Stephen Fry: Willem & Frieda - Defying Nazis | Channel 4 Documentaries

Apr 2, 2023 | Stephen Fry discovers why an act of sabotage by the Dutch Resistance, saving many Jews from Nazi death camps, remains uncelebrated and largely hidden to this day.

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.

Saudi Crown Prince Defends China's Right to Put Uighur Muslims in Concentration Camps

THE TELEGRAPH: Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’’s crown prince, on Friday defended China’s use of concentration camps for Muslims, saying it was Beijing’s “right”.

"China has the right to carry out anti-terrorism and de-extremisation work for its national security,” Prince Mohammed, who has been in China signing multi-million trade deals much to the annoyance of his Western allies, was quoted as saying on Chinese state television.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told the crown prince the two countries must strengthen international cooperation on de-radicalisation to “prevent the infiltration and spread of extremist thinking”. » | Telegraph Reporters | Friday, February 22, 2019

Calls Grow to Fire Sean Spicer After He Says Hitler Didn't Use Chemical Weapons During Holocaust

Lawmakers and Jewish organizations, including the Anne Frank Center, are continuing to call for White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to be fired, after Spicer compared Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Hitler and falsely claimed Hitler never used chemical weapons. In fact, the Nazis systematically used poison gas as part of its genocide of 6 million Jews. The Nazis began experimenting with gas with the specific purpose of carrying out mass murder in the late 1930s. We speak to Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Chechnya Opens World's First Concentration Camp for Homosexuals since Hitler's in the 1930s Where Campaigners Say Gay Men Are Being Tortured with Electric Shocks and Beaten to Death

MAIL ONLINE: Chechyna has opened the first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler / Prisoners reportedly tortured with electric shocks and some beaten to death / One of those who fled said prisoners were beaten to force them to reveal other members of the gay community / Comes after 100 gay men were detained and three killed in Chechyna last week

Chechyna has opened the first concentration camp for homosexuals since Hitler, where campaigners say gay men are being tortured with electric shocks and beaten to death.

It comes after it was claimed 100 gay men had been detained and three killed in Chechnya last week.

A report by Novoya Gazeta said authorities had set up several camps where homosexuals are killed or forced to promise to leave the republic.

One of the camps is reportedly at the former military headquarters in the town of Argun.

Svetlana Zakharova, from the Russian LGBT Network, told MailOnline: 'Gay people have been detained and rounded up and we are working to evacuate people from the camps and some have now left the region.

'Those who have escaped said they are detained in the same room and people are kept altogether, around 30 or 40. They are tortured with electric currents and heavily beaten, sometimes to death.' Read on and comment » | Thomas Burrows for MailOnline | Monday, April 10, 2017

Germany Marks 70 Years Since the Liberation of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Petr Mischtschuk, from Ukraine, was imprisoned as a 14-year-old
by the Nazis at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration
camps. He lays a flower during ceremnonies marking the 70th
anniversary of the liberation of Sachsenhausen.

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: Berlin: Germany's foreign minister has warned against racism and xenophobia at a ceremony marking 70 years since the liberation of the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp near Berlin.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier joined Holocaust survivors and other guests on Sunday at the site which was built while Hitler celebrated the 1936 Olympic Games, and where tens of thousands of Jews and other prisoners died.

Mr Steinmeier said Germany had an enduring responsibility not to forget its horrific past, which meant it must "stand against injustice, against any form of xenophobia and discrimination".

He pointed to recent anti-foreigner attacks, cases of arson of refugee centres and anti-Islamic street protests as the number of asylum-seekers rises sharply. » | AFP | Monday, April 20, 2015

The Unspeakable Hell of North Korea Concentration Camps

Nazi Posters in Germany

Posters offering a reward for information about Nazis still living in Germany have been put up in three cities.

Bulgaria Regrets Failing to Save Thousands of Jews in WWII

BBC: Bulgaria has expressed regret that more than 11,000 Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps from areas under Bulgarian control during World War II.

A Bulgarian parliament declaration did however praise Bulgarians for having blocked the deportation of more than 48,000 Jews during the war.

It said it could "not be disputed that 11,343 Jews were deported from northern Greece and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia".

