Book Burning in Germany | Holocaust Survivor | USC Shoah Foundation

Click here to watch this #short.

97-year-old Former Secretary at a Nazi Concentration Camp Convicted by German Court | DW News

Dec 20, 2022 A court in northern Germany on Tuesday convicted Irmgard F., a former secretary at the Nazi Stutthof concentration camp, of complicity in murder in more than 10,000 people. She received a two-year suspended sentence as requested by prosecutors.

From June 1943 to April 1945, she worked as a stenographer and typist at the Stutthof death camp, near what was then Nazi-occupied Danzig and is now Gdansk.


Related BBC report here.

LIRE CET ARTICLE EN FRANÇAIS SUR CETTE HISTOIRE :

Une ex-secrétaire d’un camp nazi condamnée à deux ans de prison avec sursis en Allemagne : Irmgard Furchner est la première femme à être jugée en Allemagne depuis des décennies pour les crimes commis sous le régime nazi. »

Former Nazi Secretary Guilty of Complicity in More Than 10,500 Murders – BBC News

Dec 20, 2022 | A former secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,505 people. Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945. Furchner, one of the few women to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term. Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp. Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers.

Nazi Billionaires: German Big Business and Antisemitism

Magda Goebbels - First Lady of the Third Reich | Documentary

Dec 12, 2022

The Rise of Hitler | Holocaust Education | USHMM*

Nov 29, 2022 | After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party gradually restricted Jewish citizens’ rights and violence against Jews increased by 1938. What events led up to the mass murder of six million Jews? Can recognizing similar warning signs help prevent genocide today? One notable wave of violence across Germany, known as Kristallnacht, was organized by the Nazi regime. Additional anti-Jewish laws followed. Jews tried to emigrate to escape persecution, but many countries would not accept large numbers of refugees. Those who chose to help made a difference. For example, about 10,000 Jewish children were rescued under the Kindertransport program, which sent them abroad.

* USHMM - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Inside Nazi Germany

Dec 29, 2014 | Private amateur films capturing life under the Nazi regime from the inside include footage shot by Hitler's secret mistress of Nazi officials at leisure, Hitler greeting jubilant crowds in Vienna upon the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, and the violent backlash against Jews there, and the Nazi invasion of Poland.

1940-1944: When Paris Was German

Aug 23, 2022 | June 14, 1940, Wehrmacht troops enter Paris. This is the beginning of the occupation of the French capital, then relegated to the rank of an open city. The enemy will rule there for more than four years, until August 1944. Many things have been said and written about the daily life of the French during this very special period, made up of shortages, repressive measures and raids. But never on the side of the occupier... What about the German soldiers? How did they experience this period? What were their living conditions? Did they have contact with the French population?

Documenting Nazi Persecution of Gays: Josef Kohout/Wilhelm Kroepfl Collection | Curators Corner #13

an 14, 2013 | In 1994, the Museum acquired the unique collection of Josef Kohout. More widely known as Heinz Heger, Kohout recorded his experiences in The Men with the Pink Triangle, the first published account of a gay survivor of the Nazi camps. Dr. Klaus Müller, the Museum's Representative for Europe, shares his story.

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.

‘The Temple Was Burned’ | Remembering a Kristallnacht Bar Mitzvah | Sigi Hart | USC Shoah Foundation

Nov 9, 2022 | "We had about three, four people standing outside watching if they see any police, or SS, or Nazis coming, to warn us so that we can escape from behind in the backyard. [...] In one corner were the burnt Torah scrolls. They were laying on the floor." For more than a year, Sigi Hart prepared for his November 1938 Bar Mitzvah, when he would mark his 13th birthday by reading from the Torah in his family’s synagogue in Berlin. A few days before his family and friends were to gather, his synagogue was burned down during Kristallnacht, also known as the November Pogroms. In this clip, Sigi describes celebrating his Bar Mitzvah amid the destruction.

