By the time WWII ended in 1945, the Holocaust claimed the lives of more than 6 million Jews across German-occupied Europe. In addition to Jews, Nazi Germany also engaged in the systematic killing of 11 million others, including POWs and those from different ethnic, social, political, or religious backgrounds.
In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly voted to designate January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date coincides with the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, which occurred on January 27, 1945.
Through our partnerships with the National Archives and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, we’ve digitized more than three million records to help tell the story of the Holocaust. Here are just a few of the personal experiences from some of its victims:
Doriane Kurz was born in Austria to Jewish parents. Her father ran a thriving branch of the family’s multinational optical frames business. Following Kristallnacht, the Kurz family relocated to Holland, but soon Holland fell to the Nazis. Doriane’s father was captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he later died. The Dutch underground helped smuggle 4-year-old Doriane and her 3-year-old brother Fred to Amsterdam. That city also fell under German occupation. Along with Doriane’s mother, the children ended up at Bergen-Belsen.
Each day at Bergen-Belsen, Doriane and her brother remained in the barracks while the adults were marched to work. She recalled watching out the window as carts, drawn by inmates, collected the dead bodies each morning. The rest of the day, they spoke about food, slicing their bread rations so they could last longer. She also recalled picking lice from their hair. In June 1945, Doriane was one of many inmates evacuated from the camps on a cattle train, then freed by Soviet troops. In 1946, having lost both their parents, 10-year-old Doriane and her 9-year-old brother Fred boarded a ship, unaccompanied, for their journey to the United States. They reunited with an uncle, and Doriane lived the rest of her life in New York. She was a successful businesswoman and operated a chain of stores before passing away in 2005.
Henoch Kornfeld was born in 1938 in Kolbuszowa, Poland. He was just one year old when German tanks rolled into town. Polish soldiers on horseback put up a fight but were no match for the far superior German weapons. After a short battle, dead horses littered the streets, and German police took control of the town. They terrorized residents and killed many Jews. In 1942, Henoch and his family were deported to the Rzeszow ghetto, then on to the Belzec extermination camp.
Belzec death camp was the site of mass murder between March-December 1942, and some 500,000 Jews and other Nazi targets died there. Belzec was one of six extermination camps in occupied Poland and the first to use gas chambers. On July 7, 1942, the Kornfeld family was gassed at Belzec. Henoch was just three years old.
Bernhardt Goebel was a 34-year-old Catholic priest living in Poland when the Gestapo arrested him in 1939 and sent him to Dachau concentration camp. While at Dachau, Goebel and a fellow priest, Bedrich Hoffman, stole records and secretly recorded Nazi atrocities against 1,700 imprisoned Catholic priests. Goebel himself endured beatings, torture, deprivation, and constant degradation. At great risk, the priests documented the suffering, determined to tell the world the truth of Dachau. On April 29, 1945, American troops liberated Dachau. Hoffman managed to smuggle the records to his native Czechoslovakia, and Goebel immigrated to America in 1951, settling in San Antonio, Texas.
Goebel spent more than forty years fighting to have the records he helped obtain translated to English. Finally, in 1995, 5,000 copies of And Who Will Kill You were published. Goebel continued to serve as a Catholic priest in Texas until his death in 2001 at age 96.
Our Holocaust Records Collections contain more than 600 individual stories from the Holocaust. They reveal heartbreaking loss, a resolve to live, and unimaginable suffering. The collection also contains entry registers to concentration camps, death records, captured German records, and more. See the Holocaust Collection on Fold3® today. You can also search additional Holocaust records for free on Ancestry®.
The inhumanity of the German soldiers is beyond belief! It saddens my heart to read the several Fold3 articles about how several were able to survive while millions perished.
I have been doing research on looted musical instruments specifically pianos. Through the internet records hidden from view are now available if one takes the time and effort. Most of the world today has no clue how bad things where because history is not taught nor is it studied as it should be. We are doomed to repeat it . What is going on today in our country is exactly how the nationalist party was able to raise to power . Destruction of small business is a goal now as it was then. Power in the hands of a few elites, unemployment, inflation, intimidation, secret police forces, stripping people of credentials, fees and taxes , instill fear- its all here again to anyone paying attention. The accounts I have read are heart wrenching . Post war years show the struggle to recover real property, art, cultural and personal property that was confiscated, stolen, auctioned off. Many people escaped to the US from Austria in 1938/1939 as the annexation of Austria began. To those who are “woke” I say read your history and learn from it instead of trying to change it. You are being played for fools. Do any of you know of WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Bataan Death March, Death Camps of WWII, The Killing Fields, Gas Warfare, The Gulf War , ? How about the Blitz, D-Day, Iwo-Jima, Pork Chop Hill, Chosin Reservoir, Battle of the Bulge, Do any of you care ?
JT Kelly wrote “Post war years show the struggle to recover real property, art, cultural and personal property that was confiscated, stolen, auctioned off.”
