T4

A primary goal of the Nazi regime was to create a superior German race. In 1939 they began the secret T4 Euthanasia program designed to systematically murder all German infants, toddlers, and children up to age 17 who displayed or were diagnosed with ANY physical or mental disability. These children were seen as “useless eaters” and a financial burden to society. Initially, 10,000 children died by gassing, starvation, and lethal injection. These deaths were precursors to the killing operations that the Nazis instituted in order to kill over 11,000,000 people in the death, concentration, and slave labor camps. By war’s end over 250,000 disabled children and adults had also been murdered.

T4 was the code-name of the illicit program which came from the Berlin street address of the program's coordinating office: Tiergartenstrasse 4.

detail, T4 in progress

For further reading: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-the-nazi-euthanasia-t-4-program

Ratlines

The Ratlines were a series of secret escape routes across Italy and Spain that were established at the end of WW2. Their sole purpose was to help high ranking Nazi war criminals escape justice. The International Red Cross and the Vatican were complicit in this program. The Red Cross provided 10,000 blank travel documents to the Vatican, which then actively provided sanctuary and transport, thus aiding in the escape of 10,000 Nazi war criminals (and other fascists) to South America. Some of the most notorious Nazis left Europe via the Ratlines, including Eichmann, Mengele, Barbie, Stangl, Rauff, Priebke, and others.

There are entire towns in Argentina and Brazil that reflect the influence of the large influx of Germans after the war. One can see it in the language, architecture, school curriculum, and culture.

for further reading https://www.dw.com/en/the-ratlines-what-did-the-vatican-know-about-nazi-escape-routes/a-52555068

detail, Ratlines

By March of 1955, West Germany was independently adjudicating all war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by its citizens during the Third Reich. It is estimated that there were over 750,000 German people actively involved in mass murder. West German courts, prosecutors, and police committed a failure of justice so extreme as to find innocent all those who used as a legal defense: I WAS ONLY DOING MY JOB.

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. Do not obey in advance” ~Timothy Snyder

detail, A Failure of Justice

For further reading, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-secret-student-group-stood-up-nazis-180962250/

I Do Not Say You Are Lying. I Say I Do Not Believe You

In July 1943, Felix Frankfurter, a Jewish US Supreme Court Justice met with and listened carefully to Polish diplomat Jan Karski. Karski, a Polish Catholic, was also a courier for the Polish resistance and had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica Transit Camp to personally witness the atrocities being committed against Jews. Karski gave Frankfurter a lengthy account of what he had personally observed, including mass starvation, dead and dying children, and the beating and transport of Jews. Justice Frankfurter responded to Karski’s story with a combination of acknowledgement, denial, disbelief and apathy. He consequently did nothing to raise the alarm about the German action that was targeting and murdering innocent Jewish civilians that resulted in 6,000,000 deaths.

The moral courage of Jan Karski encourages us to both bear and share witness. This story resonates by speaking to the current state of urgency as autocratic regimes strengthen around the world.

For further reading

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/karski-recalls-his-meeting-with-united-states-supreme-court-justice-felix-frankfurter-1943-claude-lanzmann/dgFS7OKiw9qznQ?hl=en

Beginning at dawn on November 3, 1943 the Nazis responded to ever increasing Jewish resistance. The armed conflicts in the Warsaw, Bialystok, and Vilna ghettos, and the uprisings at Sobibor and Treblinka sent the Nazis into a murderous rage. Despite the economic necessity of keeping the forced labor camps in the Lublin District fully operational, they decided instead to kill every Jew, naming the operation - Harvest Festival. 18,400 Jews, separated from other prisoners, were killed in a single day at Majdanek, 4,000 at Trawniki, and 11,000 in two days at Poniatowa. The murders were committed by the SS, by Police Battalion 101, and the Hiwis/Trawniki Men (volunteer collaborators from Eastern and Central Europe, mostly Soviet POWs). The massacre at Majdanek was the largest single-day, single-location mass murder during the Holocaust.

For further reading www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-this-day-nazis-muerder-43-000-in-one-day-1.5283950

During the 15 months between July 1942 and October 1943 up to 950,000 Jewish people were murdered at Treblinka, a major Nazi extermination camp in Poland.

Men, women, children, infants, and the elderly arrived in box cars to what appeared to be a real train station. They were required to drop all their possessions and were very quickly divided by gender. Forced to strip, the women had their heads shaved and all were beaten as they ran along a narrow path into “bathhouses”. Packed so tightly that no one could move, they died by suffocation from carbon monoxide exhaust in 12 minutes.

3000 people were murdered every 3 hours by this process, and the corpses burned to ash in huge cremation pits where the pyres burned 24 hours a day.

Theft of cash and personal valuables was conducted by the SS for the Third Reich and for personal gain.

Treblinka was run by 25-30 SS guards and 150 Trawniki guards (volunteer collaborators). Franz Stangl became the commandant in September 1942. He escaped to Brazil with his wife and children using his real name. Stangl was eventually tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal and brought to trial. He was convicted of the deaths of 900,000 people and sentenced to life in prison. He died at the age of 63 in 1971, 6 months into his sentence.

