police protection to honor countrymen who fought in a German combat unit during World War II. The procession, included a few surviving members of the WaffenSS unit known as the Latvian Legion, was met by dozens of jeering protesters as it arrived at the Freedom Monument, in downtown Riga. The two sides were kept apart by some 2,000 police officers deployed to prevent possible unrest at the annual event. The participants sang patriotic songs and waved Latvian flags before laying roses at the base of the monument, flanked by police in riot gear.The protesters chanted "disgrace" and "Hitler is dead" in Russian and blew whistles to drown out the singing. Police reported no incidents.

Soviet forces occupied the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in June 1940, but were driven out by the Germans a year later. The Red Army retook the Baltics in 1944, and reincorporated them into the Soviet Union. About 250,000 Latvians ended up fighting alongside either the Germans or the Soviets in World War II - and some 150,000 Latvians died in the fighting. Veterans who fought on the side of Nazi Germany say they were simply fighting for their freedom against the Soviet menace.

But many ethnic Russians, who comprise approximately one-third of the country's 2.3 million population, claim that the Soviet army liberated the Baltic state from fascism.

Nearly 80,000 Jews in Latvia - 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population - were killed during the Nazi occupation. Thousands of Russian prisoners of war also died in Nazi prisoner of war camps.Most Latvian Jews were killed in 1941-42, two years before the formation of Latvia's Waffen SS - which some Latvians claim shows the unit could not have played a role in the Holocaust.

But an unknown number of Latvian Waffen SS soldiers may have been involved in the murder of Jews as auxiliary police, years before they entered the front-line unit.

Latvia remained under Soviet control until 1991, when it regained its independence.

European Jewish leader warns against neo-Nazi phenomenon in Europe

It is still our father's Europe. From EJP:

Speaking at a special commemoration organized Monday evening in the European Parliament 's Yehudi Menuhin Hall on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kantor said:

"There are more neo-Nazis than Jews today in Europe."

Kantor, who lost half of his family in the Shoah or Holocaust in Ukraine, deplored the "trivialization" of the neo-Nazi phenomenon and warned that "lessons of history have not been learned."

"We should not allow things to be repeated," he added, in the presence of the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering. Poettering, who is a German Christian-Democrat politician, stressed the absolute need “never to forget these dark pages of history.” “We must never forget. Preserving memory is an ethical and political duty,” he added.

Kantor is the founder of the World Holocaust Forum, an international foundation for the commemoration of the Holocaust and its lessons.

Also attending the ceremony, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majalli Whbee spoke of a revival of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in the world, and called Ahmadinejad the “heir of the Nazis.” “One day he will also threaten the European countries like Hitler did,” he added.

“As an Israeli Druze, I am shocked to hear people denying the Holocaust and accusing Israeli leaders of being ‘Nazis.”, Whbee, who had talks Monday in the European Parliament, said.

In November 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day marks the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, on 27 January 1945.

Holocaust scholar: 'Jew' has become curse word among German youth

It will always remain my father's Europe. And Ha'aretz, the leading left-wing rag out of Israel, will make sure it remains that way. From Holocaust scholar: 'Jew' has become curse word among German youth:

German schools are failing in educating students about the Holocaust, a new study by a political education center has found, as German youth, who one historian said use the word "Jew" as a common curse in daily discourse, are increasingly distant from the suffering of the victims of Nazism. According to a study commissioned by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, a political education center known by its German acronym BPB, history courses no longer manage to teach Germany's younger generation of the horrors of the Nazis. In the report, which appeared in the German educational magazine Focus-Shula, teachers are quoted as saying that they are having trouble impressing upon school children the horrors of the Holocaust, and have stated that their tools for teaching about the Shoah are not effective.

Today in Jewish History - Shvat 3

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In 1933, Adolph Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. The November 1932 elections saw the Nazis emerge as the largest party in the Reichstag. Leading German politicians and businessmen persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, as a way to stabilize the government and economy. Hindenburg reluctantly agreed. Two months later, the Nazis passed the Enabling Act, giving Hitler dictatorial authority. Hitler's government then banned all other political parties, and in July 1933, a Concordat (agreement) was signed with the Vatican. Hitler secured popular support by persuading Germans that he was their savior from the Depression, the Communists, the Versailles Treaty, and the Jews. Hitler would use this power to launch World War II and oversee the murder of 6 million Jews.