Not only post WWII but even nowadays. Poles refuse to hand out Jewish possession because of the stance of the Polish government which doesn´t hand over foreign = Jewish possession to the legal hires. They (of course not all!) blackmailed their Jewish neighbours and robbed them their valuables and possession and when there was nothing left they handed them (hidden Jews) over to the German authorities or the Polish Blue Police which did guard Jewish ghettos and shot Jews who tried to escape.
“Many people escaped to the US from Austria in 1938/1939 as the annexation of Austria began.”
Not as many as were allowed (all!) as the US-authorities did everything to keep them out of the country. They required from REFUGEES who tried to save their lives that they provide enough money (while being persecuted, robbed from valuables &money, not allowed to work, etc) that they bring enough money with them to pay for their care in the USA or that they find relatives/friends/sponsors who were willed to send them an affidavit that they ´ll carry the costs. Before the US-authorities handed a visa out to the refugees. Nice refugee relief. Not!
Worth to know that according Nazi laws German & Austrian Jews were allowed to emigrate until Dec. 31st 1941, men fit for military service only until late fall 41.
“Do any of you know of WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam,[…] Death Camps of WWII, The Killing Fields, Gas Warfare, The Gulf War ,? […] Do any of you care ?”
Yes, me. I study the Holocaust & WWII in various languages since several decades. Visited Auschwitz, Dachau, Mauthausen, Stutthof, Plaszow and Theresienstadt several times to keep the remembrance alive. Participate in international confernences, etc..
But I´m not from the US.
JT Kelly wrote “Destruction of small business is a goal now as it was then. Power in the hands of a few elites, unemployment, inflation, intimidation, secret police forces, stripping people of credentials, fees and taxes , instill fear”.
Your use of “elites” and “woke” says a lot about you deflecting attention from the remembrance of the Holocaust.
No one is trying to destroy small businesses. Unemployment is at 3.9%. People are leaving jobs due to better opportunities. Secret police forces and stripping people of credentials – where has that occurred other than misinformation websites?
We have always had fees and taxes.
Did you watch the attack on our Capitol on 06 Jan 2021? Did you care? The domestic terrorists, who attacked the Capitol, are who are threatening our democracy.
Yes, my father was fought in the Battle of the Bulge? One of my uncles was a nephew of MacArthur
Yes, I have read a lot about history. The Gulf War was a disaster.
This article is about Holocaust remembrance – not someone’s political views.
Obviously a blind follower of the Biden/Antifa wing of the fascist and communist party known as the Democrat party . January 6th was not a day of insurrection. That occurred on November 3rd and 4th, 2020.
Too true. It’s been very convenient to shift blame onto the SS and other paramilitary groups (comprised of but not restricted to Ukrainians, Latvians etc). Many of the first phase murders were carried out by the Wehrmacht.
I would like to take a moment to distinguish Germans from the Nazis. The horror unleased was unleased by the Nazis.
Agree, what more can one say.
A true day of rememberence. I had no knowledgement of January 27th was dedicated to those who died horrible deaths. This date is notated on my calendar that I have recieved from The National WWII Museum. I do not know if I did the correct thing or not by sending on to many friends around the U.S. and England. I even sent it on to KTVU, FOX, in Oakland, CA. Perhaps they will report on it come this Thursday. Thank you for sending.
We will always remember! My dad was 2nd wave of troops to come to Dachau! We traveled and visited the site in 2002! I also have visited Holocaust Museum in Washington!
The very saddest fact is the majority of the German troops were ordinary people who went back to ordinary lives. I bet most ordinary people don’t know their father’s, grandfathers or great grandfathers were monsters! How could they live with themselves after the war .
While I was too young to participate in the war, my adults had as friends two Jewish brothers, Jacoby was their surname. One was married to a Jewish woman, Beth Jacoby. The other was married to my mother’s friend, Juanita Jacoby, who said to my mom after the war, “What’s all this about the Jews anyway – I married one!”. Our family business had a law firm of mostly Jews. One Saturday morning, I saw my lawyer at the bus stop with his son, I picked them up and took them to synagogue. I just don’t understand it.
We must never ever forget those who survived or perished in those places of Hell, not just we forget those who were the instigators of their murder and degregation nor must it ever happen again
I had fight at Dachua
For any one that interested in real history I suggest you get a copy of The Forth Reich by Jim Marrs, Facts that were not discussed after the war but lead one to conclude it could happen here very soon.
I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And Hitler said he was going to exterminate us also. But he
failed. Many of our people died in those awful places and yet the people of Germany had no
idea what was going on right under their noses. However in our history in the Watchtower
Bible and Tract Society there are records of where drawings of the death camps were made
by hand and sent out of the country for the world of that time to see what was going on.
Yet the present German people are being told the truth through their schools and they have
not hidden under wrap and key like some other nations have done about their history.
Also I want to say according to the Bible, those that died under those awful conditions will
be resurrected after the worlds systems of this time will be destroyed by Jehovah’s Kingdom now already in place, ready to act as willed by Jehovah’s Son Jesus the Messiah (Hebrew)Christ
(Koine Greek) the language used by the common people of Rome, the other Latin.
