Steve Schmidt on Why We Can Never Forget the Holocaust | The Warning

Jan 27, 2024 | Steve Schmidt reflects on the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. January 27th marks National Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Steve warns why it's vital -- more than ever -- to continue to remember.

Die Holocaust-Überlebende Friedländer zu ihrer Rückkehr nach Deutschland | Markus Lanz vom 8.12.2021

Dec 9, 2023 | „Es gibt kein christliches Blut, kein jüdisches Blut, kein muslimisches Blut. Es gibt nur menschliches Blut!“ Diese Weltansicht versucht die mittlerweile 100 Jahre alte Margot Friedländer den Schülerinnen und Schülern in deutschen Schulen zu vermitteln. Sie ist eine der letzten Zeitzeugen des Zweiten Weltkriegs und dem damit tragisch verbundenen Holocaust.

Bei Markus Lanz erzählt sie ihre Erlebnisse der letzten Tage ihrer Gefangenschaft in dem Konzentrationslager Theresienstadt, bevor der Zweite Weltkrieg von den Alliierten Kräften beendet wurde. Erst in den letzten Tagen wurde den dort inhaftierten Juden klar, was in den Vernichtungslagern wie Auschwitz wirklich passiert ist. Bis dato sei das Wissen um die Massenermordung an den Juden ein großes Geheimnis gewesen. Die Nationalsozialisten hatten in den letzten Tagen versucht, ihre Gräueltaten vor den sowjetischen Truppen zu verbergen, indem die in Auschwitz Gefangenen nach Theresienstadt deportiert wurden.

„Niemals kann man vergessen, wie schrecklich diese Leute da ankamen.“ Teils nur in Lumpen kamen die Überlebenden aus Auschwitz an, wo nun auch den Gefangenen in Theresienstadt klar wurde, welches Schicksal sie erwartet hätte. Leid und Trauer seien ein täglicher Begleiter gewesen.

Doch in diesem Leid hatte sie auch ihren Mann kennengelernt, mit dem sie nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs in die USA ausgewandert ist. Ein geteiltes Leid ließ die beiden eine Zukunft aufbauen, in der nicht immer Liebe dabei gewesen sei, aber eine tiefe Freundschaft sie für immer verbunden hatte.

Umso mehr verwundert es die jungen Schüler, dass Margot Friedländer mit ihren schlimmen Erzählungen doch den Entschluss gefasst hatte, wieder zurück nach Berlin zu ziehen. „Ich war zu Hause, als ich nach Berlin gekommen bin“, erklärt sie die Liebe zu ihrer Heimatstadt, die sie so lange Zeit nicht mehr gesehen hatte. Zusammen mit ihrem Umzug kam auch ihr Wunsch den Kindern ihre Geschichten zu erzählen und sie vor den Menschen zu warnen, die ein derartiges Gedankengut wie die Nationalsozialisten vertreten. „Ich will nicht, dass einer von euch so etwas erlebt!


Den gesamten Talk findet ihr hier.

Holocaust: Was in Auschwitz geschah | DER SPIEGEL

Jan 27, 2022 | Am 27. Januar 1945 erreichten Soldaten der Roten Armee das Vernichtungslager. Nach und nach erschloss sich ihnen die Dimension des Grauens.
I'm posting this disturbing documentary about concentration- and extermination-camps today because anti-Semitism is increasing terribly around the world. People need to be reminded of the horrors inflicted on the Jews in Hitler's Third Reich in the 1930s and 1940s. We should never forget how the Jews suffered back then. Furthermore, we must do everything in our power to ensure that they never again have to suffer such humiliation, abuse and cruelty.

Ich veröffentliche heute diese verstörende Dokumentation über Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager, weil der Antisemitismus weltweit furchtbar zunimmt. Die Menschen müssen an die Schrecken erinnert werden, die den Juden in Hitlers Drittem Reich in den 1930er und 1940er Jahren zugefügt wurden. Wir sollten nie vergessen, wie die Juden damals gelitten haben. Darüber hinaus müssen wir alles in unserer Macht tun, um sicherzustellen, daß sie nie wieder solche Demütigungen, Misshandlungen und Grausamkeiten erleiden müssen.