Vast Nazi archive opened to public

Via ArcaMax:

A vast archive of 47 million German documents on Nazi Holocaust victims has been opened to the public. Kept in Bad Arolsen, West Germany, miles of shelves contain detailed records of 17.5 million forced laborers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners.

Until now the files were used to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide information for compensation claims. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) manages the files.

How ironic that the ICRC manages the archives. I find that reprehensible, knowing the history of the International Red Cross' indefensible bias against the Magen David Adom in Israel.

Books: Zionist official was first to hear of Final Solution

Via JPost:

A senior Zionist official stationed in Switzerland during World War II was likely the first person to receive information from a German source regarding the plan for the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews, according to a new book published by Yad Vashem.

Chaim Pazner, head of the Jewish Agency's Palestine Office in Geneva, immediately forwarded the information to senior British officials and to Jewish officials in British-ruled Palestine, and the report reached the top echelons of the British government, according to the book, Chaim Pazner - The Man Who Knew.

The book - written in Hebrew by Menahem Michelson, with contributions from historian Sir Martin Gilbert - describes a report from a German source in the summer of 1942 about the Final Solution and the British government's refusal to make that information public.

Kristallnacht

Today is the 69th Anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht and "The Night of Broken Glass", was a massive nation-wide pogrom in Germany on the night of November 9, 1938 including the early hours of the following day and was directed at Jewish citizens throughout Germany, the newly acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland. Germans freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. On those two days, this pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 1574 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores. More than 30,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps; a few were beaten to death with others forced to watch. The number of Jewish Germans killed is uncertain, with estimates ranging from 36 to about 200 over two days of rioting. The number of Jews killed is most often cited as 91.

Never forget.

Today in Jewish History - Cheshvan 20

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Yahrtzeit of Hannah Szenes (1921-1944), a young Israeli woman who volunteered to parachute behind Nazi lines on behalf of the British Army. She spent three months in Yugoslavia working with partisan resistance fighters, but was caught when she attempted to cross the border into Hungary. She was tortured for several months, but refused to divulge any information. Szenes became a symbol of idealism and self-sacrifice, an image strengthened by the stirring set of poems she left behind. She was executed by firing squad in Budapest, and her remains were later brought to Israel.

Today in Jewish History - Cheshvan 18

I was stunned when I first read this, not having heard of the Madagascar Plan prior to this. Sponsored by Aish.com:

In 1938, Nazi leader Hermann Goering announced that in order to "solve the problem of the Jews," the African island of Madagascar was being considered as a giant ghetto for 4 million European Jews. The plan was seriously considered by Hitler in May 1940, in his discussions with Mussolini and Nazi officials. Hitler's idea was that the Jews would play the role of hostages, as a way to prevent the United States from entering the war. The Madagascar Plan was cancelled due to a British blockade. One year later, it was decided that the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" would mean extermination.

Systematic mass murder of Jews detailed in huge Nazi archive

From Ha'aretz:

Twenty days of systematic murder of prisoners in the Majdanek concentration camp are detailed in a thick office binder in the huge archive of Nazi documents in this central German city.

The binder contains hundreds of pages written on both sides. Each one has a table containing the following information: first name, last name, date of birth, address, date of death - all written out in a careful longhand. The blue ink has faded over the years, but the Jewish names jump out. Lists upon lists of towns and cities throughout Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany. In the last column, the date of death, there is not much variety: one of 20 days in September, 1942. The title on the binder reads: Lublin-Majdanek, crematorium list 08.09-1942 - 28.09.1942.

The lists were apparently brought out of the Majdanek concentration camp after it was liberated by the Russians. On the shelves around this one binder, on the first floor of the International Tracing Service (ITS) complex, are thousands more binders - the original records of the dead at the Buchenwald and Matthausen concentration camps, lists made by the Gestapo of deportees from Holland, who were captured at its headquarters after Germany surrendered, etc. All the documents are cataloged according to the names of victims and survivors, reflecting the efficiency of the Nazi bureaucracy.