I too am a Jehovahs Witness and it is so sad to hear of how our brothers were treated during this time. However, it is also so faith strengthening and encouraging to know that while the world was on fire and they were subjected to such deplorable treatment, they still showed love, helping each to stay strong and to stay alive. One of the most amazing stories was of the death march from Sachsenhausen. They never once let their fear betray their God or their fellow brothers and sisters.
“I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And Hitler said he was going to exterminate us also. But he
failed.”
There was no plan to exterminate Jehova´s Witnesses like Jews or Roma & Sinti, or as they called them in those days “Serious Bible Researchers”, AFAIK. And the explanation is very simple, they were Germans. They were persecuted because they did refuse to fight for Germany in the war as they were against any violence.
Contrary to political Nazi oponnents they did neither join illegal camp resistance (which did eg. exist in Auschwitz, leg. ike Hermann Langbein) nor did they self any acts of resistance in the camps. And because that circumstance they were usualy engaged as gardeners or house maids in SS-officer families who did live near the camp. They were even unguarded when they left the camp for work or by returning from the SS-officers houses.
” Many of our people died in those awful places and yet the people of Germany had no
idea what was going on right under their noses.”
There were about 30 000 Jehovas Witnesses in Germany in this time.
Imprisoned became 11.300 German and foreign witnesses. Of them perished in the camps 1500.
And German ciitzens obviously had different sorrows, like family members on the front or what to eat the next day.
Or they feared for their lives as also theyself did live in a dictatorship. Did you know that in Germany people got beheaded for listening foreign radio broadcasts only as this was prohibited by law? And, most camps were not located in Germany but in the East.
“Yet the present German people are being told the truth through their schools and they have
not hidden under wrap and key like some other nations have done about their history.”
Absolutely correct, well spotted! Also in Austria Holocaust education is in the syllabus since the early 60s on all schools and all students have to attend those lectures.
The JWs also had a to wear a purple patch. This was to give these good people extra brutal treatment. They held their ground with Jehovah God’s help.
You wrote “The JWs also had a to wear a purple patch. This was to give these good people extra brutal treatment.”
1. That they had to wear a lilac triangle (!) is correct.
2. The extra brutal treatment of JW is incorrect. 13.2% of them perished in the camps, that tells a lot.
I suspect there is an element of back propaganda about some of this material that demonises the German people whilst letting others off the hook.
“whilst letting others off the hook”
Who are these others you are referencing?
The authors of the Gulag Archipeligo, Bengal Famine, Operation Gomorrah or the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example – Stalin, Churchill, Bomber Harris and Truman respectively. And I should have written “black propaganda” of course.
Did you realise that they did delete my post where I mentioned the Evian Conference, the refugee ship St. Louis (on board were also former Jewish concentration camp inmates which were released to enable them the emigration!) which was turned away from the US-shores and help denied – while the USA signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions long before WWII started.
Or the 83% (103 million people) of the US population which oposed to save Jewish refugees from Austria & Germany in 1939 – while US-newspapers mentioned the concentration camp Dachau already in spring 1934 (one year after the Nazis gained power in Germany!) in report.
Wow! What a world we have grown up in!
My perhaps too simplistic solution is to remember and record the past for posterity with genuineness, so that it is never forgotten, but then let us allocate the past to our memories and really concentrate on the future of all of us!
We need to love our families, respect our neighbours, tolerate our current Administrators, and fight as never before for what we need to be the basic criteria of our existence within our local community, our State and our country.
Penalise convicted criminals to the hilt so that they, nor others, would ever wish to commit a crime again. This simply means stop being weak against criminals.
Require our politicians to speak nothing but the truth and any digression, must be compared to Company Directors relaying untruths, with a penalty of their substantial gaol period. Honesty in Government is a foundation of the entire Democratic system of Government.
I just finished reading Doriane Kurz’s WWII experience. I knew Doriane for more than 36 years. Her humanity to those who both worked for her and who came in contact with her was in sharp contrast to what she experienced during the war. She was the best of the best!!
Thanks for sharing Fred. I wish I could have met her. She was such a remarkable woman.
I find it so difficult to understand why schools no longer teach such important history as this! We must never, ever let it be forgotten. The younger people of today have absolutely no idea what it truly must have been like. Most don’t even seem interested – this fact is not only heartbreaking, but dangerous too! Awareness MUST be made ALL OVER THE WORLD, before it becomes too late.
Are you aware that Fold3 deleted multiple times my correction about their misinformation
“Each day at Bergen-Belsen, Doriane and her brother remained in the barracks […] In June 1945, Doriane was one of many inmates evacuated from the camps on a cattle train, then freed by Soviet troops. ”
Their (the staff from Fold3) actions are so ridiculous and pathetic, and those are the people who claim to care for Holocaust remembrance!
Bergen-Belsen got liberated by the British on April 15th 1945, and WWII ended in Europe on May 8th 45.
Conclusion: NO ONE was evacuated in June 45 and liberated by the Soviets from Bergen-Belsen in June 45. One can´t be liberated a second time after two months since the real liberation.
