Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold

Nov 26, 2020 | The only documentary to tell the full story of the Swiss Banks, Jewish money, and Nazi gold. It has been called the most cynical bank robbery in history, the ultimate inside job. Swiss banks accepted Jewish life-savings -- smuggled to neutral Switzerland for hiding from Nazi terror, only to use the very same secrecy laws to prevent Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and their heirs from recovering their rightful money.

"Blood Money" reveals Switzerland's Faustian bargain to become Hitler's bankers, financing the Nazi war machine, and ultimately prolonging World War II.

In a moving, true-life tale every bit as breathtaking as a best-selling international thriller, "Blood Money" reveals previously unknown details of history's biggest swindle, including an examination of the role of the secretive Bank of International Settlements, run by American, Thomas McKittrick, and the part that the bank played in laundering gold for the Nazis in Switzerland.

The film leads the viewers through the extraordinary events, up through the shredding of documents by the Swiss banks, to the resignation of the Swiss Ambassador to the United States, and the exclusively recorded summit of Jewish, Swiss and U.S. officials as they meet for the historic resolution.

Official Selection Berlin Film Festival
Official Selection Haifa International Film Festival, Israel
Boston Jewish Film Festival
Encontros Internacionais Documentary Film Festival, Portugal
Silver Plaque, Chicago International Television Competition
Winner, Emmy Award for Outstanding Research>br />
Directed by Stephen Crisman
Co-produced and written by Gaylen Ross
A&E Investigative Reports

This important documentary cannot be embedded on external websites; it must be viewed on YouTube itself. This is a link to this very informative, but disturbing, documentary. – Mark

The Mauthausen Resistance | ARTE.tv Documentary

Nov 26, 2023 | Mauthausen shows the full horror of the Nazi regime, a concentration camp where 120,000 people died. But a group of Spanish republican prisoners managed, not only to survive their terrible incarceration, but also to reveal to the world what really happened there by saving from destruction thousands of official photographs taken by the SS. This is the little known story of how young photojournalist Francisco Boix, and others, proved the guilt of major Nazi figures with their acts of bravery.

The Night of Long Knives - Hitler's Rise to Power | Parts 1 & 2 | Free Documentary | History

Dec 16, 2022 | The Night of the Long Knives is considered the first act of horror committed by the Nazis. What happened in Germany, and in Hitler's rise to power, that led to this organized purge in 1934? Caught between the conservative tendency and the revolutionary aspirations dividing the country, the Chancellor had to choose a side. Hitler intended to send a clear message to calm the rumors of a military coup against him.


Es erstaunt mich immer wieder, daß das deutsche Volk, welches so hochintelligent und kultiviert war, dazumal von diesem Scheusal aufgenommen worden war. – © Mark Alexander

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

Aug 23, 2021 | Many men who were partly of Jewish ancestry served in the German armed forces during WW2 - find out how and why they ended up in Hitler's army.

Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers 'Zero Night' and 'Castle of the Eagles', both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries.

Cross-dressing among Nazi-era German Wehrmacht Soldiers | DW Feature

Nov 24, 2018 | Homosexuality was a crime in Nazi Germany. Still, artist Martin Dammann found so many Nazi-era photos of Wehrmacht soldiers in drag that he published an entire book of them. What do the photos tell us about sexuality in the Wehrmacht? Why was cross-dressing so prevalent among Nazi-era soldiers?

Illinois Governor ‘Deeply Concerned’ by Trump Rhetoric Reminiscent of Nazi Era

THE GUARDIAN: JB Pritzker, who’s of Jewish descent, says Trump ‘is dangerous for our democracy’ and ‘dangerous for specific minority groups in US

Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, his plans for a second presidency if he wins next year’s election, and his description of political enemies as “vermin” reflect the language of 1930s Germany and the Nazis’ rise to power there, a senior Democrat warned on Sunday.

JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor of Jewish descent who helped drive the construction of the state’s Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Chicago, added his voice to a wave of condemnation over the former president’s remarks. » | Richard Luscombe | Sunday, November 19, 2023

To throw Trump's own sentiments re Hillary back at him: Lock him up! Save America the heartache! Indeed, save the world the heartache! The world doesn't need a 'Fourth Reich'! – © Mark Alexander

The Night of Broken Glass: A Warning of Future Nazi Crimes

Streamed live on Nov 9, 2023 | Starting on November 9, 1938, the Nazis orchestrated a wave of nationwide violence targeting Jewish communities. Rioters destroyed synagogues, attacked and looted Jewish shops, and ambushed people in their homes. Around 30,000 men were arrested and sent to concentration camps merely for being Jewish. Jews were left bereft, desperate to escape Nazi Germany by any means possible.

After the initial outrage, world attention faded and the Nazis carried out even greater horrors. Eighty-five years after the “Night of Broken Glass,” watch this discussion to understand this pivotal moment on the path to mass murder.

Guest: Dr. Daniel Greene, Historian and curator of Americans and the Holocaust exhibition, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Host: Dr. Edna Friedberg, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Tensions High as Germany Prepares to Mark 1938 Nazi Pogrom

A man places candles at a synagogue during a silent march from Cologne Cathedral to mark the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht. Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
GUARDIAN EUROPE: Eighty-five years after the ‘brutal prelude’ to state-sanctioned race hate, the emphasis falls on contemplating its influence on the present day

It has long been the most delicate day in the German calendar, 9 November. It brings a balancing act of remembrance for the state-sanctioned murderous devastation of the Nazi pogroms across the country in 1938, and, 51 years later, the overnight collapse of the most famous barrier in the world, the Berlin Wall.

Both had international repercussions which are still felt today. The former dominates the nation’s collective memory.

Marking the date has never been easy. For good reason 9 November was not chosen in 1990 as unified Germany’s national holiday.

Historians and commentators have long referred to it as Schicksalstag (day of fate), though that, say critics, suggests something done to the German nation, rather than something in which the people played a role and had a say.

“November 9 marks not only the brutal prelude to National Socialist crimes but reminds us that the persecution and attempted annihilation of European Jews began in full view, in town and city centres, under the gaze of neighbours, colleagues, friends, fellow players, whether from the orchestra or the sport club,” Petra Bahr, the protestant bishop of Hanover and a member of the German Ethics Council, wrote in a commentary for Die Zeit.

On Thursday, the 85th anniversary of what is sometimes referred to as Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass – the emphasis, especially in light of the outbreak of war in the Middle East, is not so much on remembering a historical event as on reflecting on its enduring influence on the present day.

Across Germany, on sites of destroyed synagogues as well as inside those that have been reconstructed in recent years, politicians, mayors and other Germans will gather with Jewish leaders for memorial ceremonies, speeches, concerts, candle-lit processions and readings. » | Kate Connolly in Berlin | Thursday, November 8, 2023

Holocaust survivor George Shefi retraces escape 85 years on: A crowd of 50 or 60 people jeer as a Jewish shopkeeper tries to scrub antisemitic graffiti off the pavement. »

Zarah Leander: The Biggest Nazi Film Star …

Aug 31, 2023

Canada’s House Speaker Apologizes After Ukrainian Who Fought for Nazis Was Honored

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Jewish groups demanded an explanation after Anthony Rota, the speaker of Canada’s House of Commons, introduced a 98-year-old veteran of an SS unit as a “hero.”

The Ukrainian man sitting in the gallery of Canada’s House of Commons was a “hero,” the speaker of the House said on Friday, drawing applause from lawmakers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who had just addressed the chamber during his first visit to Ottawa since Russia invaded his country.

But several Jewish groups responded with outrage, saying that the man, Yaroslav Hunka, 98, had served in a Nazi unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which fought alongside Germany during World War II and declared allegiance to Adolf Hitler. » | Isabella Kwai | Monday, September 25, 2023

My Nazi Family | Silent History | Full Documentary

Apr 14, 2022 | After the WW2, German solders returned home and kept quiet about their actions. What was the price of this silence?

The atrocities committed by the Nazis have been widely discussed at a general level since the Second World War. Less attention has been paid to the fact that the perpetrators of the atrocities have kept quiet about their actions to their own descendants.

This wall of silence has descended around the actions that have been done but that have not been handled and talked about within families. The silence has grown these things into problems that will last for generations.

The documentary My Nazi Family opens perspectives on the consequences of silence and why the antisemitism is growing again. This is reflected in the true stories of the three German families, where the past and the present meet in surprising ways.

