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.

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

Nazi Death Camp Guard John Demjanjuk Found Guilty
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: John Demjanjuk, the former Nazi death camp guard, has been found guilty of almost 30,000 counts of accessory to murder and been jailed for five years.


The judge in the court in Munich said he was convinced that Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a guard at the Sobibor death camp "and that as a guard he took part in the murder of at least 28,000 people."

Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair before the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction.

The court sentenced him to five years in prison. It was not immediately how much credit he would get for time already served.

Demjanjuk's defense has said it would appeal a conviction.

Prosecutors had called for a six-year jail sentence for Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany in 2009 from the United States, where he lived for decades after World War II.

Demjanjuk was brought into the packed courtroom in a wheelchair on Friday, as usual, wearing a light-blue baseball cap, dark glasses and an army-like green coat which he took off after arriving.

Demjanjuk has kept silent throughout the proceedings, sitting in a wheelchair or lying on a stretcher. His health was often a cause for concern during the trial, leading to frequent delays. » | Thursday, May 12, 2011

Holocaust Memorial Day 2010: "The Legacy of Hope"

Neo-Nazis Suspected of Raid on Auschwitz ‘to Rewrite History’
TIMES ONLINE: The slickly organised theft of one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust sent a wave of outrage around the world yesterday.

The sign that hung over the gates of Auschwitz extermination camp, where more than a million people died during the Second World War, was stolen in minutes. Polish police suspect that the culprits were either neo-Nazis or acting on behalf of collectors or a group of individuals.

The slogan wrought in iron, Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work sets you free”), was the cynical welcome to those entering the camp in the 1940s. One million of the 1.1 million people who died at Auschwitz were Jewish.

The theft in the early hours of yesterday was seen as an attempt by right-wing extremists to muddy the narrative of the Holocaust.

“This act constitutes a true declaration of war,” said Avner Shalev, the head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial institute in Jerusalem. “We don’t know the identity of the perpetrators but I assume they are neo-Nazis.”

Poland is treating the recovery of the sign from the site, near Cracow, as a matter of national honour. President Kaczynski said: “I appeal to all countrymen to help the police to track down the sign. A worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims has been stolen. This act deserves the strongest possible condemnation.” >>> Roger Boyes | Saturday, December 19, 2009

British Bishop Richard Williamson to Go on Trial in Germany for Holocaust Denial
Accused: Roman Catholic bishop Richard Williamson (centre) arriving at Heathrow airport in London in February this year. Photo: Mail Online
MAIL ONLINE: British Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson faces trial in Germany for an outspoken TV interview in which he denied that the wartime extermination of the Jews took place.

The ultra-conservative Catholic cleric was hit with a fine of nearly £12,000 today by a court for his comments made to a Swedish television interviewer - but he refused to pay it.

Because Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany - and because he gave the interview while on German soil - he was prosecuted in Regensburg, near to the birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI, where he gave the interview.

Under the German legal system, he was served with an ‘order of punishment’ informing him of the penalty.

Such orders are intended to cut down on bureaucracy and costs if both sides agree with the fine, which also would mean a criminal conviction.

But Williamson did not agree. He is to appeal, paving the way for a full hearing which could prove highly embarrassing for the church once more - even though Williamson can absent himself from proceedings to be represented just by his lawyer.

A trial judge will demand to know why he believes that six million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis and on what facts he bases his views on.

In the controversial interview, Williamson alleged that Nazi gas chambers had never existed and 'only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews' had been killed by the Nazis.

He went on to claim that historical evidence was 'hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler... I believe there were no gas chambers.'

He added: 'I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps but none of them in gas chambers.' >>> Allan Hall | Wednesday, November 10, 2009

Extract: Khatami Attacked, Ahmadinejad Denies the Holocaust
YNET NEWS: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at Tehran University, hinting once again that the Holocaust never took place.

According to him, "If the Holocaust was planned by the West, why won't you allow any research on the Holocaust? The Holocaust has turned into a black box and they won't let anyone open it and examine it… If this is such an important event, why won't you let us reveal the reality to the entire world?"

'Zionists greatest criminals in history'

Ahmadinejad reiterated his past "proposal", to have the Jews immigrate to other country. "Why don't they immigrate to Canada or the United States? They can go live in other countries. The Palestinian people don’t have to pay for your crime. What is the Palestinians' sin?

"The Zionists are the greatest criminals in history. Resisting the Zionists is a national duty and a religious commandment and a human duty. The Zionist regime is a tree with rotten roots," Ahmadinejad said.

He added, "It's clear that this fake regime was established for colonialist goals, and there is no logic behind its establishment." The crowd responded by chanting, "Death to Israel." [Source: YnetNews] Dudi Cohen and Reuters | Friday, September 18, 2009

BBC – Auschwitz: The Final Solution
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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

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Mark Alexander (Paperback)

A Response to Islamofascist Holocaust Denial
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Mark Alexander