Source: http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/trial/TrialFront/TrialFront_01.html
Note the names in the acknowledgements at the bottom, Louise!
What about the 10 million+ or so Christians, slaughtered and massacred by the bolsheviks(1917-1937), who just happened to be jewish, why is this never told about? And what about the 10 million or so poor Ukranians killed in 1932-33, also by the bolsheviks(HOLODOMOR)? Why dont the world remember those poor souls?
Great point Silvania!
A disgraceful comment to conflate the death of Christians in the Soviet Union with the fact that many Communists were Jews. You need to ask yourself why many Russian Jews were Communist or left-leaning. Read up about the state-instituted program of Pogroms by Imperial Russia in the years before 1917. Read up about the forced conscriptions of Jewish males into the Imperial Russian Army.
My Dad was a WW11 vet, he fought in the battle of the bulge and helped to free Auswich he was my hero and told some things how a french family hid he and his felow brothers when the nazi’s would have killed them. he showed a book of the atrocities I was 7 and told my mother that he didn’t ever want me to forget. I never did. The evil in our county now I am glad he does not see. We must all everyday Americans fight to make sure that this never happens to our beloved USA by doing what we can. God bless America.
” […] My Dad was a WW11 vet, he fought in the battle of the bulge and helped to free Auswich […]”
1. It´s WWII, and not WW11.
2. It´s Auschwitz, not Auswich.
3. As you refer to the USA as “our country” I´m sure you/-r are Americans. News for you: No American soldier was involved in the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. It where Soviet forces who liberated the camp without a struggle on Jan. 27th 1945.
You apparently don’t know who is behind the evil in our country….it’s jews. They are pushing race mixing, illegal immigration (along with Catholics and Lutherans too, but I digress) this LGBTQ crap, White genocide, abortion, pedophilia, rap music, hollywood (of course they’ve dominated there a long time)….they’ve been driven out of 109 countries over the years.
Patton was right, we defeated the wrong enemy.
Patton would have slapped you.
my father was also in the Battle of the Bulge – so cold and wet and scared with bombs all thru the night….
he would be appalled at this US situation now
As a Christian but a life long activist against anti semitism, I am actively involved in ensuring that the world never forgets the horrors of the Holocaust and the bravery of those non Jews who supported their Jewish friends and neighbours during the nightmare of WW2. I taught for 40 years and took parties of young people to Ann Frank’s house in Amsterdam on numerous occasions. I visited Yad Vasham and the experience made me resolve to do everything in my power to fight all forms, but particularly religious , prejudice for the rest of my life. Man’s inhumanity to man remains but we should never again witness the wickedness of the Nazis era. Shalom my friends Shalom!
Can the March toward a totalitarian government with the result of the death of democracy in our country be avoided?
I agree it could happen here and probably will if people won’t weak up and look at what’s really going on. We’re sooo seperated in our views. We need to find a way to come together.
I don’t think I could have survived the horrors the Jewish people and their families endured. I am thankful that their stories will be available so that nobody ever forgets or deny what these precious souls went through. We all need to pray for world peace. Too many innocent people are still passing because some can’t get along. When will they learn how short our lives are already. Why can’t we do more to live and teach our children there is a better way. God Bless us all.
Although it is sad and horrible to read about these brave souls and especially the ones who gathered information at great risk, it does my 77 year old heart good to see more stories and proof of what was done in the holocaust. May the world never forget.
I am the same age – and you expressed my feelings exactly!
January 26th.
A day in which the world remembers
the Holocaust deaths and inhuman torture of the Jewish peoples, by the German Nazis .
The evilness that reaped through Germany, involving many of the German people, not all.
Many risked their own life, by saving Jewish people, or housing them in their own homes.
We must therefore also celebrate the acts of sacrifice and kindness, by these people.
Over six million people, mostly Jewish murdered.
Lest We Forget.
Auschwitz was liberated on January 27th and not January 26th, that´s why the International Holocaust Remembrence Day is also on Jan. 26th..
Neither do you need to point on the evilness of the German people who did live in a dictatorship. The whole world stood by and turned a blind eye onto the suffering of German and Austrian Jews from 1933 – 1945 and beyond.
You mention the evil Germans but not those who sat in safety and did everyting to keep Jews out of the country, like the USA and the UK. And what about the Soviets, Jews were deported from Austria & Germany to the Minsk area and which were killed/caught by Soviet border guards or handed over to the NKVD for show trials and shot as alleged spies afterwards or deported to Gulag camps for nor return. The Soviets didn´t allow many of them even after WWII to return to their home countries!
What about the Slovakians? It´s the only country in Europe which paid a bounty to Nazi Germany for each deported/murdered Jew!?
Did you know that Polish partisans did murder Polish Jews who wnated to join them to fight the German occupants? Their anti-semitism was bigger than their will to accept them as fellow resistance fighters. (Do you know that in Poland Jews got murdered in pogroms from Poles already in 1918, during WWII and even in 1946 when they murdered Holocaust survivors in Kielce?)
