In September 1939 the Germans took control of Poland and Warsaw after a three week siege. There was no love lost between the Germans and the Poles and it soon became clear that the Nazis, considering themselves a 'Master Race', valued Polish life at next to nothing. As was later demonstrated, on an unprecedented scale, this was one step up from the value they put on Jewish life.
As early as November 1939 in Warsaw the first decrees intended to denigrate the Jewish people were issued by the Nazis - the most notable of which was that all Jews over the age of twelve years were forced to identify themselves by wearing a Star of David on their sleeve. These first measures were just the start of a long process however, and with more edicts issued every month it wasn't long before the Jews were reduced to the status of slaves and chattel. They were forbidden to work in either key industries or government institutions, to bake bread, to earn more than 500 zloty a month, to travel by train or trolley-bus, to leave the city limits without special permits, to possess gold or jewellery, plus all Jewish shops and enterprises had also to be marked with the Star of David. In addition to these official oppressions, Jews were summarily humiliated, beaten or even executed for little or spurious reason. In short they lived their lives in a state of constant fear.
Plans for a Jewish ghetto had in fact existed since the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, but in October 1940 they finally began to take form. A small district South West of the Old Town, in the centre of the city, was chosen and 113,000 Poles were evacuated to make way for Warsaw's 400,000 Jews. Thirty percent of the city's population were now living in an area that constituted less than three square miles, or 2.4 % of the capital. In November that area was closed off by a formidable wall, topped with barbed wire.
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.
As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland, where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.
In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to killing centers, often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed gassing facilities.
In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called “death marches,” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in displaced persons (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust deWASHINGTON - Shortly after leaders of the French Revolution lopped off the heads of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, in 1793, they locked the royal couple's 8-year-old son in a dank prison cell. What happened to the Dauphin - the eldest son of a French king - after that has been the subject of much speculation.
A more recent conundrum for some is the fate of Adolf Hitler.
The Nazi leader is widely believed to have committed suicide in the closing days of World War II. His body, reportedly burned by two aides and buried in a shallow grave, was uncovered by Soviet troops a few weeks after his 1945 death and kept in a secret location until it was cremated in 1970. But some people have long questioned whether the remains the Russians unearthed were actually those of Hitler and Eva Braun, the Fuhrer's longtime mistress.
Now the answer to both of these mysteries may be at hand.
Last month, two scientists uncovered evidence that the boy who died in a French prison in 1795 actually was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. They matched the DNA found in descendants of the royal family with a sample taken from the child's heart - a heart stolen by the doctor who examined the dead boy. The physician kept the child's heart as a memento - a trophy of the autopsy he performed on the young heir to the French throne.
Pretty ghoulish, right?
In a series of events that rival the mishaps in a Fatty Arbuckle Keystone Kops routine, the heart bounced about for a half-century until it was given to one of the boy's distant relatives in the 19th century. But it wasn't until the DNA test that evidence became available to refute speculation the child escaped his captors and lived a long life in obscurity.
In the case of Hitler, there was little to substantiate his death beyond the official Russian account, which was hard to verify since the remains were never made available to American or Western European doctors. The Russians buried the bodies in a secret gravesite on one of their military bases in East Germany. Shortly before the facility was turned over to East Germany in 1970, the Soviet Union's secret police cremated the remains - except for a jagged piece of skull and four fragments of jawbone.
Just why the Russians held on to these body parts isn't clear; DNA testing didn't come into vogue until the 1990s. They seemed to be little more than ghoulish spoils of war until the Russian archive put them on public display last month and indicated a willingness to allow a DNA test.
While the cash-poor Russian government is not willing to pay for such a test, the archivists hope a Western government will come up with the money. While few people doubt Russia's claim that the body its secret police cremated was that of Hitler, a DNA test would put to rest any controversy that the brutal butcher managed to avoid that fate.
The opportunity to close the final chapter of Hitler's life wouldn't have been possible without the shard of skull that, for some unexplained reason, was not cremated along with the rest of his body.
However unseemly, the theft of the heart of Louis XVII and Russia's secret retention of Hitler's skull fragment may help solve two of history's greatest mysteries.
Literally dozens of imposters claimed to be the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the years following the boy's imprisonment. One was so convincing that he was buried in the Netherlands in 1845 with a tombstone that identified him as the missing Dauphin. After World War II, Hitler sightings were rampant. One rumor had him living in an Italian cave, another working as a croupier in a Swiss casino. Even Dwight Eisenhower expressed doubts about Hitler's death two months after it was reported on German radio.
Strangely, the debate over what actually happened might be put to rest by the ghoulishness of people whose bad taste produced good res
Found some interesting photos from the ghetto in Warsaw..The first of a dead babyy infant , deposing of dead corps, and the last of a new york times newspaper
Eva Anna Paula Braun, died Eva Anna Paula Hitler[1][2] (6 February 1912 – 30 April 1945) was the longtime companion and, for a brief time, wife, of Adolf Hitler. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was 17 years old while working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer and began seeing him often about two years later. She attempted suicide twice during their early relationship. By 1936 she was a part of his household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden and by all accounts lived a materially luxurious and sheltered life throughout World War II. Braun kept up habits which met Hitler's disapproval, such as smoking, wearing makeup and nude sunbathing. Braun enjoyed photography and many of the surviving colour photographs of Hitler were taken by her. She was a key figure within Hitler's inner social circle, but did not attend public events with him until the summer of 1944, when her sister married an officer on his personal staff.