Je publie aujourd'hui ce documentaire inquiétant sur les camps de concentration et d'extermination parce que l'antisémitisme augmente terriblement dans le monde. Il faut rappeler aux gens les horreurs infligées aux Juifs sous le Troisième Reich hitlérien dans les années 1930 et 1940. Nous ne devrions jamais oublier combien les Juifs ont souffert à cette époque. En outre, nous devons faire tout ce qui est en notre pouvoir pour garantir qu’ils n’aient plus jamais à subir de telles humiliations, abus et cruautés.

© Mark Alexander

Diese Dokumentation ist für Kinder auf keinen Fall geeignet. Empfindsame Leute sollten auch vorsichtig sein.

This documentary is definitely not suitable for children. Sensitive people should also be careful.

Cette documentation n'est certainement pas adaptée aux enfants. Les personnes sensibles doivent également être prudentes.

Diese Dokumentation ist altersbeschränkt und kann daher nicht auf externen Websites eingebettet werden. Es muss auf YouTube selbst angesehen werden. Klicken Sie bitte hier, um den Dokumentarfilm anzusehen. (It has English subtitles.)

The Abortionist of Auschwitz

AISH: Dr. Gisella Perl was forced to care for tens of thousands of women in the Holocaust.

In May 1944, the Jewish ghetto in the Hungarian town of Sziget was being liquidated with all the surviving Jews being sent to Auschwitz. One of the thousands of terrified Jews forced into an overcrowded cattle car bound for Auschwitz was Dr. Gisella Perl, a distinguished intellectual who’d grown up there. After studying medicine in Germany, Gisella became one of Europe’s early female doctors, specializing in gynecology, delivering babies and offering medical care to women in Sziget and the surrounding areas.

In Auschwitz, all female doctors in the group were ordered to identify themselves. Gisella recognized the Nazi doctor giving the order. She and her husband had once hosted Dr. Victor Kapezius in their home for dinner in 1943, not realizing he was a member of the SS. Kapezius looked at Gisella with a cold smile before telling her, “You are going to be the camp gynecologist. Don’t worry about instruments… you won’t have any.Your medical kit belongs to me now.”

With that, Gisella was separated from her beloved husband Ephraim and entered the rings of Hell. » | Dr. Yvette Alt Miller | Sunday, June 26, 2022

Music in Nazi Germany - The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz | DW Documentary | Reupload

Nov 9, 2022 | Why was classical music so important to Hitler and Goebbels? The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight.

The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.

The world-famous conductor made a pact with Hitler and his henchmen. The young woman, brought to Auschwitz for being Jewish, was spared death for her musical talent. While Furtwängler decided to stay in Germany and make a deal with the devil, Lasker-Wallfisch struggled to survive the brutality of the death camp, with a cello as her only defense. Why did gifted artists like Furtwängler make a pact with evil? Why was classical music played in extermination camps? And how did this change the way victims saw music?

German music was used to justify the powerful position the Third Reich claimed in the world, and to distract listeners from Nazi crimes. In addition to Beethoven, Bach and Brucker, Richard Wagner was highly valued, because he was Hitler’s personal favorite. Hitler understood the power of music, and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels was in charge of music in the Nazi-controlled state.

This music documentary by Christian Berger features interviews with musicians like Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann; the children of Wilhelm Furtwängler; and of course 97-year-old survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Her memories are chilling. Archive film footage, restored and colorized, brings the story to life, and bears witness to an agonizing chapter in history.

«Ich wollte leben!» - mit 13 im KZ Auschwitz

Oct 20, 2015 | Von Schweizer Grenzern abgewiesen wird die Jüdin Liliana Segre 1943 mit ihrem Vater von Mailand nach Auschwitz verschleppt. Sie überlebt.

Holocaust-Gedenktag: Erinnern an gehörlose Opfer | Sehen statt Hören | Doku | BR

Jan 27, 2019 | Am 27. Januar 1945 wurde das Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager Auschwitz durch die sowjetischen Truppen befreit. 51 Jahre später - 1996 - wird dieses Datum vom damaligen Bundespräsidenten Roman Herzog zum bundesweiten Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus auserwählt. An die 1.500 gehörlose Menschen waren unter den Opfern.