What about the members of the Traniki units, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Poles, former Soviet POW, etc.? They were not only involved in the mass murder in the death camps of the Aktion Reinhart (usual ratio was 20 Germans & 100-130 Trawnikis who did the bloody work), but also during the suppression of the Warsar Ghetto Uprising.
Did you know that Ukrainian police & militias were also involved in mass murder of the Jews during WWII?
Thank you for raising awareness as so much is either ignored or avoided by the youth of today. I run a Writing Group and for the last Remembrance Day, we wrote about both World Wars, and my group wrote very moving stories after doing their research. I am not Jewish but have always felt in awe of your bravery and your history and although I was lucky to have been born after WWII, I will always tell my grandchildren of what happened in these Concentration Camps. It must never be forgotten or denied.
PS.: I forgot to mention that it was British troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen.
In the early 1980’s I was working in Denver and would ride a bus out to Golden where I lived. One day I sat across from an elderly couple. The man grasped several plastic grocery bags and the sleeve on his shirt was pushed up. It revealed a tattoo of numbers. I recognized it immediately as a concentration camp identification number. His wife also had one.
My heart ached as I saw that. I so wanted to get up and kneel before them to thank them for surviving. I knew that to do so would embarrass them. I hoped that one day I would see them again. They got off the bus and I never saw them again. But I will never forget them or the tattoos that were a silent witness of man’s inhumanity to man. And all that cruelty was created and condoned by a government mandating people’s action through fear and intimidation. And the people were willing to become monsters for security and a job.
Just read a memoir by Eddie Jaku (a Holocaust survivor, who died in October 2021) – a most harrowing account of his time spent in Auschwitz and the ‘forced march’; l recommend it as a read, albeit in small batches. We also visited the Holocaust Memorial just outside Jerusalem in the company of an Auschwitz survivor as a ‘babe in arms’ – for the first time in my life, l was speechless as l exited the Children’s Memorial. ‘Lest we forget’ indeed.
I´m sure you´re referring to the man who wrote “The Happiest Man on Earth”.
Too many misinformations were written about him and sadly happened such through himself.
It starts with
quote “Edward Jaku OAM[1] (born Abraham Salomon Jakubowicz […] Eddie had a sister Johanna […] and he changed his name to Edward (Eddie) as a tribute to his sister, who called him Eddie as an affectionate nickname.[4]” unquote
on the English Wikipedia about “Eddie Jaku” and continues through the whole www because media did only parrot what others wrote already instead to do serious research.
In fact he was born “Adolf “Adi” Jakubowicz” and changed his name after WWII into ” Abraham Salomon J.” and later into Eduard/Edward Jaku. Hence he more likely made the name change to ged ridd of a name which would remind him every single day on Hitler.
This Australian Jewish source got it totally wrong, can´t understand how such errors can happen when writing about such appreciated person.
Quote ” […] Eddie Jaku, once ALI Jakubowicz, is one of the last witnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust and one who has witnessed four forms of the Holocaust.[…] Escaping to Belgium he was denounced and deported in early 1944 to Auschwitz. HERE HE ENCOUNTERED THE INDUSTRIAL KILLING OF JEWS BY POISON GAS . As a skilled toolmaker, he was subjected to forced labour in Auschwitz-Monowitz. […] In January 1945 he survived the death march to Buchenwald concentration camp […]” unquote
Source: https://www.jwire.com.au/happy-100th-eddie/
1. It´s Adi (from Adolf).
2. Only Jewish prisoners who were in the Sonderkommando labor detail had direct contact to the mass murder process in the crematoriums.
3. He was lucky that he got transfered to Auschwitz III, there were no gas chambers there (prisoners were brought to Au II) and also the camp circumstances were better than in Au I or Au II.
4. The evacuation transports to the KL Buchenwald happened by train.
Dear Roman Matz, thank you for all the information you have provided here! I mean absolutely no disrespect in any way, but, how do you know so many things? Is it purely through research? How do you know that research is correct? Please, please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just curious. Thank you.
And even more ridiculous is what the BBC has to say about him:
quote ” He was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, but released five months later to work in a factory making tools.
He described how his father picked him up from the camp to take him to his new job – but instead they fled to the border and were smuggled into Belgium.
They were caught by Belgian police and once again locked up – not for being Jewish this time, but as German refugees.
After 11 months he was out and travelled to France, where he was eventually arrested in Lyon and sent to Gurs concentration camp.
Seven months later, Vichy France started deporting Jews, and Jaku found himself on a train bound for Auschwitz. ” unquote
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58883318
It can be summarised with two words “utter nonsense”.
Mr. Jaku was only on time a prisoner of Buchenwald (he arrived there on Jan. 26th 45), after his time in Auschwitz.
neither was he or any other family member a prisoner in Gurs and the less they were deported from France or Gurs to Auschwitz but from Malines in Belgium.
Obviously those hacks from the BBC have no clue about the Holocaust or how to do proper writings/reportage. Hundreds of thounsads of Holocaust related files are online available nowadays and they manage to write such article. Insane.