As the Third Reich collapsed towards the end of the war, Braun swore her loyalty to Hitler and went to Berlin to be by his side in the heavily reinforced Führerbunker deep beneath the Reich Chancellery. As Red Army troops fought their way into the neighbourhood on 29 April 1945, she married Hitler during a brief civil ceremony: she was 33 and he 56. Less than 40 hours later they committed suicide together in a sitting room of the bunker, she by biting into a capsule of cyanide. The German public was wholly unaware of Braun until after her death.
The Last Will
As I did not consider that I could take responsibility, during the years of struggle, of contracting a marriage, I have now decided, before the closing of my earthly career, to take as my wife that girl who, after many years of faithful friendship, entered, of her own free will, the practically besieged town in order to share her destiny with me. At her own desire she goes as my wife with me into death. It will compensate us for what we both lost through my work in the service of my people.
What I possess belongs - in so far as it has any value - to the Party. Should this no longer exist, to the State; should the State also be destroyed, no further decision of mine is necessary.
My pictures, in the collections which I have bought in the course of years, have never been collected for private purposes, but only for the extension of a gallery in my home town of Linz on Donau.
It is my most sincere wish that this bequest may be duly executed.
I nominate as my Executor my most faithful Party comrade, Martin Bormann. He is given full legal authority to make all decisions. He is permitted to take out everything that has a sentimental value or is necessary for the maintenance of a modest simple life, for my brothers and sisters, also above all for the mother of my wife and my faithful co-workers who are well known to him, principally my old Secretaries Frau Winter etc. who have for many years aided me by their work.
I myself and my wife - in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation - choose death. It is our wish to be burnt immediately on the spot where I have carried out the greatest part of my daily work in the course of a twelve years' service to my people.
Given in Berlin, 29th April 1945, 4:00 a.m.
Signed:
ondon, Sept 16: Nazi chief Adolf Hitler himself killed his niece Angela (Geli) Raubal, with whom he had a sexual relationship, while Munich police manipulated evidence to make the murder look like a suicide.
Seventy-five years ago, this week, Munich police found Angela face down in a pool of blood, her blue nightdress drenched and torn from the single bullet from Hitler’s Walter that had pierced through her heart.
But chief police investigator Heinrich Muller, who later went on to become the Gestapo chief and the Bavarian Minister of Justice who became the Reich Minister of Justice when the Nazis rose to power in 1933, quickly closed the case without an autopsy.
Angela’s body was also quickly taken out of Germany and buried in Vienna. Contrary to the norm, she was given a Catholic burial. Suicide victims are not allowed a catholic burial in the church cemetery, as taking one’s own life is considered a sin.
The priest, Father Johann Pant, wrote to a French newspaper in 1939: "They pretended she committed suicide. From the fact I gave her a Christian burial you can draw your own conclusions".
Angela was normally a very bubbly girl and when she reportedly committed her suicide, she was in the middle of writing a cheerful letter to a friend.
According to the Mirror, the Nazi party leadership was extremely worried about Hitler incestuous relationship. By 1931, the Nazis were increasingly getting popular there were fair chances of the party making a breakthrough in the Germany political scene.
A scandal would have completely ruined Hitler’s and the Nazis chance of victory in the elections.
On September 18, 1931, Hitler was due to leave Munich, where the Nazis had their headquarters, for a rally in Hamburg.
Neighbors claimed to have heard Geli shouting to Hitler from their second-floor balcony as he was getting into his car. Hitler shouted back: "No. For the last time, no." Geli shut herself away in her bedroom.
Next morning servants broke open the door and found her body.
It is not known what they found or what they did before they called the police, but they settled on the story that Angela had committed suicide because she was worried her voice was not good enough to be a singer.
Eighteen months later when the Nazis came to power, they were able to doctor police records to fit the story: “Detectives found Geli in a blue nightdress, lying face-down on the floor. Her arm was stretched towards Hitler's Walther pistol on the couch. She had bled from a bullet hole over the heart, which had pierced her lung”.
Hitler said he was 100 miles away in Nuremburg when he heard the news of Angela’s death, but at least one police investigator believed he was in the flat when the fatal shot was fired.
He wanted to charge Hitler with Angela’s death but was overruled by pro-Nazi officials.
Fritz Gerlich, a German journalist, claimed that instead of leaving that Friday, Hitler had dined with Angela in a restaurant and that Hitler, who seldom touched alcohol, drank beer.
When they went back to the apartment, there was a row and he shot her.
From the rigor mortis, police doctors placed the time of her death as the previous evening, though there was no inquest.
Also surprising was the fact that the bullet had entered above the heart and lodged in her lower back at hip level, meaning the gun had to be pointing downwards and the hand holding it higher than her heart - a strange way to commit suicide.
This apart, none of Hitler's servants admitted hearing a shot but they soon began to contradict themselves. Three different people claimed to have broken down Angela’s door.
According to the paper, the anti-Nazi Munchener Post had at that time reported that Angela’s nose had been broken and there were other injuries on her body as well. (ANI)