The documentary deals with themes of hatred, war and violence and is not recommended for children under 12 years of age.

Director: Ruut Ahonen
Interviewees: Jobst Bittner, Frank Pfeiffer, Caroline Hohnecker, Friedhelm Chmell, Rita Kasimow Brown
Length: 45 minutes
Languages: English – German (subtitled English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese and Finnish)
Published: April 2022
Producer: Mika Ahonen
Production: Hurttimurtti


Please note that this documentary is not suitable for children. / Bitte beachten Sie, daß diese Dokumentation für Kinder nicht geeignet ist. / Attention, cette documentation ne convient pas aux enfants. – Mark

Letter Found in Vatican Archives Confirms Church Was Told About Death Camps

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The newly discovered letter, written by a German Jesuit to Pope Pius XII’s personal secretary, suggests that the pope knew of Hitler’s atrocities but chose to remain silent.

Pope Pius XII blessing the crowds in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome in 1947. The pope’s recently opened archives have been the subject of research to learn about his response to Hitler and Nazism. | Bettmann, via Getty Images
A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, “above all Poles and Jews,” were being killed in furnaces every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland.

Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler was already reaching Pope Pius XII’s ears, this information was especially important because it came from a trusted church source based in Germany, said Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist who discovered the letter. The source was “in the heart of the enemy territory,” Mr. Coco said on Saturday.

The document, which was made public this weekend by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, adds to the evidence that some scholars say shows Pius knew about the Holocaust as it happened. Some scholars say Pius did not want to confront or offend Hitler because he feared Communism, believed that the Axis powers would win the war and wanted to avoid alienating millions of German and Nazi-sympathizing Catholics.

Other historians insist that Pius XII remained silent publicly because he was surreptitiously arranging for — or at least allowing — local Catholics to aid and save Jews from the Nazis, and he also feared that the Nazis might come after Catholics. » | Elisabetta Povoledo, Reporting from Rome | Saturday,, September 16, 2023

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.

The Nazi Art Heist: A Belated Search for Justice – On the Trail of a Gigantic Nazi Raid | DW Documentary

Aug 20, 2023 | The systematic looting of art owned by Jewish families has never been fully investigated. Descendants of families forced to leave Nazi Germany are still searching for their property - often in vain.

The documentary follows the trail of one large-scale Nazi looting operation. Provenance researcher Kathrin Kleibl and her colleagues are investigating the crime, and hope to bring about justice one day. It’s her job to ascertain the whereabouts of looted art and return it to its rightful owners.

Jewish families ordered to leave Germany were assured they could take their property with them. But often, all their worldly goods remained behind. Thousands of crates stored at locations like the port of Hamburg were seized by the Gestapo. Instead of sending the objects on to their owners, they were auctioned. The contents of entire households went under the hammer at the "Hamburg Bailiff’s Office" and in many other auction houses; the lots included valuable artworks.

The auctions were blatantly advertised in newspapers. In Hamburg, they raised 7.2 million Reichsmark for the Nazis. A state-sponsored bargain hunt, says historian Frank Bajohr. The objects disappeared into the hands of private individuals, museums and dealers. In most cases, they have never been seen again.

Who were the owners and who were the buyers? Kathrin Kleibl explains her mission: "The primary goal is to give these objects back to the families." In a research project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, Keibl is hot on the trail. She has one key advantage, in the search: the Nazis kept meticulous records of their crimes. Kathrin Keibl has access to thousands of pages of auction reports, store ledgers and invoices. It’s an arduous task, but: "Using these puzzle pieces, we can trace the path of a theft from its original location to its eventual sale in Hamburg, " says Kleibl.

The descendants of these Jewish families can now hold out some hope of recovering their property. The Koch family from Wiesbaden, for example, was forced to emigrate to London. But their crates, which contained priceless art collections including works by Nolde, Jawlensky and Klee, never arrived. What happened to their grandparents’ property? There’s a specific lead on one painting, but several changes of ownership and an art market that still remains largely secretive are hampering the search. As one member of the Koch family says: "If our generation stops searching, then this chapter will remain forever lost in darkness.”