I had the honor and privilege to meet the youngest person on Schindler’s List. He worked with students at Chapman University and Orange High–meeting him was a distinct PRIVILEGE. He also kindly spoke to my 8th graders at an Orange County Middle School. Because of the University working with the 39ers Club, I met many more Holocaust survivors.
We must never forget. And bandying and likening any person or event to the Holocaust is unforgiveable.
WWII actually had two holocausts: the European Holocaust and the Pacific Holocaust. No one knows exactly how many people the Japanese murdered between 1931 and 1945 because they didn’t keep records like the Germans did. Estimates range from 3 to 13 million. The atomic bombs saved thousands of lives of civilian and military prisoners who were being starved, murdered, and dying of disease every day in Japanese camps.
I weas born ine HSA juisty as Hityler was coming ionto poer (ll193434).
IO hwave heard and read about tyhe atrocityies above. IO wish tyhere was away to tll tyhe truith and facts about the above stories.
Then, I wooulkd like to hear fromthose sameeople, exactly WHAT do they recommend that we do in OURE country to avoid those same atrocoitoies.
Please shareaoo of your thjoughts about THJAT, .
I will appreciate that very mkuch.
Sincerely,
William J Getson
Lithjuaniann American)
My Father helped liberate German concentration camps and was for a time the military mayor of Nurenberg for the early war trials. My Mother served on ambulance crews during the London bombing Blitz….her husband MIA an RAF pilot. She had a tiny baby, and worked 12 hour shifts in a one bedroom flat, share with another mother and baby. She collected body parts and live patients to transport to the hospitals. She also worked in the. Receiving camps for concentration camp victims, helping to care for the starved, malnourished, abused survivors. “We gave them one ounce of orange juice, and one ounce of heavy cream, because that is all their stomachs could hold.” These stories are so important. I was drilled in them every day from age 2 onward.
Never again. My Dad served on Eisenhower’s planning team for D-Day…. NEVER Forget!
Taking time to remember the horrors my father endured in Dachau, Auschwitz and Struthof Natzwiller concentration camps.
He arrived with 200 prisoners on 22 November 1944 at the Camp Neckarelz, located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France. Within hours of his arrival, he received his prisoner number 98.967 of the Concentration Camp Natzweiler and was handed a red triangle to sew onto his clothes. The Nazi SS officer noted his nationality as #38220;RD/Reichsdeutscher #8221, which means German political prisoner.
He was one of many, too sick to walk on the march that day in March 1945, so the Nazis round up all the sick prisoners. Put them on trucks to take them down the mountain to the train station. They were being sent by train to head back to Dachau. 900 sick prisoners crammed into the carriages. The prisoners on the train were liberated by the US Army in Osterburken (30km from Neckarelz in the district of Würzburg) on Wednesday 4 April 1945.
This is small part of my father’s wartime story and his journey on the Train to Nowhere and it’s liberation by the US Army and his eventual freedom. My father was Polish born in Katowice.
Thanks for sharing your fathers story.
You wrote “SS officer noted his nationality as #38220;RD/Reichsdeutscher #8221, which means German political prisoner”.
You mentioned tow different camp numbers for the same camp now, which one is the correct one, please?
And it´s correct that “RD” means Reichsdeutscher but it doesn´t mean that he was a political prisoner. It´s only the information from which country he was. But not an information about his inmate group. To know to which inmate category he belonged it would be necessary to know the color of his triangle/Winkel.
You also mentioned that he was in Auschwitz, do you know anything about his time there?
Thanks for keeping the remembrance alive!
6,000,000 figure given at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was based on 2.500,000 – 4,000,000 deaths at Auschwitz and 1,400,000 deaths at Majdanek. research has shown that the number of “gas chamber” victims has dropped by at least 3,000,000 since the IMT raising the example of Believer Math
6,000,000 – 3,000,000 = 6,000,000.
Thank you Tony-
History should be truthful and accurate. The Six million figure is the subject of
a new documentary. The Round Number
See https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-new-israeli-film-tackles-the-taboo-did-six-million-jews-die-in-the-holocaust/#:~:text=A%20new%20documentary%20film%20by,the%20HOT8%20channel%20in%20Israel.
One must be either a Holocaust denier or a simple ignorant to write such humbug like you. Correct is only that the number of victims from Auschwitz were corrected several times after WWII, due to newer research.
But your ugly calculation “6,000,000 – 3,000,000 = 6,000,000” doesn´t pay attention on the fact that not only in Majdanek and Auschwitz Jews were murdered.
What about those Jews who were murdered by Einsatzgruppen units?
What about those who perished due to starvation, sickness, etc. in ghettos?
What about those who were murdered in the death camps of the Aktion Reinhard?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Reinhard
And so on…..
Thank you !
Randall R. Kniess, your remark as nothing to do with Holocaust Remembrance Day. But you sure let the world know what you are like.