This is the largest archive of Nazi documents in the world - more than 33 million pages of records, stored in six buildings in Bad Arolsen, a Baroque town north of Frankfurt. The archive was established after World War II by the Allies, taking advantage of the town's location between Germany's four areas of occupation, and the fact that it had suffered practically no damage from bombardment. It is funded by the German government and operated by the Red Cross. Searching among the 17.5 million names recorded there, staffers assist people seeking information on the fate of their families or submitting demands for reparations from the German authorities.

Today in Jewish History - Tishrei 11

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In 1941, SS Chief Helmut Knochen ordered the systematic destruction of synagogues in Paris. During this time the Vichy government established other anti-Jewish measures, including the requirement that all Jews wear a yellow badge. Roundups took place in Paris where tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and handed over to the Nazis. Of an estimated 350,000 Jews who lived in France, 25 percent were murdered in the Holocaust. While many were sent to Auschwitz, there were also concentration camps located inside France, such as Gurs.

Today in Jewish History - Tishrei 9

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In 1941, the Nazis carried out executions at Babi Yar, as thousands of Jews were buried in a ravine near the Ukrainian city of Kiev. The Nazis had instructed all 175,000 Jews of Kiev to report to the cemetery. Most thought they would be deported. Yet the Nazis killed the Jews in retaliation for a series of bombings against German installations (though a secret Russian agency was actually responsible). With the aid of Ukrainian citizens, 35,000 Jews were ordered to undress, beaten if they resisted, and then shot at the edge of the Babi Yar gorge. Many people were buried alive, suffocated by the mass of bodies atop them. All told, an estimated 100,000 people -- including Soviet POWs -- were shot at the site.

Today in Jewish History - Elul 22

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In 1939, during the Polish September Campaign, the Nazis occupied Krakow, Poland, a thriving Jewish community of 70,000 Jews. Jews were consigned to forced labor, and all Jews were required to wear identifying armbands. Synagogues were ordered closed and all their valuables turned over to Nazi authorities. In May 1940, the Nazis ordered a massive deportation of Jews from the city, leaving only 15,000 behind in Krakow's Jewish ghetto, crammed into 3,000 rooms. German businessman Oskar Schindler came to Krakow to take advantage of the ghetto labor, and subsequently worked furiously to save Jews, as portrayed in the film, Schindler's List. In March 1943, the Nazis carried out the final 'liquidation' of the ghetto.

Israeli Museum Launches Looted Holocaust Art Database

From Israeli Museum Launches Looted Holocaust Art Database:

Israel's national museum has launched an Internet catalog of more than 1,000 pieces of art looted by the Nazis to allow Holocaust survivors and their heirs to identify and reclaim property. The pieces include drawings, Judaica items and paintings - several of them worth millions of dollars - that were plundered by German troops, recovered by the Allies in postwar Europe and later transferred to Israel.

Obituary: Raul Hilberg

Raul Hilberg, a world-renowned Holocaust scholar, has died from a recurrence of lung cancer, his wife said. He was 81.

Hilberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, died Saturday, said his wife, Gwen. Though he had lung cancer, he never smoked, she said. He died with her at his side at the Vermont Respite House in Williston.

Hilberg was the author of The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), a landmark study of the Nazi killings of more than 5 million Jews.

He was honored by the German government for his contributions and teaching on the Holocaust and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, according to the university.

Hilberg, who taught at the university from 1956 to 1991, started the school's Holocaust Studies program. The university later created the Center for Holocaust Studies in 1992 "to honor Hilberg's teaching and research accomplishments. "

"The entire university community is saddened by the loss of this great scholar, but comforted in the legacy of writing and research he leaves for those who seek to understand one of the darkest, defining chapters in human history," university president Daniel Mark Fogel said.

Hilberg and his parents left Austria in 1938 after the Nazi invasion emigrated to the United States, where Hilberg served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II.

As a member of the War Documentation Project, he found Hitler's private library in crates stored in Munich, the university said. That prompted him to start investigating the Holocaust.

"Once the Nuremberg Trials were over and a few people judged guilty, no one wanted to talk about it. But I was driven by a desire to know what happened," he had said.

He earned a B.A. degree from Brooklyn College in 1948, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1950 and 1955.