The Maestro and the Cellist of Auschwitz | DW Documentary

Nov 9, 2022 | Why was classical music so important to Hitler and Goebbels? The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight.

The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.

The world-famous conductor made a pact with Hitler and his henchmen. The young woman, brought to Auschwitz for being Jewish, was spared death for her musical talent. While Furtwängler decided to stay in Germany and make a deal with the devil, Lasker-Wallfisch struggled to survive the brutality of the death camp, with a cello as her only defense. Why did gifted artists like Furtwängler make a pact with evil? Why was classical music played in extermination camps? And how did this change the way victims saw music?

German music was used to justify the powerful position the Third Reich claimed in the world, and to distract listeners from Nazi crimes. In addition to Beethoven, Bach and Brucker, Richard Wagner was highly valued, because he was Hitler’s personal favorite. Hitler understood the power of music, and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels was in charge of music in the Nazi-controlled state.

This music documentary by Christian Berger features interviews with musicians like Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann; the children of Wilhelm Furtwängler; and of course 97-year-old survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Her memories are chilling. Archive film footage, restored and colorized, brings the story to life, and bears witness to an agonizing chapter in history.

Gay Pride: Kitty Fischer on Gay Male Rescuer in Auschwitz | 2015 | Reupload

Jun 18, 2015 | For National Gay Pride Month USC Shoah Foundation is featuring a testimony clip every week in June of eyewitnesses to the Nazi persecution of Gay men in the Holocaust. Kitty Fischer recounts her time in Auschwitz-II Birkenau when as a young girl she encounters for the first time a gay male prisoner who will turn out to save her life.

Anita Lasker Wallfisch: Mich hat Auschwitz nie verlassen

Streamed live on May 28, 2018 • Zeitzeugen im Gespräch – Erfahrungen und Schicksale deutscher Juden im Nationalsozialismus

Holocaust Memorial Day [Thursday, January 27th]: ‘The Nazis Experimented on Me at Auschwitz’ - BBC News

Jan 26, 2022 • A woman in her nineties who has been diagnosed with dementia has shared her story of how she escaped the Nazis with her son for the first time.

After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Alina Peretti was sent to a labour camp in Siberia, put in front of a firing squad in Warsaw and finally sent to the concentration camp, Auschwitz.

“It’s unbelievable when you found out that we survived,” she said, ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Thursday.

Holocaust: Deutsche Muslime, Christen und Juden besuchen Auschwitz | DW Reporter

Oct 10, 2021 • Am Ort des Holocaust kommen sie mit Zeitzeugen ins Gespräch, teilen ihre Eindrücke miteinander. Solche Begegnungsreisen sind nötig, lautet die Erfahrung der Veranstalter, denn im Schulunterricht in Deutschland wird die Geschichte der Nazidiktatur nicht immer umfassend behandelt; manchmal nur als ein Zeitabschnitt unter vielen. Da gibt es Nachholbedarf - und die Chance, durch die drastische Konfrontation mit dem Grauen der Shoa aktuellem Antisemitismus und antimuslimischen Rassismus zu begegnen. Am Ende sind sich die TeilnehmerInnen einig: Jeder junge Deutsche sollte einmal in einem ehemaligen KZ gewesen sein. Eine Reportage von Axel Rowohlt.

Gay Pride: Kitty Fischer on Gay Male Rescuer in Auschwitz

Jun 18, 2015 • For National Gay Pride Month, USC Shoah Foundation featuried a testimony clip every week in June of eyewitnesses to the Nazi persecution of gay men in the Holocaust. Kitty Fischer recounts her time in Auschwitz-II Birkenau when, as a young girl, she encountered for the first time a gay male prisoner who turned out to save her life. To learn more and explore the stories of other eyewitnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides, visit sfi.usc.edu | Copyright USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.


Viewer discretion is advised. – Mark

The Imaginary Disease – How Italian Doctors Saved Jews from the Nazis | DW Documentary

"Syndrome K" might be the only deadly disease that ever saved lives. Despite the fact that it never really existed.