Only 67 of the 950,000 survived Treblinka.

For further reading: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/treblinka

The White Rose, 2019, String and Wax on Wood, 42” x 33”

Despite anti-Nazi speech being relentlessly prosecuted by the Gestapo (German State Secret Police) a group of University students formed The White Rose, a nonviolent intellectual resistance group. They wrote, printed, and distributed 15,000 leaflets advocating nonviolent resistance in denouncing persecution, the mass murder of Jews, and the end to the war. 7 core members, most in their early 20s, were executed by guillotine in 1943. Across the world, The White Rose has come to symbolize opposition to tyranny and a fight for freedom.

Have Courage

For further reading www.smithsonianmag.org

detail, The White Rose 2019

Reserve Police Battalion 101 was comprised of “regular” German men from Hamburg, too old for conscription. They were construction workers, druggists, businessmen, dock-workers, teachers, machinists, waiters and professional policemen. They became part of the German Order Police.

These men transformed themselves into a killing squad of such violence, brutality, sadism, and enthusiasm that it has been well studied.

Their first action was in Józefów, Poland and lasted for 17 hours. The men were given large amounts of ammunition and alcohol (provided by the mayor of Józefów). They separated Jewish men of working age then took 1500 Jewish women, children, infants, and elderly men to a nearby forest, forced them to lie naked on top of their murdered neighbors, friends, and relatives, and were shot in the back of the neck at point blank range (as directed by the Battalion physician). Those trying to escape, those too frail to walk and very young children were shot on the spot.

After the war, the 500 men of Police Battalion 101 returned to their previous occupations.

Of the 14 men indicted for these crimes in Józefów, for the crimes of 38,000 additional direct one-on-one murders, and for the crimes of transporting 45,000 Polish Jewish citizens to their deaths at Treblinka, only 3 individuals were ever jailed and each served an average of 5 years

The commander, Wilhelm Trapp, and one other policeman were executed in 1947 for the killing of 78 non-Jewish Poles. The 180 Jewish victims killed at the same time were deemed not relevant to the case.

Further Reading http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/polbat101.html

detail, Józefów

Detail, Józefów

Lorenzo’s Primo

At Auschwitz, Lorenzo Perrone, (a modest Italian civilian forced laborer) saved Primo Levi’s life by bringing him a piece of bread and soup every day for 5 months, secretly and at great risk to himself. After the war, Primo Levi found Lorenzo and tried to return the gift by saving him from tuberculosis and alcoholism. Sadly, he was unsuccessful.

Primo Levi became one of the greatest Jewish writers of the 20th century. He said of Lorenzo, “his humanity was pure and uncontaminated. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed to not forget that I, myself, was a man.”

In the face of great injustice, do what you can.

Find your Primo.

Further Reading https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-auschwitz/perrone.asp

Work in Progress, detail, Lorenzo’s Primo

Beginning at 4 AM, on July 16, 1942, French authorities instructed French police to round up and arrest as many Jews as possible within Paris. They arrested more than 13,000.

Each person was instructed to bring one blanket, one sweater, a pair of shoes and two shirts. They were held in extremely crowded conditions at Velodrome d’Hiver, a professional bicycle racing arena one block from the Eiffel Tower. About 6000 were taken to a transit camp and on to Auschwitz the following day, but 7000 remained at Vel D’Hiv in extreme heat without water, food or sanitary facilities. After 5 days, they were taken to three concentration camps near Paris. At the beginning of August, all remaining Jewish adults were taken, leaving the children (ages 16 and under) behind. Over 3,000 children were sent via rail cattle cars to their deaths in Auschwitz from these camps. The youngest was 18 months old.

Further Reading https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/vel-dhiv-roundup.html

Work in Progress, detail, Vel D’Hiv

In October 1941, one of the largest single mass murders of Jewish people took place in Odessa, Transnistria (now Ukraine).

Romanian and German troops took the city on October 16. On the afternoon of October 22, a Soviet booby-trapped safe exploded inside the Romanian Military Headquarters killing the Romanian Commander and 66 others.

In retaliation, the Romanians led between 25,000 and 34,000 Jews out of town, tied them together in groups of 40–50 people, threw them into ditches and began to execute them. The Romanians decided that the killing was taking too long and was too expensive, so they led the remaining Jews into four large adjacent wooden warehouses. The doors were closed and the soldiers fired directly into the buildings through perforations they made in the walls.

In order to make sure that all the people inside the buildings had died, they poured gasoline into three of the buildings (one held women and children) and set them on fire. Those who tried to escape through windows or the roof were shot or met with hand grenades. On October 25, the fourth building, which was filled with men, was shelled.

Further Reading https://www.dw.com/en/the-odessa-massacre-remembering-the-holocaust-by-bullets/a-45844546

details, Odessa

The near total destruction of Lithuanian Jews between July 1941 and July 1944 was, in large part, due to the willing and enthusiastic participation of the local populace in Nazi occupied Lithuania.

