Secretly Captured Images of German Jews' Expulsion Found – by Chance – in Local Archive

HAARETZ: The photos, taken secretly by an amateur Jewish photographer who risked his life to show the expulsion of the Jews of the city of Breslau in Germany, are being revealed for the first time ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Breslau, 1941Credit: Landesverband Sachsen der Jüdischen Gemeinden
Previously unknown photographs, documenting the expulsion of Jews from Germany during the Holocaust, were recently discovered in a German archive and are being revealed for the first time ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday. Twelve of the photos were taken in November 1941, and an additional photo was taken in April 1942. They show the expulsion of the Jews of the city of Breslau in Germany (today, Wroclaw in Poland).

The photos were taken secretly by an amateur Jewish photographer who risked his life to take them. The German research project #LastSeen, run by the Berlin-Brandenburg Freie Universitat Berlin and which holds hundreds of photos of expulsions from the period of the Holocaust, is now showing the photos on its website. The project is the public's help in identifying the people in the photos. » | Ofer Aderet | Friday, January 26, 2024

Breslau 1941: clandestine photos tell of the Holocaust’s upheaval and terror: Images taken secretly some 80 years ago are being published for the first time to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day »

The British Aristocrat that Joined the Nazis – BBC REEL

Oct 22, 2022 | John Amery was the son of a high-ranking British politician. But unlike his father, he was a traitor. As Adolf Hitler dragged Europe into the Second World War, Amery presented himself to the Germans as someone who could help the Nazis. His actions shocked Britons. When he was eventually captured in Italy he was sent to the hangman.

Film by Jono Namara
Commissioned by Paul I. Harris

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

The Forgotten Australian Hero Who Saved Thousands from the Nazis’ Crimes

THE OBSERVER: Bruce Dowding’s war exploits were never recognised. Now in a new book his nephew says it’s time to give him the honour he deserves

Bruce Dowding volunteered as an interpreter for the British army after war broke out while he was studying in France. Photograph: Pen & Sword
Ayoung Australian who joined the French Resistance, worked undercover for British intelligence, and helped to save thousands of lives in war-torn France was guillotined by the Gestapo in 1943 after he was betrayed by a British double agent.

Yet Corporal Bruce Dowding’s bravery and ultimate sacrifice have been largely forgotten because France’s attempt to award him its highest national honours – the Croix de Guerre and Légion d’honneur – came up against his own country’s bureaucracy.

Now Dowding’s family are calling for him to receive the honours that he deserves and for Australia to recognise him as one of its heroes, after he aided the escape from France of allied servicemen and Jews fleeing the persecution of the Third Reich. » | Dalya Alberge | Sunday, September 17, 2023

Forbidden Love in Nazi Germany | World War II Documentary | Real Stories

Sep 2, 2023 | World War Two was the most destructive conflict of the 20th Century, with 60 million deaths and more than 7 million people displaced. But nothing can stop love.

Between 1939 and 1945, thousands, perhaps millions of men and women formed intimate relationships. Yet, the Nazi rules were very clear: German men mustn’t have a sexual partner with someone from an ‘inferior race’! Doing so was under penalty of imprisonment, or even death. Homosexuals were also persecuted by the Nazis. 10,000 were sent to the Reich’s concentration camps. And to these prohibitions, one can add the prohibitions of the Allies.

For the first time, survivors who dared to sleep with the enemy during the war, and their children born into the shame of these forbidden unions, have agreed to break the taboo. Through the narration of four illicit stories and emblematic love affairs of the Second World War, this universal documentary sheds new light on the worst conflict in history.


Please be aware that this documentary is totally unsuitable for children. It is also unsuitable for the narrow-minded. – Mark

What Living in London Was Like during the Blitz | Cities At War: London | Timeline

Aug 10, 2017 | This programme includes an award-winning trilogy whose theme is the miraculous resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

You can sign up to this History Hit documentary service, at a huge discount by using the code 'TIMELINE' here.

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.

Spectacular Colorized Film of the Beginning of the German Occupation of The Netherlands during WW II

Premiered Apr 23, 2023

Liberation of Paris after Four Years of Nazi Occupation (June to August 1944)

May 26, 2023 | This is an excerpt from the film "The Spirit of Liberation": click here. Between the 19th and 25th August 1944 during the Second World War and in the course of Operation Overlord, the liberation of Paris took place. The capital of France had been occupied by German troops since June 1940. In mid-August 1944, a general strike set in motion the events of the eventual liberation, and an open revolt by French resistance fighters followed from 19th August. Allied formations advanced towards Paris in support, and soon the German city commander Dietrich von Choltitz capitulated in defiance of explicit orders from Adolf Hitler.

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. …

Poland Is Demanding €1.3 Trillion in Reparations from Germany – What's Behind This Claim? | DW News

Over eighty years after World War II began, Poland is demanding €1.3 trillion euros in reparations from Germany to compensate for the wartime devastation it caused. But Germany considers the issue to be long settled. Who is in the right?