Most Jews sent to the Nazi German death camps in Poland died.

Referring to the 11,343 deported, the MPs' declaration said "we denounce this criminal act, undertaken by Hitler's command, and express our regrets for the fact that the local Bulgarian administration had not been in a position to stop this act".

Only a few hundred of those deportees survived, Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre says.

Yad Vashem lists 20 Bulgarians among its "Righteous Among the Nations" - individuals who acted to protect Jews from the Holocaust.

Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany during the war, when Jews were deported en masse from the Nazi-occupied Balkans to death camps such as Auschwitz. » | Friday, March 08, 2013

Holocaust Memorial Day 2010: "The Legacy of Hope"

Dachau Concentration Camp – Liberation

The Man Who Smuggled Himself into Auschwitz
More than a million people died in Auschwitz. Photo: BBC
BBC: When millions would have done anything to get out, one remarkable British soldier smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the horror so he could tell others the truth.

Denis Avey is a remarkable man by any measure. A courageous and determined soldier in World War II, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a camp connected to the Germans' largest concentration camp, Auschwitz.

But his actions while in the camp - which he has never spoken about until now - are truly extraordinary. When millions would have done anything to get out, Mr Avey repeatedly smuggled himself into the camp.

Now 91 and living in Derbyshire, he says he wanted to witness what was going on inside and find out the truth about the gas chambers, so he could tell others. He knows he took "a hell of a chance".

"When you think about it in today's environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous," he says.

"You wouldn't think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me."

He arranged to swap for one night at a time with a Jewish inmate he had come to trust. He exchanged his uniform for the filthy, stripy garments the man had to wear. For the Auschwitz inmate it meant valuable food and rest in the British camp, while for Denis it was a chance to gather facts on the inside. >>> Rob Broomby | Sunday, November 29, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Lashes Tehran: Says nuclear Iran threatens the world, not just Jews
THE WASHINGTON TIMES: UNITED NATIONS (AP) | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waved designs of the most infamous Nazi death camp from a U.N. podium on Thursday, exhorting the world to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told assembled world leaders that he smells hope not sulfur, a small compliment for President Obama, after branding President George W. Bush as "the devil" in his last speech to the world body three years ago.

Just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again denied the Holocaust, Mr. Netanyahu used his speech before the U.N. General Assembly to warn of another catastrophe.

He held up a copy of the minutes from a notorious meeting at Wannsee Lake, where top Nazis formalized plans for the systematic extermination of Europe's Jewish population.

"Is this protocol a lie?" he asked.

Then he brandished original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp - a representation in chilling detail of gas chambers, crematoria and other facilities where 3 million Jews perished.

"The most urgent challenge facing this body today is to prevent the tyrant of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons," he declared.

Iran denies that it is producing nuclear arms, but Israel, the U.S. and other world powers do not believe it and are hoping to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions through a series of sanctions. Mr. Netanyahu warned that Tehran's nuclear program threatens not only Israel, but the entire world.

"Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime, perhaps they threaten only the Jews. Well, if you think that, you're wrong. You're dead wrong," he said. >>> Associated Press | Friday, September 25, 2009

Transcript: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks at the U.N. General Assembly >>>

The Holocaust: A Survivor Speaks
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New Book Reveals Horror of Nazi Camp Brothels
REUTERS: BERLIN - In 1942, the Nazis decided that forced labourers in concentration camps would work harder if they were promised sex -- so they made female prisoners work in brothels for them.

The brothels form the subject of "Das KZ Bordell" (The Concentration Camp Brothel) by Robert Sommer, a book that has been hailed as the first comprehensive account of a little known chapter of Nazi oppression in World War Two.

Sommer's 460-page work, due to be presented at the Berlin state parliament on Wednesday, explores the origins, structure and impact of the "Sonderbauten" (special buildings) run by Heinrich Himmler's SS in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe.

"In the collective memory and written history of World War Two, the camp brothels were for a long time taboo," the 35-year-old Berliner told Reuters. "The former prisoners didn't want to talk about it: it was a difficult subject to handle.

"It didn't fit so easily into the postwar image of the concentration camps as monuments to suffering."