Both the Ypatingas Burys (special security force) and the Ponary Riflemen (so named by Kazimierz Sakowicz who, from his attic window, witnessed and recorded precise information about the executions and executioners) were primarily responsible for the deaths of over 70,000 Jews, 10,000 Polish intellectuals, academics, and resistance fighters, and 2,000 Soviet POWs.

The victims included men, women, and children who were forced to strip before being shot. The bodies were buried in huge pits that had been previously built by the Soviets for storage of fuel oil. Their remains were subsequently burned, ground up, and mixed with sand in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Before WWII, Ponary (Paneriai) was a picturesque village and forestland where people picnicked, skied, and enjoyed the outdoors. This area is now a suburb of Vilnius, Lithuania.

Many Lithuanians benefitted economically from this and other similar actions.

Further Reading http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/ponary.html

detail, The Ponary Riflemen

At the beginning of 1941, approximately half of the 100,000 residents of Iasi, Romania were Jewish.

On June 28 and 29, a violent slaughter of the Jewish citizens of Iasi was perpetrated by the Iasi police, the Romanian military, SSI agents, The Iron Guard, and many ordinary citizens (neighbors of Jews, known and lesser-known supporters of anti-semitic movements, students, poorly-paid, low-level officials, railway workers, craftsmen frustrated by Jewish competition, “white-collar” workers, retirees and military veterans) who knew they would not have to account for their actions.

On June 30, 1941, two trains departed from Iasi, Romania in the blazing heat of summer on a ‘trip to no-where’. They contained the survivors of that pogram. 2500 people were crammed into cattle cars that had their ventilation slats nailed shut. For the next 17 hours this ‘death train’ traveled a circuitous route across Romania. Periodically, rail cars were opened to remove those who died of suffocation, heat exhaustion, dehydration, wounds inflicted during the pogrom, and suicide. Anyone attempting to get water at these stops was immediately shot.

Approximately 200/2500 people survived. They were subsequently “invited” to return home.

Further Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iași_pogrom

An 8 year-old Polish boy incited the Kielce Pogrom after the end of the war. This boy, named Henryk Błaszczyk, and his father accused local holocaust survivors of kidnapping Polish children, holding them in a building at 7 Platy Street, and committing “ritual murder”. This resulted in a massacre of innocent survivors including Jewish men, women, and children. In 1998, when that boy turned 60 years old, he told a journalist that the entire story was a lie. The ruthlessness of this action and these murders sent the international message that Jews would not be safe to return to their homes across Europe - and thus began a mass exodus of survivors.

There are only about 20,000 people with Jewish ancestry currently living in Poland. Before the war, there were 3,000,000.

Further Reading https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-kielce-pogrom-a-blood-libel-massacre-of-holocaust-survivors

detail, Morning Until Evening

January 20, 1945

1,350 Jewish women prisoners were forcibly marched 550 miles from three concentration camps in freezing temperatures for 106 days. 118 managed to survive murder, starvation, exposure, and utter brutality at the hands of their SS guards. After being liberated by American forces on May 5, in Volary, Czechoslavakia, 26 of the women died within days (of frostbite, dysentery, and severe injuries to the feet). The Germans knowingly marched these women to their deaths as the Russians approached and a German defeat became evident.

In the last 10 months of World War 2, approximately 250,000 people died on forced death marches such as these.

Further Reading https://www.yadvashem.org/blog/death-march-to-volary.html

NOTICE: “All Yids of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday, September 29, by 8 o'clock in the morning at the corner of Mel'nikova and Dorohozhytska streets. Bring documents, money and valuables, and also warm clothing, and linen. Any Yids who do not follow this order and are found elsewhere will be shot.”

33,771 men, women and children assembled and were marched two miles out of Kiev to Babi Yar, a deep ravine. The crowd was enormous and chaotic. The people were forced to deposit all of their luggage, warm coats, money, valuables and clothing (including underwear) into designated piles. The naked people were then forced single file in groups of 10 down a corridor of soldiers into the bottom of the deep and wide ravine. The Schultpolizei required them to lay face down and German marksmen proceeded to shoot each person in the neck with submachine guns. Like a layer cake, soil from the sides of the ravine was scraped down in between the rows of dead bodies.

29 out of 33,771 survived. One testified.

Witnesses recounted what they saw. The stories match.

Further Reading https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar

Work in Progress, detail, Babi Yar

For three days in January 1942, the Hungarian military and gendarmes forced over 1200 Jews and Serbs to the banks and bridges overlooking the frozen Danube River. The ice was shelled. The people were robbed, many were shot, and groups of adults, children, and the elderly (bound with piano wire) were pushed to their deaths through the ice into the river. Bodies washed up for many months afterwards as spring arrived and summer began.

It is believed that Admiral Miklos Horthy, leader of Hungary, was aware of the raid and approved the action. However, at the Nuremberg trials, the Soviets and the Americans pressed that all charges of him be dropped.

Further Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_Sad_raid

detail, Novi Sad