Hitler's Favourite Royal | World War 2 Documentary | Timeline | Reupload

Sep 8, 2017 Prince Charles Edward was Queen Victoria’s favourite grandson. In 1900, the sixteen-year-old Prince was the only viable British contender for the hugely wealthy Dukedom of Saxe Coburg and Gotha in Germany. Ordered to go by Queen Victoria, he took the title and was transformed from a British Prince into a German Duke – Herzog Carl Eduard. The course of his life was altered in ways neither he nor Queen Victoria could have ever imagined.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Prince Charles Edward had no option but to fight for Germany against the country of his birth. When the War ended, he was stripped of his British titles, and an Act of Parliament branded him a Traitor Peer. Disillusioned and depressed, Charles Edward became an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party, and unwittingly helped him in his rise to power. Appointing him President of the Anglo German Fellowship, Hitler offered Charles Edward a way to return to Britain with his head held high.

Charles Edward was also President of the German Red Cross, and it was this that would ultimately embroil him in the darkest aspects of the Nazi regime, implicating him in the T4 Euthanasia Programme. At the end of the Second World War, he was arrested by the Americans, held in a series of harsh internment camps and forced to undergo a humiliating trial where, despite his claims he had no knowledge of the crimes of the regime, he was adjudged to have been an important Nazi and was almost bankrupted by heavy fines. He died in poverty and obscurity in Germany in 1954. His sister Princess Alice, who had stayed in England, became one of the most popular members of the Royal Family and a favourite aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She was the living embodiment of the life her brother could have had, if it had not been for Queen Victoria’s fateful decision fifty years earlier. Documentary first broadcast in 2007.

Roberto B. Tucci on YouTube: Content licensed from TVF International.

The Phoney War: Why Didn't the Allies Act? | Price of Empire | Timeline

Jun 14, 2022 • What were the noteworthy events at the beginning of World War II? See rare archive footage and hear remarkable testimony on early advances made by Germany, Italy and the USSR.

You can sign up to the 'History Hit' documentary service and get a 50% discount by clicking here and using the code 'TIMELINE'.

Smoking: Unopened, Original WW2 Cigarettes from the Third Reich

Jun 10, 2021 • Seemingly, a really smooth smoke! (Not like the dross they sell these days*!) | Views on YouTube: 1,024,747

* I write now as an ex-smoker. Though I must say those cigarettes would be tempting. – Mark

Why Did So Many German Officers Flee to Argentina after WW2?

Views on YouTube: 5,952,015

How Nancy Wake Saved Countless Lives | Enemy of the Reich | Timeline

Nancy Wake: Gestapo’s Most Wanted
Jul 19, 2018 • This is the incredible true story of Nancy Wake, the daring allied spy who became the Gestapo’s most wanted woman in WWII. Codenamed ‘The White Mouse’ for her elusiveness, this international femme fatale was a key inspiration behind Sebastian Faulkes’ celebrated fictional spy Charlotte Gray.

'LOVING' - A Military Couple

A video short about John and Dariel and loving during WWII, "LOVING A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s - 1950s"

Video created by HOGARTH World Wide NYC and shared as part of LOVING The Exhibition, June 2021 at HOGARTH NYC.

Bertram Schaffner on Helping Gay Soldiers during WWII

WWII Veteran Bertram Schaffner, a gay man himself, talks about how he dealt with the military's anti-gay policy while evaluating draftees.

‘I Seek a Kind Person’: The Guardian Ad That Saved My Jewish Father from the Nazis

THE GUARDIAN: In 1938, there was a surge of classified ads in this newspaper as parents – including my grandparents – scrambled to get their children out of the Reich. What became of the families?

On Wednesday 3 August 1938, a short advertisement appeared on the second page of the Manchester Guardian, under the title “Tuition”.

“I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family,” the advert said, under the name Borger, giving the address of an apartment on Hintzerstrasse, in Vienna’s third district.

The small ad, costing a shilling a line, was placed by my grandparents, Leo and Erna. The 11-year-old boy was my father, Robert. It turned out to be the key to their survival and the reason I am here, nearly 83 years later, working at the newspaper that ran the ad.

In 1938, Jewish families under Nazi rule were scrambling to get their children out of the Reich. Newspaper advertisements were one avenue of escape. Scores of children were “advertised” in the pages of the Manchester Guardian, their virtues and skills extolled in brief, to fit the space.

The columns read as a clamour of urgent, competing voices, all pleading: “Take my child!” And people did. The classified ads – dense, often mundane notices that filled the front pages, and coffers, of the Guardian for more than 100 years – also helped save lives. » | Julian Borger | Thursday, May 6, 2021

Nancy Wake: Enemy of the Reich | French Resistance Documentary | Timeline

This is the incredible true story of Nancy Wake, the daring allied spy who became the Gestapo’s most wanted woman in WWII. Codenamed ‘The White Mouse’ for her elusiveness, this international femme fatale was a key inspiration behind Sebastian Faulkes’ celebrated fictional spy Charlotte Gray.