Thank you but you seem to forget that the holocaust started decades before the concentration camps were ever created. They started with the lies whispered in the dark of night. Those lies were spread by newspapers and by those deceived in their hearts about fictionalized accounts of those being blamed for societies ills. Today’s media working in conjunction with a political ideology is nothing more than a more modern version of the 1930’s. I hope you do take a good look at what I wrote. But your feeble attempt to try to shame me is laughable.
You fail to see how duped you are by the modern day Goebels, or how easily swayed the press syndicates were in the 1930’s. History is well documented on how the holocaust began. It wasn’t started by the Jews or any other minority. It was started by the marriage of facististic ideology, the press, and the populace. It was then melded together with fear and hate. Fear to speak up and the hatred of those who did. I will never forget, and I will speak up.
Randall you are absolutely correct. Things went on well before people went to the death camps. I am afraid many of the people who have flamed you and I have no clue and are examples of the modern mush minds coming out of decades of indoctrination. I am reading a book now called The Big Lie by Dinesh DeSouza where he talks about the projection and transference being used by the left . Before the people got swept up they where forced to inventory all their possessions especially art work, coins, cultural objects, books, antiques, sketches, equipment, furnishings. These lists made it easier to loot to help finance the war. Business got taken under duress, professionals had credentials revoked, people got evicted or where forced to take in others. Those that saw the handwriting on the wall got out while they could many going to the US to places like NYC, NJ even Oregon. If one reads the post war claims available on the internet in the National Archives it weaves a picture of what happened for real.
Some people survived the camps but came back to NOTHING. Lies, propaganda, ignorance allowed it to happen but at the heart of it where true madmen, party elites, secret police, thugs. As for the guy who said no small business” have been forced to close- there are hundreds now gone in NYC where the streets are wild and cops have been shot. The people involved in January 6th have been rounded up and treated as political prisoners getting hit with stiff prison time while those in the riots had charges dropped. We have been betrayed
by the corrupt media, politicians and weaponized federal agencies . I will never forget the price we have paid for freedom and I maintain that one of our greatest strengths is to realize it is worth keeping. A piano customer of mine told me how he spoke at a school assembly at a Veterans Day Memorial, As a WWII veteran he was asked to make a speech. The school principal introduced his as a veteran of World War 11 – yes eleven-. His relatives had fought the germans in the Netherlands as members of the Resistance and a great uncle was given a medal for his sacrifices in the name of freedom…………….
So accurately and well written, I support everything you imparted. Do you know about the Armenian Genocide? It was what lead Hitler to reason he could get away with his Final Solution. We have a deep history that few know about and we’re never taught. We need to be be concerned, if not afraid, of what is being deleted and rearranged to suit political agendas of the left. Thank you for speaking out, Bless you.
Thank you, James for your support. Unfortunately many people are like the frogs in the pot. They are oblivious to the hands turning up the heat. They don’t realize that it is they who are slowly being turned into a new generation of tormentors. Ignorance is bliss.
My dad served with the 87th Mtn Inf. 10th Mtn Div. In Northern Italy during WWII.
That is an amazing unit and one of the best along with the Rangers who scaled the cliffs at Mont Du Hoc in Normandy . My Dad was what would be a load master today in the Air Force . Back then it was the Army Air Force. He was involved in Operation Grubworm in Burma loading troops, supplies, ammunition and mules onto planes that flew over the Burma Road and the Himalayan mountains. Look it up – it was a massive 24 x 7 x7 operation designed to pursue the Japanese Army in the China-Burma-India theater. It is often called the “Forgotten War” but it was very real He was offered a commission to go to Japan but turned it down. 4 years in the jungle was enough.
The air base he was stationed at in Burma had been taken by the famous Merrills Maurauders just days before his unit landed . He was on an un -escorted troop ship that left from Hampton Roads VA . I found it insulting that a recent President went on a world wide apology tour and apologized for dropping the bombs. The Japanese where vicious,ruthless killers like the Germans. The Death Camps are an example of following orders that are as evil as evil can be. The world turned a blind eye when it should have been paying attention and putting a stop to it. I feel it is my obligation and duty to the Greatest Generation and all before and after who have paid the price for freedom to stand up for what is right and not buy in to the woke and pc agenda. Its a tough sell since so many are swayed by propaganda that would make Goebbels proud.
Amen to what you wrote. My dad liked to talk about his experiences. The term “shell shocked” and “battle fatigue” was considered a horrible stigma to that generation. They carried what they lived through on the inside. Post traumatic syndrome was recognized by the majority of people until after Vietnam.
The stories my dad shared with us was his way of releasing the deep stress locked with in him. When your battalion loses 1/3 of the men in a 4 month period of combat, you know you have lived through a hell many will never experience. My earliest memories are of my dad moaning in his sleep about the deaths of his buddies. To see him break into a sweat at a fireworks display with 5 minutes of heavy motor bursts. To here him say that it reminded him of a night of being shelled on Punchboard Hill. Or to see him for the last time crying over the death of a close buddy that occurred nearly 60 years previously, saying, “I told him to keep his head down!” Those stories echo in my heart because my dad relived them.