The Kristallnacht Pogrom was an organized attack by military, police and civilians against Jews in Germany, Austria and parts of former Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland) that occurred on November 9–10, 1938. Orchestrated by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth named Herchel Grynzspan, 1,400 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed, almost 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. German Jews were subsequently held financially responsible for the destruction wrought upon their property during this pogrom.


For more on Kristallnacht, click here.

Unseen Kristallnacht Photos Published 84 Years after Nazi Pogrom

THE GUARDIAN: Images released by Israeli Holocaust memorial show Hitler’s regime clearly orchestrating 1938 atrocity

Civilians watch a Nazi officer vandalise Jewish property, most likely in Fürth, outside Nuremberg.Photograph: AP
Harrowing, previously unseen images from 1938’s Kristallnacht pogrom against German and Austrian Jews have surfaced in a photograph collection donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial, the organisation said on Wednesday.

One shows a crowd of smiling, well-dressed middle-aged German men and women standing casually as a Nazi officer smashes a storefront window. In another, brownshirts carry heaps of Jewish books, presumably for burning. Another image shows a Nazi officer splashing petrol on the pews of a synagogue before it is set alight.

Yad Vashem, a Holocaust memorial centre, released the photographs on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass. Mobs of Germans and Austrians attacked, looted and burned Jewish shops and homes, destroyed 1,400 synagogues, killed 92 Jews and sent another 30,000 to concentration camps. » | Associated Press | Wednesday, November 9, 2022

Smoking Unopened Original WW2 Cigarettes from the Third Reich | Reupload

Hier befindet sich eine Dokumentation über die Herstellung von Zigaretten in Dresden. – Mark

As I have said before, I have given up smoking; in fact, tomorrow, November 10, it will be seven months since I smoked my last cigarette. But I must say those cigarettes look very tempting! They were surely of excellent quality.

Even when I started smoking, back in the day, cigarettes were of a much higher quality than the inferior cigarettes they sell today. These days, the only thing about cigarettes that is high is the price of them! That, of course, is because of governments practising extortion on smokers by taxing them so highly in the vain hope of making people healthier.

I should add that I am rather surprised that those cigarettes are still smokeable after all this time! When I smoked, I found that the best place to store cigarette to keep them fresh for as long as possible was in the freezer. That's a trick I learnt many years ago whilst working in the Middle East, where, due to the hot dry weather, tobacco dries out very quickly if left in the open air. If stored in the freezer, however, they last forever; and are smokeable directly when taken out of the freezer (because they contain no moisture). – Mark

The Nazi Persecution of Gay People | 2020 | Reupload

Jun 3, 2020 | Before the Nazis came to power, Berlin was home to a vibrant gay community. Within weeks of their rise in March 1933, the Nazis drove this population underground and waged a violent campaign against homosexuality. Over the next 12 years, more than 100,000 men were arrested for violating Germany's law against "unnatural indecency among men.” During this time, proof was often not required to convict an individual. Some were sent to concentration camps and subjected to hard labor, cruelty, and even medical experiments aimed at “curing” them.

Gay Pride: Albrecht Becker on Queer Life in 1934 Germany | USC Shoah Foundation

Jun 3, 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. This is the first clip in the series. Albrecht Becker recounts the atmosphere for gays in Nazi Germany while Röhm was still in charge of the SA and how the relative freedom he enjoyed during that time changed dramatically after Röhm's assassination in June 1934.

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?

How Hitler's Third Reich Terrified Europe | Impossible Peace | Timeline | Reupload

Aug 13, 2020 | The power in Europe has shifted to the terrifying and unstable hands of Germany, with the Third Reich being the dominant force. It's like Netflix for history... Sign up to History Hit, the world's best history documentary service, at a huge discount using the code 'TIMELINE' Hstory Hit

"Purple Triangles"

Mar 19, 2020 | A 1991 film "Purple Triangles" was aired on BBC and depicts the plight of Jehovah's Witness religious group during the Nazi regime. When thrown into concentration camps they were identified with the Purple Triangle which were sewn on their uniform to identify their religion.

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