Beginning with the Austrian camp at Mauthausen in 1942, the SS opened 10 brothels, the biggest of which was in Auschwitz, in modern Poland, where as many as 21 women prisoners once worked. The last opened in early 1945, the year the war ended.

The chapter is separate from the annals of the Holocaust of European Jews. Jewish women were not recruited as prostitutes, and Jewish men were not admitted to the brothels.

Sommer estimates around 200 women inmates in total were forced to work in the brothels -- initially offered the prospect of escaping the brutality of the concentration camps.

"They were promised release after half a year if they served in the brothel. But the promises were never honoured," he said. "Later, the SS just selected women they felt were suitable."

"Jews were not allowed in. Neither were Soviet prisoners of war," he added. "Jewish women did not serve as sex workers."

Tens of thousands of captured soldiers, political prisoners and people branded socially undesirable by the Nazis, including Roma and homosexuals, were held in camps alongside the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust.

"The idea behind the brothels was to raise productivity by providing forced labourers with added incentive," said Sommer. "Yet from what I found, it didn't work at all. Only a few people were actually in a physical condition to go to them."

According to Sommer, the use of prisoners to provide sex to other prisoners was purely a Nazi phenomenon in the war. >>> Dave Graham, Editing by Kevin Liffey | Monday, August 17, 2009

Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope. Photo: Google Images
Britain Knew about Extermination of Jews, Vatican Claims
THE TELEGRAPH: The Vatican's official newspaper has accused Britain and the United States of having detailed knowledge of Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews but of failing to do anything to halt the Final Solution.

L'Osservatore Romano said the British and American governments ignored, downplayed or even suppressed intelligence reports about the Nazis' extermination plans.

They could have bombed Nazi concentration camps and the railways that supplied them but instead chose not to, the newspaper claimed.

It quoted from the diary of Henry Morgenthau Jr., the wartime US secretary of the treasury, who described London's alleged indifference to the plight of the Jews as "a Satanic combination of British chill and diplomatic double talk, cold and correct and adding up to a sentence of death".

British and American inaction was in contrast to the efforts made by the wartime Pope, Pius XII, who tried to save as many Jews as he could through clandestine means, L'Osservatore claimed in a lengthy article titled "Silence and omissions at the time of the Shoah (Holocaust)".

The editorial is the Vatican's latest effort to rehabilitate the reputation of Pope Pius, whose reluctance to denounce the Nazis publicly prompted accusations of anti-Semitism and earned him the title "Hitler's Pope".

L'Osservatore dismissed such claims as a "radically false" characterisation of the pontiff's wartime record.

It quoted Morgenthau as saying that as early as Aug 1942, the US government "knew that the Nazis were planning to exterminate all the Jews of Europe".

In his diary, Morgenthau cited a telegram dated Aug 24, 1942, and passed on to the US State Department, that relayed a report of Hitler's plan to kill between 3.5 million and four million Jews, possibly using cyanide poison.

L'Osservatore, which is regarded as the semi-official mouthpiece of the Holy See, reproduced a copy of the telegram.

American officials had "dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed information about atrocities," Morgenthau wrote.

When the US government was finally convinced to try to rescue European Jews who had not already been sent to concentration camps, the British baulked, the editorial said.

It cited a British Foreign Office cable that warned of "the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued from enemy occupied territory" and advised against allocating money for the project.

While the British and Americans prevaricated, Pius was engaged in "the only plausible and practical form of defence of the Jews and other persecuted people" by arranging for them to be hidden in monasteries, convents and other Catholic Church institutions, the newspaper claimed.

L'Osservatore said that although the Nazis rounded up and deported from Rome more than 2,000 Jews, another 10,000 were saved.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Pius' death last year, Pope Benedict XVI described him as a great pontiff who worked "secretly and silently" during the war to "save the greatest number of Jews possible". >>> Simon Caldwell and Nick Squires in Rome | Monday, August 17, 2009

Lest We Should Ever Forget the Cruelty of Which Man Is So Capable

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Riz Khan: Holocaust Archive Opened – December 4, 2007

YNET NEWS: Hitler star of Palestinian radio show

Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Mark Alexander (Paperback)

A Response to Islamofascist Holocaust Denial
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Mark Alexander