The holocaust was very real to many folks, the war was hell to those who lived the experience. Sadly a few who have commented on this story are severely ignorant of their present day surroundings, or in one case for sure an absolute bigot spreading more lies about Jews Catholics, and Lutherans. It was people like that who tried to camouflage their identity on January 6th by trying to goad good people into becoming an Antifa type law breaker.
I meant Ponte du Hoc not Mont du Hoc. My wife’s grandmothers brother Joe was a POW shot down in Germany. When he came home he would sleep in the attic and have flashbacks. My youngest daughter was going with a guy who was a combat medic with the 173rd Airborne in Afghanistan. Severe PTSD from the death and destruction he saw and not being able to save everyone he had to treat . He said the medics had to perform meatball surgery often and do things way beyond what he was trained for. He will never be the same again just like the many Vets among us. That old guy ahead of you in line just may have been on the beach at Normandy. I knew a guy here that was a P-38 fighter pilot who escorted bombers over Japan. I tuned his piano for years and he told me some amazing stories. The Veterans Memory project taped him and he told them the same stories. When I read his obit it had details on the number of missions he had flown on and his units. He was a real, honest to goodness Hero and would be saddened by what is going on today to bring us all down.
“I found it insulting that a recent President went on a world wide apology tour and apologized for dropping the bombs. The Japanese where vicious,ruthless killers like the Germans”
I guess the world finds it rather insulting and pathetic from the US that they turned a blind eye on the suffering of Jewish refugees instead to help.
Not aiding/supporting refugees (while the USA signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions long before WWII!) is considered nowadays “assistance in mass murder”.
And your “ruthless killers like the Germans” tells a lot about your ignoramus or shell we call it hypocrisy?
Whoa … I believe the ships where turned away from multiple places and it was a tragedy. As for being ignorant or a hypocrite I am not sure what your attack is about. The germans where ruthless killers and there are multiple, well documented cases of it such as the Malmedy Massacre in Belgian. The Japanese committed many atrocities as well such as the Bataan Death March. The original post was about remembering the Holocaust so perhaps we should get back to that- it was a horrible, immoral, shameful event but it was a series of events that led to it. Herein lies the value of studying history whether it is good or bad. The following describes the Malmedy Massacre :What happened next is reasonably well documented. After speaking briefly to his subordinate, SS Sturmbahnführer (Major) Werner Pötschke, Peiper moved on ahead. About an hour later, some time after 2:15PM, the Americans were assembled in a field. German machine gunners then opened fire and massacred them. SS men walked among the wounded, shooting some of them in the head; and they also murdered a Belgian widow who owned a local café
You wrote “Whoa … I believe the ships where turned away from multiple places and it was a tragedy. As for being ignorant or a hypocrite I am not sure what your attack is about. The germans where ruthless killers and there are multiple, well documented cases of it such as the Malmedy Massacre in Belgian. ”
What you believe is wrong, in no other country a ship with REFUGEES on board was turned away from the shores instead to help, this happened only in the USA.
And which attack you´re talking about? Your “The germans where ruthless killers ” I guess.
Quite a shame that more Nazi officers got honored as Righteous among the Nations by Vad Vashem then Americans. That tells a lot!
And what has the Malmedy Massacre to do with the 103 Million Americans who oposed to save Jewish REFUGEES from Germany & Austria?
You´re throwing permanent stones while sitting in a glasshouse. Did you not hear about the Dachau Liberation massacre where GI´s murdered their German POW or allowed former inmates to torture and kill them. They even recorded the mistreatment of a German POW holding a white flag in his hand and holding him at gunpoint to make sure a former inmate can torture him.
But that doesn´t surprise anyone, didn´t they also murder journalists in Afghanistan and even people who wanted to render First Aid to them.
The monstrous tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust its so sad to me. However, it dud happen and no one can ignore it. I’m not not Jewish, I’m Catholic but my heart breaks for the Jewish community and what they’ve had to endure. I visited Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, Holland and when I was inside her house and saw all her magazine clippings she pasted on her wall I cried. Her dream was to visit Hollywood someday and dream died with her and her sister at the concentration camp. The Holocaust is a very sensitive topic for me and I’m pleased that you’re posting these stories so the world never forgets the atrocities that occurred by the Nazis on these beautiful families of jews. Thank you
I came to learn more about the Holocaust and realize that some of the comments here reflect the same kind of hatred and insulting that still need to be rejected in order to avoid anything similar. There are ways to express ideas and respect those of others. If there are facts to be made known, just guide to the information in an appropriate fashion!
I love to read the comments on n Fold3!
” […] Each day at Bergen-Belsen, Doriane and her brother remained in the barracks […] In June 1945, Doriane was one of many inmates evacuated from the camps on a cattle train, then freed by Soviet troops. […]”
The concentration camp Bergen – Belsen got liberated by the British on April 15th 1945. WWII ended in Europe on May 8th 1945.
Conclusion: No one was evacuated from Bergen – Belsen on cattle trains in June 45 and liberated by the Soviets.