This film tells the story of three courageous Roman Catholic doctors who saved Jewish lives at a hospital in Rome by means of a convincing lie: they told the Nazis their patients were infected with a highly fatal and contagious disease called Syndrome K.

This incredible story takes place during the Nazi occupation of Rome in October 1943. As Jewish people were being deported to Auschwitz, some Jews sought refuge in the Fatebenefratelli hospital. There, the doctors invented a disease to protect them. Advising their patients to fake symptoms, including coughing, when Nazi officers arrived to carry out inspections, these doctors declared the ward far too contagious for the soldiers to enter. The ruse worked.

Jewish survivors and one of the Italian doctors who carried out the plan were interviewed for this film. In combination with archival footage, these accounts make for a chilling, heroic WWII story.

Jewish Survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch Testimony

Anti-Semitism Rears Its Head 75 Years after Auschwitz | DW News

The last survivors of Auschwitz gathered at the Nazi death camp in what was once occupied Poland. They were joined by world leaders to mark 75 years since Auschwitz was liberated in January of 1945 in the final months of World War Two. The number of survivors is growing ever fewer, but some returned there to bear witness. They spoke about the horrors they experienced during the Holocaust and warned that it could happen again. Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and president of the European Conference of Rabbis joined DW in the studio to discuss what the recent rise of anti-Semitism means in the context of history.

Holocaust Survivor Dita Kraus: 'For Children, Auschwitz Was Less Horrible Than for Adults'

As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, FRANCE 24's Jerusalem correspondent sat down with Dita Kraus, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Detained with her parents from December 1943, the young teenager was in charge of the few books smuggled out of the belongings of other deportees and kept in the "children's block". With these books, Kraus, nicknamed the "Librarian of Auschwitz", sought to provide a semblance of humanity in the midst of unspeakable horror.

Les leçons oubliées d’Auschwitz

LE MONDE: Editorial du « Monde ». Soixante-quinze ans après la libération du camp d’extermination, les antisémites sont toujours à l’offensive dans une Europe marquée par la poussée des nationalismes.

Editorial. Les célébrations ne sont pas des cours d’histoire, mais des leçons sur le présent. Celles du 75e anniversaire de la libération du camp d’extermination d’Auschwitz, jeudi 23 janvier, à Jérusalem, en présence d’une quarantaine de dirigeants internationaux, n’ont pas échappé à la règle. Au prix d’une instrumentalisation parfois sidérante du passé, ces cérémonies n’en auront pas moins livré un double enseignement sur l’inquiétant état du monde. Le premier concerne la montée de l’antisémitisme. En 2000, à Stockholm, le 3e Forum international sur la Shoah, auquel avaient assisté 46 chefs d’Etat et de gouvernement, avait débouché sur une déclaration en huit points évoquant notamment « la responsabilité solennelle de combattre le génocide, le nettoyage ethnique, le racisme, l’antisémitisme, la xénophobie ». » | Éditorial, Le Monde | vendredi 24 janvier 2020

75th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz: A Survivor Remembers | DW News

Dita Kraus, the 'librarian of Auschwitz,' was just a teenager when she was deported from Prague and ended up in death camp. Now 91, Dita spoke to DW at her home in Israel. World leaders will be at the former death camp for the official Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, but for Dita, it's a place she never wants to see again. The horrors she experienced there are too much to bear. At Auschwitz, she snuck books to the children's block.

Angela Merkel Speaks of 'Deep Shame' on First Visit to Auschwitz

THE GUARDIAN: German chancellor says crimes at Nazi death camp will always be part of country’s history

Angela Merkel has expressed “deep shame” during her first visit as German chancellor to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial and vowed to fight rising racism and antisemitism in Germany and Europe.

Dressed in black, Merkel said the crimes committed at the site in southern Poland where the Nazis ran their largest death camp would always be part of German history.

“This site obliges us to keep the memory alive. We must remember the crimes that were committed here and name them clearly,” Merkel said during a ceremony also attended by the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki.

“I feel deep shame given the barbaric crimes that were committed here by Germans,” she added. » | Kate Connolly and agencies | Friday, December 6, 2019