Hilberg also was author of Perpetrators Victims Bystanders (1992); The Politics of Memory (1996); and Sources of Holocaust Research (2001).

Obituary: Henri Amouroux

Henri Amouroux, a French historian who testified on behalf of Maurice Papon at his war crimes trial and wrote several books on the Nazi occupation, has died, news reports said Monday. He was 87.

Amouroux died Sunday in Normandy, Le Parisien newspaper and France-Info radio reported. No cause of death was given.

Amouroux, who served as president of the history section of the prestigious Academie Francaise, testified at Papon's 1997 trial for his role in deporting Jews during the World War II. Papon, a former Cabinet minister who became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis, was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity, and died earlier this year.

Born July 1, 1920 in Perigueux, southern France, Amouroux started as a journalist during World War II. He later worked for radio and television, and wrote several books on daily life under the German occupation.

Many historians accused him of being an apologist for the Vichy regime.

At the Papon trial, Amouroux countered noted American historian Robert O. Paxton's version of the Vichy period. Lawyers representing Holocaust victims at the trial said Amouroux was sanctioned during postwar purges of the collaborationist press, charges Amouroux denied.

He was to be buried in his native Gironde region, Le Parisien reported. No information about surviving family members was immediately available.

New Jersey man urging Italy to open Holocaust archive

It will enable archivists to determine just how many people were murdered in Italy. How many gypsies were sent to death camps? Which corporations were providing poison gas? How did the people who were carrying out the atrocities distance themselves from what they were doing? From The Daily Record:

A Morristown man who is interning with the Helsinki Commission in Washington, D.C., hand-delivered a letter signed by 42 members of Congress to the Italian Embassy, seeking to open Holocaust-era archives that have been sealed for six decades.

The letter, delivered by Mark Hadzewycz, 23, was a culmination of the commission's effort to pressure members of the Italian parliament to open to scholars and the public 30 million pages of documentation once maintained by Nazi Germany and its allies during the Holocaust.

In May 2006, the 11 countries that govern the International Tracing Service, which oversees the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives in Germany, agreed to open the archives. But first each member country has to formally amend the 1955 Bonn Agreement, which has kept the archives essentially sealed, except for a process by which relatives can ask to have individual names looked up with no guarantee of when, if ever, they'll get a response.

Once opened, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum would be one of several centers to receive a digital copy of the archives.

"It's a shame that it's taken so long to get it open to the public," Hadzewycz said.

Hadzewycz, a graduate student of Ukrainian history at Rutgers University, has been living behind the Supreme Court in student housing since June. He applied to intern at the Helsinki Commission partly because it frequently came up in his research, he said.

Eight countries already have ratified the amendment, and Greece is scheduled to approve the amendment within the month. France has said it will ratify the amendment when parliament convenes in September. That leaves only Italy.

Click here to read the full article.

Romanian named 'righteous gentile'

An heartfelt thank you to the Criveanu family. From Jpost:

Yad Vashem on Wednesday posthumously honored a Romanian reserves officer who blocked the deportation of Romanian Jews to Nazi death camps.

Theodor Criveanu was inducted into Yad Vashem's "Righteous Among the Nations" group of non-Jews who rescued Jews from the Nazis. His son, Willie Criveanu, accepted the award on his behalf.

The 20,000 Jews of Czernowitz, Romania, were interned during the war and slated for deportation to death camps.

As a reserves officer in the Romanian army, Criveanu was assigned the task of presenting authorities a list of Jews who were required to work in the ghetto, and were thus spared deportation. According to testimonies given to Yad Vashem, Criveanu risked his own life by handing out permits beyond the allowed limit, including to Jews who were not essential to the workforce. Yad Vashem said it could not estimate how many Jews he saved.

Criveanu married the daughter of one of the Jews he saved. He died in Romania in 1988.

"My father's life was based on justness, correctness. He was a great humanitarian, that was his nature," his son said at the ceremony. "He was a gift from God for my mother's family and to so many more."

More than 21,000 non-Jews have been honored by Yad Vashem, including Oskar Schindler, whose efforts to save more than 1,000 Jews was documented in the Oscar-award- winning film Schindler's List. Fifty-three Romanians have been honored.