The valuable art collection of Johanna Ploschitzki from Berlin was also lost. Her belongings, which totaled 1,500 objects and included pieces by renowned artists such as Pissarro, Beckmann and Liebermann, was auctioned off over the course of three days in Hamburg. To this day, her descendants are hoping to recover at least some of the items.

This chapter of German history is also posing a challenge to Dr. Ute Haug, provenance researcher at the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum: In the year 1941, her museum bought eight paintings at an auction. But can these artworks be correctly assigned to the families they were stolen from? To find out, Ute Haug is also seeking help from Kathrin Kleibl.

The Vatican and the Third Reich: An Unholy Alliance

Jun 8, 2023 | In the midst of WWII, Catholics looked to the pope to guide them. Hitler had already begun secretly launching his plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Secretly, that is, to most- except Pope Pius XII. The pope remained silent whilst the rest of the world awaited any kind of grand gesture or speech condemning Hitler’s atrocities.

He chose to keep quiet in the face of the crimes committed by the Nazis throughout Europe, crimes that even took place below the Pope’s own windows, like the 1943 liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, to which the pope made no official reaction.

At first glance, Nazism and Catholicism are diametrically opposed. The Vatican even seems an institution beyond all suspicion. The Church, however, faced in turn with the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the extermination of Jews, will play an ambiguous – at times unholy – role. Several men of the Church, priests and bishops, being fervent admirers of Hitler, even fell into complicity…

Director: JULIETTE DESBOIS

Channel Island Nazis Inquiry Under Pressure to Find Out Why Perpetrators Never Faced Justice

THE OBSERVER: Thousands of people may have perished on Alderney during the second world war but their murderers never stood trial

Alderney was the only Channel Island to be evacuated during the second world war as the island became part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall defence. Photograph: No Credit
The official inquiry into Nazi atrocities committed on Alderney in the Channel Islands is under pressure to investigate why those responsible for committing war crimes on British soil were never brought to trial in the UK.

Prof Anthony Glees, the security and intelligence expert who advised Margaret Thatcher’s war crimes inquiry, told the Observer: “This is a vital opportunity to establish all the facts, and it must examine why those who perpetrated such heinous war crimes were never brought to trial in this country. The review into the atrocities on Alderney is to be warmly welcomed, but I believe it should not just focus on the numbers killed, as important as that is.”

Last week the Observer revealed that the UK’s Holocaust envoy, Lord Pickles, would be launching an inquiry into the number of prisoners murdered by the Nazis in the British crown dependency. But Glees said the investigation needed to delve more widely into the events on the Channel Island to uncover the truth about one of the darkest episodes of British history. He added that the events on Alderney had been excluded from his inquiry in 1989. » | Antony Barnett and Martin Bright | Saturday, July 29, 2023

The Former British King and the Nazis | Edward VIII: The Traitor King | BBC Select

May 19, 2022 | Historians examine newly discovered sources relating to the Duke of Windsor, the former king who renounced the throne to marry Wallace Simpson. This revelatory Edward VIII documentary explores his life after abdication, his connections with the Nazi Party, and evidence that he encouraged Germany to bomb the UK into submission during World War Two so he could regain the throne.

Brutal Torture of Gay Men under Nazi Regime - Nazi Germany

Oct 4, 2022 | The brutal torture of gay men under Nazi régime in Nazi Germany. Despite the fact that homosexuality was illegal, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, there were indications of nascent and growing gay communities in Germany…

Saved by Schindler’s List | Celina Biniaz | Jewish-American Heritage Month | USC Shoah Foundation

May 22, 2023 | Holocaust survivor Celina Biniaz was the youngest female on Oskar Schindler’s famed list. Celina survived the Kraków Ghetto, Nazi labor camps, and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp before being rescued by Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

Celina, 91, is a longtime friend of USC Shoah Foundation. Both Celina and her mother recorded testimony for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in 1996. For many years after the war, Celina was reluctant to share her story because she feared no one could comprehend what she had been through. That changed in 1994, when Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List and established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became USC Shoah Foundation.

Celina often says that “Oskar Schindler gave me life, but Steven Spielberg gave me a voice.” Some of Celina’s testimony was included as an extra feature on a DVD release of Schindler’s List, to help fight Holocaust denial. …

The Stomach-churning Things Nazis Did to Gay Men

Feb 28, 2023 | Nazi Terror, Gay Men In Nazi Germany …